Snobbin: Beautiful Trash in the Pop Culture Gutter

The final three songs focus on the plane ride and subsequent crash of both bands: the fictional one and Lynyrd Skynyrd. Cooley's “Shut Up and Get on the Plane” is a premonition of what is to come, as well as an excoriation of those that fear life and do not want to live it to its fullest. He sings, “We've been this close to death before; we were just too drunk to know it / Guess the price of being sobers being scared out of your mind.” Cooley dares listeners to get on the plane because death is inevitable and there is no use in complaining. The adventure the band is on trumps all. Even though the narrator would like to go home and lay around, he is a working man and needs to keep on moving. This theme continues through Cooley's songs; they revolve around men of action who move through less specific worlds. They carry on because they have to, despite the odds, not concerned with the specifics of history, but moving through a more generalized world. He writes songs for...

The idea for the album formed in a conversation between Hood and former bassist, Earl Hicks, in which they discussed writing a semi-autobiographical screenplay about their youth in the south and the plane crash that almost ended Skynyrd by taking the lives of vocalist Ronnie Van Zant, guitarist Steve Gaines, and backup vocalist Cassie Gaines in 1977.   Their chartered plane, a 1977 Convair CV-300, converted from a CV-240 ran out of fuel and crashed in Gillsburg, Mississippi near the end of a flight from Greenville, South Carolina, where they had performed at the Greenville Memorial Auditorium, to Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Assistant road manager Dean Kilpatrick, pilot Walter McCreary and co-pilot William Gray were also killed in the crash, while 20 other people survived, including guitarists Allen Collins and Gary Rossington. Bassist Leon Wilkeson, keyboardist Billy Powell, and drummer Artimus Pyle, who crawled out of the wreckage with members of the road crew, were also injure...

The first time I heard the Drive-By Truckers, I wrote them off as just another band in the long line of Uncle Tupelo wannabes. My girlfriend's cousin had given me a copy of Decoration Day saying it looked like something I would like. He was a big fan of mainstream country, and Columbia House had given him a free copy. On first listen I thought the band was copying the tried and true Americana formula, sounding very much like Uncle Tupelo with a greater southern flair. I thought they were just another in a long line of Tweedy and Farrar copycats, writing songs about their working-class roots and love of alcohol. The record just didn't speak to me. I filed it away with my other CDs, never expecting to return. I'm sure I went back to Uncle Tupelo, Son Volt, Whiskeytown, and other similar bands for my rootsy needs. I was late to the party on Steve Earle as well.             A few years later, A Blessing and A Curse came out a...