online.wsj.com/public/article/0,,SB111102511477881964,00.html
Prescriptions for an Economic Uptick How healthy is the US economy these days? Economist bloggers John Irons and Arnold Kling take its pulse and write some prescriptions to pick up the pace.
How Bush and Cheney Avoided AMT On tax day last week, millions of Americans had paid more in taxes for 20 04 because of the alternative minimum tax. President Bush and Vice Presi dent Dick Cheney weren't among them.
Panel Suggests 'Peace Corps' to Fight AIDS A medical advisory board is calling for the creation of an AIDS "Peace Co rps" to send US doctors, nurses and other health-care workers to fill the demand in many AIDS-stricken countries.
Subscribe Now Subscribe Now to The Online Journal & benefit from many exclusive online features, including access to Journal archives and personalized news tra cking.
The Welsh quintet's first song had gone ove r fairly well, the second less so, and singer/guitarist Davey MacManus l ooked out at the still-gathering crowd. Then, from somewhere in the darkness came the cry, "Freebird!" It made this night like so many other rock 'n' roll nights in America.
This exchange between Lynyrd Skynyrd's Ronnie Van Zant and an A tlanta audience introduces the version of "Freebird" from the 1976 live album "One More From the Road". That cut has been a radio mainstay since the album's release, likely inspiring many more shouts for "Freebird."
this on-stage lecture, de livered during a 1993 show in Chicago. And in some cases, entertainers become slightly unhinged when they hear t he song title, especially after Chicago DJ Kevin Matthews urged listener s to yell "Freebird."
it's from the 1973 debut album by leg endary Southern rockers Lynyrd Skynyrd. The band's nine-minute march fro m ruminative piano to wailing guitar couldn't be less like the Crimea's jagged punk-pop. "I don't know that I've ever se en a show where it hasn't happened," says Bill Davis of the veteran coun try-punk band Dash Rip Rock. "It's just the most astonishing phenomenon," says Mike Doughty, the forme r front man of the "deep slacker jazz" band Soul Coughing, adding that " these kids, they can't be listening to Lynyrd Skynyrd." has been a rock clich for years, guaranteed to elici t laughs from drunks and scorn from music fans who have long since tired of the joke. And it has spread beyond music, prompting the Chicago Whit e Sox organist to add the song to her repertoire and inspiring a greetin g card in which a drunk holding a lighter hollers "Freebird!" But one common retort is: "I've got y our 'free bird' right here." It's a strategy Dash Rip Rock's former bassist Ned Hickel used. According to fans' accounts of shows, so have Jewel and Hot Tuna's Jack Casady. Mr Casady says that's "usually not my response t o those kind of things." On a recent live album, Modest Mo use's Isaac Brock declares that "if this were the Make-a-Wish Foundation , and you were going to die in 20 minutes -- just long enough to play 'F reebird' -- we still wouldn't play it." Dash Rip Rock often plays "Stair way to Freebird," a mash-up of the Skynyrd epic and Led Zeppelin's "Stai rway to Heaven" that Mr Davis boasts lasts "less than two minutes. A few years ago, Mr Doughty started promoting the Weather Girls' "It's R aining Men" as the new "Freebird," asking audiences at his solo shows to call for the disco chestnut instead. Now, he says, he gets yells for bo th songs at every performance. A harsh reaction to "Freebird" came from the late comedian Bill Hicks dur ing a Chicago gig in the early 1990s. On a bootleg recording of the show , Mr Hicks at first just sounds irked. The comic soon works himself into a rage, but the "Freebirds" keep coming . "Freebird" is hardly obscure -- it's a radio staple consistently voted one of rock's greatest songs. One versi on -- and an important piece of the explanation -- anchors Skynyrd's 197 6 live album "One More From the Road." On the record, singer Ronnie Van Zant, who was killed along with two other bandmates in a 1977 plane cras h, asks the crowd, "What song is it you want to hear?" That unleashes a deafening call for "Freebird," and Skynyrd obliges with a 14-minute rend ition. To understand the phenomenon, it also helps to be from Chicago. When aske d why they continue to request "Freebird," Mr Hicks's tormentors yell o ut "Kevin Matthews!" Kevin Matthews is a Chicago radio personality who has exhorted his fans - - the KevHeads -- to yell "Freebird" for years, and claims to have origi nated the tradition in the late 1980s, when he says he hit upon it as a way to torment Florence Henderson of "Brady Bunch" fame, who was giving a concert. He figured somebody should yell something at her "to break up the monotony." The longtime Skynyrd fan settled on "Freebird," saying t he epic song "just popped into my head." Mr Matthews says the call was heeded, inspiring him to go down the listi ngs of coming area shows, looking for entertainers who deserved a "Freeb ird" and encouraging the KevHeads to make it happen. "It was never meant t o be yelled at a cool concert -- it was meant to be yelled at someone re ally lame," he says. "If you're going to yell 'Freebird,' yell 'Freebird ' at a Jim Nabors concert."
Lynyrd Skynyrd performing in New York City in April 1976. Still, Mr Matthews treasures his trove of recorded "Freebird" moments -- such as baffled comedian Elayne Boosler wondering why the audience is s houting "reverb." And he argues that good bands simply acknowledge it an d move on. "The people who are conceited, the so-called artists who get really offended by it, they deserve it," he says. Longtime Chicago Tribun e music writer Greg Kot says he remembers the cry from the early 1980s. He suggests it originated as an in-joke among indie-rock fans "having th eir sneer at mainstream classic rock." Other music veterans think it dates back to 1970s audiences' shouts for i t and other guitar sagas, such as "Whipping Post," by the Allman Brother s Band, and "Smoke on the Water," by Deep Purple. They may all be right: It's possible "Freebird" began as a rallying cry f or Skynyrd Nation and a sincere request from guitar lovers, was made fam ous by the live cut, taken up by ironic clubgoers, given new life by Mr Matthews, and eventually lost all meaning and became something people h oller when there's a band onstage. But as with many mysteries, the true origin may be unknowable -- cold com fort for bands still to be confronted with the inevitable cry from the d arkness. For them, here's a strategy tried by a brave few: Call the audi ence's bluff. The Dandy Warhols play a slowed-down take singer Courtney Taylor-Taylor describes as sung "like T Rex would if he were on a lot of pills." And Dash Rip Rock has perfo rmed the real song in order to surprise fans expecting the parody. For h is part, Mr Doughty suggests that musicians make a pact: Whenever anyon e calls for "Freebird," play it in its entirety -- and if someone calls for it again, play it again. "That would put a stop to 'Freebird,' I think," he says. "It would be a b ad couple of years, but it might be worth it." So what do the members of Skynyrd think of the tradition? Johnny Van Zant , Ronnie's brother and the band's singer since 1987, says "it's not an i nsult at all -- I think it's kind of cool. Besides, Mr Van Zant has a confession: His wife persuaded him to see Che r in Jacksonville a couple of years ago, and he couldn't resist yelling "Freebird!"
|
http://csua.com/feed/