Be A Simple Kind Of Man

by | Jul 20, 2006

You know you’re adjusting nicely to the South when you buy Pronounced Leh-Nerd Skin-Nerd, Lynyrd Skynyrd’s 1973 debut on iTunes. At $7.92 it’s hard to resist. My purchase today was in part motivated by an event I didn’t see coming. Last Friday we ate sushi with friends and then we went to Rider’s Lounge, where I encountered my boss, another co-worker and her husband, as well as a high school band from Bluffton known as The Gnomes.

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Here’s what the Island Packet said about them last summer:

In a town where cover bands are about as common as drink specials and the strains of “Freebird” blend into the background noise like cicadas, it can be hard for a seemingly innocuous set of teenagers to gain a foothold, much less a following.

The best part of their show for me was a rendition of “Simple Man.” I stood back against the bar after downing a Jaeger bomb (not somethng I do much of), and took it all in. Namely, that three teens in this small South Carolina town know how to rip and they like to rip Skynyrd. They do pretty well by their musical idols, I’d say.

On a related note, Lynyrd Skynyrd’s biggest hit single, “Sweet Home Alabama”, was an answer song to Neil Young’s “Alabama” and “Southern Man”. The common belief that Ronnie Van Zant and Young were rivals is incorrect–they were actually fans of each other and considered collaborating together on several occasions.