For the most part of the Southern Rock Music enthusiasts, the release of a new 38 Spécial album can't let obviously cold. Certainly, there is (and there will always be) a small part of the southern community that will balk again and again at considering this band as one of the greatest Rock'n Roll bands in the Southern Rock, and even if, strangely, most of those Rebels know perfectly the story and the beginning of the band in the mid -Seventies beside Skynyrd, but.... of course everybody has the right to have an opinion... I have to confess that to consider Southern Rock only as an ear splitting Hard style, for the guitars like for the way of singing, always seems to me to be a bit simplistic for this marvellous musical style.

So, that being said, I have to come back to this Live from Texas. Actually, I imagine that no one will be really surprised if I say that the interpretation is Top Quality and that the production is still on the level. Really, the only possible interrogation that I easily understand (because I agree with) is why a new Live after this from Sturgis ? Of course we are now 12 years later and we can think that Don Barnes and his pals wished to jog our memory about the great Live performances that 38 Spécial gives regularly, but there you are... As many people know it, the band hasn't the habit to change its set-list every day (even if we saw a real evolution during the last monthes about this point !) and we can't be surprised to find again the most part of the standards that made from some of the band's albums golden or platinum records at that time (''Rockin Into The Night'', ''Fantasy Girl'', ''Back Where You Belong, ''Twentieth Century Fox'', and other ''Hold On Loosely'') but it will be regardless possible to appreciate some more recent (or less old, as we want !) tunes like "The Squeeze", "Trooper With An Attitude" or "Help Me Somebody" from the Van Zant Brothers, a set of tunes magnificently played that confirms the huge value of the band on stage !

So it would be logical today (from my point of view) that 38 Special devises a new studio album with some compositions more ''Roots'' than on "Drivetrain" and more directly linked to the style that confirmed the value of the band in the beginning of the 80's, but well... it's only a fan's wish, and I suppose that it's impossible for Don Barnes or Donnie Van Zant to listen to all their fans' wishes... So, if they could have the idea to come back for an European Tour (32 years after their only visit) I think that a lot of people would be delighted...

Keep on rockin' (as Don Barnes says so well !)

John Molet

Translation. Y. Philippot-Degand