I consider myself to have a fairly severe form of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder when it comes to music – you see, I’m a tad manic about bands/genres I like. For instance, even today I still collect each new Stranglers recording even though most everybody else is past caring (or not if you saw the attendance at Manchester Academy in October 2007.) What’s this got to do with Thirty Eighty Special’s Rock & Roll Strategy I hear you ask? Well, if this little series was about favourite/best albums then I’d be deciding which Lynyrd Skynyrd album I should be writing about but as it isn’t I thought I’d discuss why this, the band’s eighth album is so important to me.
 
It was my love of Skynyrd and subsequent desire to own all things Southern Rock that led me to .38 Special (as they are called on every album except this one) and I found that I wasn’t overly moved by their earlier Skynyrd-lite efforts but when I bought Tour De Force from a record fair at the Polytechnic of Wales I was hooked on their more AOR albums. I remember buying this on vinyl from Vibes in Bury, still wrapped (it was an import, naturally) and being excited as I’d seen the video for the title song on late night television and thoroughly enjoyed it. I later bought it on CD but unusually for me have no recollection of where.
 
As I have mentioned elsewhere I am a sucker for good packaging and it has to be said that the art work for this album is really, really …crap so it must have some special qualities and those would be the songs. This is one of the very few albums that I can sing along with absolutely every word and I still regularly give it a spin almost twenty years down the line. It was also the first .38 album not to feature two drummers playing in tandem.
 
I love every single song on this record. That is possibly surprising as it was the band’s first album without singer/guitarist Don Barnes who had previously been, in many ways, the leader of the group. Wisely he was replaced by two people; Danny Chauncey who still plays guitar with them today and Max Carl on keyboards who played on this and the next album Bone Against Steel in 1991. Carl is all over this record, he had a hand in writing eight of the eleven songs, sings nearly as many and his keyboards underpin everything sonically.
 
Until Rock & Roll Strategy .38 had been getting farther and farther away from their Southern roots but on this album they married their melodic tendencies with Southern sounds not heard of for almost a decade.  The track Hot ‘Lanta in particular simmers with heat whereas Little Sheba tells a particularly American tale about, “girls on the dance floor, wrestling in jello.” A mention must be given at this point to the superb production of long term collaborator Rodney Mills.
 
Second Chance gave the band their second and final US top 10 single featuring a black and white video that was a main stay of Casey Kasem’s America’s Top Ten for weeks. In many ways Donnie Van Zant,  vocalist and hero of mine, was relegated to the role of bystander as can be seen on the Second Chance video where he strums ineffectually on a guitar that he didn’t play on the track. Having said that, Chattahoochee finds him in fine form and as always he suits the rockier material.
 
Elsewhere, Midnight Magic, Never Be Lonely, Innocent Eyes and Love Strikes are a total master class in melodic rock and that would be the reason why this is such an influential record for me. It was this album that led me to explore acts like Journey, FM, Survivor et al as well as other wimpy parptastic fluffy keyboard driven bands, so I owe this piece of vinyl a great deal and it has been my pleasure to salute one of .38 Special’s lesser known efforts.

Let us know your views on Rock And Roll Strategy

Track Listing

Rock and Roll Strategy
What's It To Ya?
Little Sheba
Comin' Down Tonight
Midnight Magic
Second Chance
Hot 'Lanta
Never Be Lonely
Chattahoochee
Innocent Eyes
Love Strikes

Line Up

Donnie Van Zant - Vocals
Max Carl lead - Vocals/Keyboards
Jeff Carlisi - Guitar
Danny Chauncey - Guitar
Larry Junstrom - Bass
Jack Grondin - Drums