LYNYRD SKYNYRD One More From the Road (MCA)

As if certain rock writers didn't have enough to worry about already, lying awake nights, wondering whether Lynyrd Skynyrd are going to declare for Lester Maddox on the eve of the election, thereby tarnishing the writers' earlier praise of the L.S. aesthetic, lead singer Ronnie Van Zant has dropped another bomb in the new live set, where he intros "Whiskey Rock-a-Roller" with "Had an' ol' stupid writer ask me one time:

What are you, man?"'

What indeed, man? Lynyrd Skynyrd continue to befuddle Yankee interviewers with a caginess which is not so much calculated equivocation as it is genuine confusion over what role they're expected to play for those nosy Northerners. Capricorn Records, with its foundation of pious WEA liberalism, always made the task easy: "We're good ol' boys who lahk to lay back an' get drunk, in between our grateful cultivation of our indigenous cullud bluesmen." Johnny Rebbing it for patronizing Northerners, gratifying the visitors' own provincialism.