Drive-By Truckers’ Southern Rock Opera (33 1/3 Series)

"The Drive-By Truckers' Southern Rock Opera takes listeners on a road trip through the American South, with stops along mean old highways and soul-sucking swamps, iconic recording studios and doomed chartered jets, and even Heaven and Hell. Along the way, the Truckers attempt to untangle the mess that is southern history by exploring the contradictory, dualistic nature of the region. Like twin paths intersecting and diverging before meeting again, the opera's libretto focuses on the lives of two bands: the fictional Betamax Guillotine, a stand-in for the Truckers themselves, and Southern rock gods Lynyrd Skynyrd. Rien Fertel takes us for a ride along the Truckers' winding road through the opera's Southlands, a region filled with youthful rockstar aspirations, fatal crashes, the wreckage of one band gone too soon, and the ambitions of another wrestling with the great hope and tragedy that is America."--Bloomsbury Publishing. Title Page Copyright Page Contents Track Listing Acknowledgments Act I Chapter 1: A Mean Old Highway U.S. Route 72 The purity of the road The duality of the southern thing Savage and lonely streets Chapter 2: That Muscle Shoals Sound The Shoals, Alabama The sound of the Shoals Moving on That Muscle Shoals sound Take a song and make it better Chapter 3: Dying Before Your Time Macon, Georgia The Colonel The big house Enlightened rogues From the A(llman Brothers Band) to Z(Z Top) On the southernness of southern rock Chapter 4: Hell Birmingham, Alabama 1964 A brief history of the rock opera Ain’t Very close to Hell itself Sympathy for the governor Act II Chapter 5: Fly Around the World and Back The Road The beautiful and damned Crazy, stupid, shit Road warriors Dismal failures Even if it kills us Chapter 6: From the Swamps of Northern Florida Jacksonville The first son of southern rock Gene What’s your name? The American Rolling Stones The rotgut life As long as we possibly can Chapter 7: Hurtling Through Space Outside Gillsburg, Mississippi The day southern rock died The end Ain’t no time Survivors Chapter 8: America Huntsville, Alabama/Oxford, Mississippi Southern American Southern, American Notes Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Also available in the series The Drive-By Truckers' 'Southern Rock Opera' takes listeners on a road trip through the American South, with stops along mean old highways and soul-sucking swamps, iconic recording studios and doomed chartered jets, and even Heaven and Hell. Along the way, the Truckers attempt to untangle the mess that is southern history by exploring the contradictory, dualistic nature of the region.0Like twin paths intersecting and diverging before meeting again, the opera's libretto focuses on the lives of two bands: the fictional Betamax Guillotine, a stand-in for the Truckers themselves, and Southern rock gods Lynyrd Skynyrd. Rien Fertel takes us for a ride along the Truckers' winding road through the opera's Southlands, a region filled with youthful rockstar aspirations, fatal crashes, the wreckage of one band gone too soon, and the ambitions of another wrestling with the great hope and tragedy that is America