Wednesday, March 14, 2012

Father-Son Bonding via the Medium of Lynyrd Skynyrd

I used to be quite the Lynyrd Skynrd fan, starting around the age of 15.  I still am, I suppose.  They go over the same sort of material, with the same sound, multiple times.  Some might even say that they made essentially the same record several times over.  Maybe, but it is a very good record.

I had either forgotten or underestimated, however, how much of a Skynyrd fan my 17-year-old son is.  We were tooling northward up through Kentucky when this gem came on the radio, and we both loved it, grooving on the great guitar work:



What a great track.  Yes, the worldview leaves something to be desired, buy my son and I are precisely agreed about that, too.

We talked about the group some more, and then it occurred to me to tell him how when I lived in NYC, I had this exact Lynyrd Skynyrd belt buckle. The photo really does not do justice to it; it absolutely sparkled, like a red glass taillamp lens on a shoebox Ford.


Kinda wish I had not thrown it away.  I would have liked to hand it over to my son as some kind of Rite of Passage:
Son, I bestow upon you this Lynyrd Skynyrd belt buckle.  I pronounce and declare you to be now a man!