What happened to bands who just had fun? Bands who tailor made songs for driving around in your pick-up with the windows down without looking like a redneck? The type of band that, despite success, never got to the point where they felt it necessary to speak of social issues or make a double album, or worse, a concept album. Bands that brought the rock in a way that didn’t seem like a job, but rather a necessity; an itch they couldn’t quite scratch, and the only way to sate it was to play hard; bands that you could get drunk and sing along to?

Exhibit A: the Georgia Satellites; hailing from Atlanta, the group achieved momentary success with the novelty hit “Keep Your Hands to Yourself,” and were soon written off as a kitsch act; not fitting in with the synth-based acts and hair bands of 1986. They were not of their time, a band who borrowed heavily from country and the blues based stylings of the Rod Stewart-fronted group the Faces vying for mainstream success must have seemed like a joke to MTV producers who showed the humorous video until the joke just wasn’t funny anymore. But the Satellites clearly weren’t fazed and soldiered on, making some of their best music even after sales plummeted. They went on to make more rock n’ roll in the style of the Faces, a band to whom the Satellites could be named the spiritual successors, even copping the style of the early Faces-backed Rod Stewart solo records with the acoustic “Another Chance,” the best song that Ronnie Lane and Ron Wood never wrote.

And like the Faces, they were at the heart of it, an extremely good bar band. Some people have negative connotations to the phrase “bar band” but I never have. I consider the Stones and E-Street Band to be bar bands of the highest caliber, the Faces even more so, and Georgia Satellites fit right in line with that dynasty. Of course, the kind of bar these guys play at I have never been to, but would love to visit (I’m guessing it’s on Beale Street). This becomes clear to the listener when one sees what the Satellites do with their cover songs. Frontman Dan Baird was a top-notch songwriter, but he was an even better arranger; turning Ringo Starr’s “Don’t Pass Me By” from a tepid attempt at a country number into a bonafide barroom rocker. But the Satellites moved into the transcendent realm with their medley of the John Fogerty tunes “Almost Saturday Night/Rockin’ All Over the World,” making, for my money, one of the best and most rockin’ Saturday night barroom sing-a-longs ever. Why the Black Crowes hit it big and these guys are living off royalties from various Southern Rock compilations is a mystery.

So buy all their records (especially Open All Night), grab a bunch of friends and a cooler of cheap light beer, drive out to the middle of nowhere, crank it all the way up and prepare to have laryngitis Monday morning. It’s the only way to get the full effect of the Georgia Satellites.

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