WI: 'Southern Rock' in '70s United States more pro-solidarity and economic justice?

It looks like "Sweet Home Alabama" peaked at number 8 in October 1974.
http://www.billboard.com/artist/308693/lynyrd-skynyrd/chart

Neil Young was much bigger than Lynyrd Skynyrd. They were punching above their weight and taking on one of the big boys.

Plus, Skynyrd was speaking truth to power. Now, they weren't necessarily correct! A person or group is not necessarily a hundred percent correct when they speak truth to power. But it was definitely that feeling.
 
What I don't like about the song is the whole us-versus-them mentality.

When I was in high school in suburban Houston from 1977 to '81, maybe about 15% of students were "kickers" and maybe about 10% were "freaks." The freaks often wore rock concert T-shirts, had long hair, were thought to smoke marijuana or even more dangerous drugs. Actually, a lot of kids smoked marijuana including pretty clean-cut and "normal" kids. I didn't, basically because I didn't have the opportunity in the time period between my Christian period and my hypochondriacal period.

Kickers had more of a definitely uniform. Boots, jeans, western style belt, and baseball cap maybe advertising John Deere tractor, maybe something else. It was considered a point of pride to have a back pocket on your jeans worn thin by a can of skoal or copenhagen tobacco. A public health advocate might find this part the most objectionable!

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And about "Sweet Home Alabama," what the heck is this quick lyric at the end "Where the skies are so blue
And the guv'nor's true" ? ! ?
 
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raharris1973

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Parsing Lynyrd Skynyrd songs, I've always interpreted "Sweet Home Alabama" as leaning conservative/reactionary and showing irritation with do-gooders and muckrakers.

"In Birmingham we love the Governor" &

"Watergate does not bother me" seem to clinch it.

However, there is still an interesting mix in some of their other songs.

"Gimme back my bullets" - not sure what it's talking about but it's at least using a metaphor of the gun-wielding vigilantes.

However, "Saturday Night Special" would not be NRA-approved, as it condemns a particular fire-arm as only good for murdering people. Would be denounced as a liberal screed in the 21st century south or country music scene.
 
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Disgruntlement about the huge numbers of white trash dying in Vietnam motivated folk musicians, Southern Rockers, etc. to write protest songs about the VN War. Many of those songs were written about poor whites being used and abused to fulfill "planter" ambitions.
I've heard of Steve Earle. But give me a couple of political protest songs which received any kind of radio play at all ? ?

And I know corporate radio says they don't like anything "political," even though they're much more nervous about one particular direction! All the same, there are artful ways of hinting and pushing the envelope.

And maybe Southern Rock could have been big enough to develop its own regional model? Still corporate of course, for it has to be in our economy, and largely overlapping the national music scene, but maybe a little different?
 
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Actually, the "bullets" in Gimme Back My Bullets were referring to chart positions (ie, "coming in at number one with a bullet"). As for political protest songs that get radio airplay, if we're not just sticking to Southern Rock, War Pigs by Sabbath comes immediately to mind, while a more recent example would be most of the radio hits from Rage Against the Machine.
 
I've heard of Steve Earle. But give me a couple of political protest songs which received any kind of radio play at all ? ?

And I know corporate radio says they don't like anything "political," even though they're much more nervous about one particular direction! All the same, there are artful ways of hinting and pushing the envelope.

Back in the 70s, before the creations of Clear Channel owning a huge number of markets with Hub stations, local independent stations had plenty of discretion on playlists. You had to be really out there, Like DOA by Bloodrock, to get banned from play, but even that still hit the Top 40 Charts.
 
Actually, the "bullets" in Gimme Back My Bullets were referring to chart positions (ie, "coming in at number one with a bullet"). As for political protest songs that get radio airplay, if we're not just sticking to Southern Rock, War Pigs by Sabbath comes immediately to mind, while a more recent example would be most of the radio hits from Rage Against the Machine.

Even Iron Maiden's Run To The Hills was about the genocide of North American indiginous people, though admittedly someone who only ever heard it on the radio probably wasn't abosrbing the lyrics.
 

raharris1973

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Even Iron Maiden's Run To The Hills was about the genocide of North American indiginous people, though admittedly someone who only ever heard it on the radio probably wasn't abosrbing the lyrics.

I don't know what musical genre except for "awful 70s" in which to place: "Cherokee People" by Paul Revere and the Raiders

 
Back in the 70s, before the creations of Clear Channel owning a huge number of markets with Hub stations, local independent stations had plenty of discretion on playlists. You had to be really out there, Like DOA by Bloodrock, to get banned from play, but even that still hit the Top 40 Charts.
In '78, I was fifteen and just coming off my Christian period. I think it was a choice year in music and have a lot of fond memories.

But honest to gosh, I think the small companies are just as quick to conform to their corporate masters, I really do! For example, I don't remember a single DJ expressing skepticism toward the oil companies during the 1979 energy crisis. And even if in the final analysis, it was a real issue and only 30% oil companies manipulating and taking advantage of a situation, it's still something which should have been hashed out and discussed.

So, yes, I'm glad you mentioned the f#@kers at "Clear Channel." I agree things have gotten more consolidated and overall worse, but they weren't that great to begin with.
 

Gypsies, Tramps & Thieves by Cher (1971)

I was born in the wagon of a travelin' show
My mama used to dance for the money they'd throw
Papa would do whatever he could
Preach a little gospel, sell a couple bottles of Doctor good

Gypsies, tramps and thieves
We'd hear it from the people of the town
They'd call us gypsies, tramps and thieves
But every night all the men would come around
And lay their money down

. . . . .
. . . . .
I think this is just a great song in general, including the hypocrisy of those who think they're part of the in-group. And also potentially standing in solidarity with those who are excluded.
 
Harper Valley PTA was another one that took on small-town moral hypocrisy(in the form of anti-single momism), though I believe the singer otherwise identified as right-wing.
 

L.A. Freeway, sung by Jerry Jeff Walker, written by Guy Clark (1972)

Pack up all your dishes
Make note of all good wishes
Say goodbye to the landlord for me
That sum-bitch has always bored me

Throw out them old LA papers
And that moldy box of vanilla wafers
Adios to all this concrete
Gonna get me some dirt road back street

If I can just get off of that L.A. freeway
Without getting killed or caught
Down that road in a cloud of smoke
For some land that I ain't bought bought bought
If I can just get off of that L.A. freeway

Here's to you old skinny Dennis
Only one I think I will miss
I can hear your Bassman singin'
Sweet and low like a gift your bringin'

. . . . .
. . . . .
Yeah, a pretty good song about opting out of the rat race, and stepping away from social-climbing elites and would-be elites.

I think one cover version goes:
If I could just get off of that L.A. Freeway
without getting killed or drunk
 
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and it's kind of amazing that the baby boom generation and the youth culture was never able to successfully take on the recording industry
 
and it's kind of amazing that the baby boom generation and the youth culture was never able to successfully take on the recording industry

Entrenched Evil is difficult to remove.
You really needed an alternate distribution method, that was available for most.

But the Empire did strike back, with killing Napster and the Jobs encrypting Apple iTunes.
 
maybe a pirate radio movement similar to the UK, and backed by a nascent libertarian movement/party?

who are then challenged by those on the left, esp regarding the topic of the Vietnam war,

might make for some different focuses and emphases even if the issues each side believes remain largely the same.
 
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