While I was never the Confederate flag waving, Dixie loving, fan of southern rock music, that some of my friends were, I loved certain songs and ” Free Bird ” was one of them.įor years it has been a song that people shout out at inappropriate times at concerts or on other occasions when they think it might be funny. There was nothing wrong them, they were just ordinary shoes, but after about the third glance and somewhere around the words, ” Lord, I can’t change … ” I realized that I was looking at his feet because Ronnie Van Zant always went barefoot on stage and I remembered that I’d read that he did it because he liked to feel the stage burn. In a funny twist towards the end, I realized I was looking down at his shoes with no particular thought. Listening last night as the lone musician played the southern rock classic, I closed my eyes a few times remembering myself at 15 and that night when for a few minutes all that seemed to matter was a song. The crowd roars as the band retakes the stage and Ronnie Van Zant, lead singer for Lynyrd Skynyrd, asks that now famous question in southern rock circles, ” What song is it you wanna hear? ” It’s in the Fox Theatre in Atlanta, Georgia that a sort of musical history is made when the crowd responds in what sounds like one explosive voice with only two words, I’m dancing alone, but together along with 4,677 other fans calling out and demanding in a way, to hear that one last tune. My voice is strained and I’m sweaty from dancing in place. They want to hear another song before they go and I join in with the others shouting and clapping as we try to bring back the band for another encore because there’s one more song we need to hear before we say goodnight. It’s one of three sold out shows being recorded for their live album, ” One More From The Road ” and fans of the band are making their thoughts heard. I have a perfect seat although I have spent little of the concert in it and from my position in the center section of the balcony, I can see the stage clearly and part of the audience below. I’m fifteen and lost in the screaming energy of southern rock fans who don’t want the show to end. It was at the end of the evening after having put on my coat while giving my husband a look that said, ” I’m ready to go if you are … ” that I heard the opening chords to a song that only has one memory for me. It was quite the party with live music and great food and I had fun chatting with the people who’ve become my friends. Last night I was at our village pub celebrating my friend Kate’s 50th birthday. We may hear a song in a different location years on, but within a few notes we’ve shifted back to the time when everything around us imprinted along with the music, linking it forever in a sort of soundtrack for our lives. Music can act as a link for many of us with certain songs tethering us to old memories like those amp cords allowing us to gain distance, but never completely disconnect. Attached as they were to the volume control, they could leap and dance about while they played, but only so far. In 1976, rock musicians were still limited in their physical movement by the length of the cords that connected them to their amplifiers.
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