By JAY ROBERTS

The Cassette Chronicles is a continuing series of mini reviews and reflections on albums from the 1980’s and 1990’s. The aim of this series is to highlight both known and underappreciated albums from rock, pop and metal genres from this time period through the cassette editions of their releases. Some of the albums I have known about and loved for years, while others are new to me and were music I’ve always wanted to hear. There will be some review analysis and my own personal stories about my connection with various albums. These opinions are strictly my own and do not reflect the views of anyone else at Limelight Magazine.

.38 SPECIAL – WILD-EYED SOUTHERN BOYS (1981)

In the mystery writing world, there are those who meticulously plot out their books before doing the actual writing of the story and there are those authors who write by the seat of their pants. While I don’t write mystery novels, I take the seat of my pants approach when determining which album I’m going to write about for a given week. 

Of course, then I have to do a little research about the album so I can learn about an album if I’ve never heard it before or have stuff to flesh out a piece on a release I’m already pretty familiar with.

In the case of writing about .38 Special’s 4th studio album Wild-Eyed Southern Boys, I had to learn about most of the album. While I have managed to acquire all of the band’s albums on either cassette or CD, it’s not like I know every song in their catalog by heart. 

For this album, I ended up knowing three of the nine tracks beforehand. And of those three tracks, I’m pretty sure the album’s title cut I only heard when I owned just a greatest hits release for the band. 

I do remember hearing “Fantasy Girl”, probably on the radio and you’d be hard-pressed to find someone who hasn’t heard “Hold on Loosely”, the biggest song from the album. While it had some success on the singles chart when it was released, it has gone on to become one of the biggest hits for the band. It still has a home in their live set and if you tune into any classic rock radio station you will inevitably hear this song. 

But that’s a good thing because the song does hold up quite nicely. Besides the great vocal from Don Barnes (who trades off lead vocals on the album with Donnie Van Zant), the guitar line provided by Jeff Carlisi provides a killer hook that always manages to draw me in.

For the title cut, I find it funny that given the song’s title, the song isn’t a bit more of a wild rollicking track in terms of tempo. It still has an uptempo drive to it but it is still a bit more mellow in its delivery compared to some of the other fast moving numbers.

That would include the song “First Time Around” which has a smoking musical score to it. Meanwhile, the song “Back Alley Sally” has a nice little rocking beat to it. Given the lyrical subject matter of the song, I thought this song coincided more with the album’s cover art than the actual title track.

Getting back to “Fantasy Girl”, the song ranges from mid-to-uptempo but has a solid hook that keeps me very entertained each time I hear this particular song.

That .38 Special can successfully combine both the Southern Rock and arena rock sounds to make high quality radio friendly tracks has always been the biggest key aspect of their appeal. However, since I’m nowhere near being an expert on their catalog, I was a little surprised to find that the song “Hittin’ and Runnin'” had a bit more of a pronounced bluesy feel to it. It’s woven throughout the song but unless my ears were playing tricks on me, it was there and it made the song that much more interesting to me.

When I first heard the song “Honky Tonk Dancer”, my notes said that I liked the sly guitar playing on the track. And that stuck with me through each successive listen to this song. The guitar work has a nice subtle touch at times and that deepens the overall tone of the music to me.

“Throw Out The Line” was used as the B-side for the “Hold On Loosely” single. While it is likely only remembered as an album track, I liked the hard rocking nature of the song a lot. The same could be said about the album’s final song “Bring It On”. It’s a straightforward rocker that will keep your excitement level high.

I’ve written about two .38 Special albums in the past (Special Forces and Tour de Force) and liked them both. You can now add Wild-Eyed Southern Boys to that list as well. At the moment, I don’t have any more of the band’s albums on cassette but hitting the high water mark on these albums certainly has whetted my appetite to get my butt in gear and investigate the rest of their catalog ASAP.

NOTES OF INTEREST: The Wild-Eyed Southern Boys album was the first album for .38 Special to go platinum. The album was reissued in 2023 via Rock Candy Records with four live cuts added on as bonus tracks.

Survivor’s Jim Peterik co-wrote three songs on the album but wrote the album’s title track on his own.

The song “Hold On Loosely” was the first single released from the album. It rose to #27 on the singles chart. It has appeared on the soundtracks for the movies Joe Dirt and Without a Paddle. It was also used in an episode of the TV series Better Call Saul.  The video for the song is credited with being the 13th video played on MTV the day the network premiered. The album version of the song runs nearly five minutes but the single version is edited down to just under four minutes in length.