Some people might consider calling .38 Special a poor man’s Lynyrd Skynyrd – but, seeing this was a band co-founded by Donnie Van Zant, it’s easy to understand why the two bands sounded so similar. (At least, they did in .38 Special’s earliest years.)
In fact, listening to their self-titled debut, it sometimes made me wonder if I was listening to Molly Hatchet with a different, less powerful vocalist. But make no mistake: this album is neither Skynyrd nor Hatchet. If anything, it’s typical Southern rock from that period of time that does precious little to set itself apart from the pack.
Here’s the simple truth: If you pick this album up expecting to hear early renditions of songs in the vein of “Hold On Loosely,” you’re going to be in for a bad time. These nine tracks are a band still growing into their own skin, discovering their own voice while walking some well-worn musical paths. I get it: they needed time to mature into the band they would eventually become.
If only .38 Special had enough moments to make that self-realization journey worth the price of admission. Van Zant is an okay singer, but he lacks the vocal power that peers like Danny Joe Brown or his own brother Ronnie had, and that, in the end, does cause some of the music’s power to ebb. (Guitarist/backing vocalist Don Barnes would eventually share lead vocal chores with Van Zant.)
Are the nine songs featured here bad? No… but they’re also nothing that the listener hasn’t heard elsewhere. Often during the second half of the disc, tracks like “Gypsy Belle,” “Four Wheels” and “Just Hang On” made me wonder if I had picked up a Molly Hatchet album by mistake. Even putting aside the band’s history and my knowledge of what they would produce musically in just a few short years, this disc came off as the musical equivalent of Chinese food: passable, but unsatisfying in the end.
Oh, I still go back to this album every couple of years, if only to remind myself of where .38 Special got started and how far they were able to develop as musicians and songwriters. The fact still remains that .38 Special is not a great album… but it’s also not wretched. If it had been purely original and bad, that would have been one thing. But to be similar to so many other bands in that genre and not be noteworthy… to me, that’s the bigger sin.
