Allow me to rave about a band for a minute

Today after work I drove to Manifest Discs (the best record store in the world) and bought the new CD by the Drive By Truckers. This is band from the Athens area of Georgia. Their basic story is they are a southern rock band in the style of (I hate to say it because it's like, "duh!") Lynryd Skynryd. But I must qualify that statement by saying that the main songwriter, Patterson Hood, grew up hating Lynryd Skynryd because all the redneck fucks that tortured his kind in high school loved Lynryd Skynryd. If I recollect correctly he left his small town Georgia town and after a while realized that the guys in Lynryd Skynyrd were artists unlike the bozos that loved them that he hated when he was young. Then he realized that he was southern like the guys in that legendary band and he was an artist and so were the guys in Skynyrd. Once he realized that he also saw that Lynyrd Skynyrd was actually speaking him more than the meatheads from his younger days. Like all great bands they take their main inspiration and run with it and expand it.

I saw the Drive by Truckers at the Double Door here in Charlotte a couple of years ago and they blew the roof off the joint. Rarely do I get to witness a band relish in the act of simply playing music. I didn't buy their album then because it was a double CD and I was poor as hell. The new album is called "Decoration Day" and right now it is competing with the new Dirtbombs' album as my favorite of the year.

The Drive by Truckers are playing here in Charlote on January 17th. I officially extend an invitation to anyone who reads this to join me that night at the Visulite Theater here in Charlotte for a three-guitar attack rocking good time.