38 Special is the second rock band in the Van Zant family, but any similarity between Donnie Van Zant's group and his older brother's Sturm und Drang aggregation, Lynyrd Skynyrd, is purely generic. This band's adaptation of the Southern rock formula is more modest and workmanlike than Skynyrd's approach—in fact, 38 Special is technically a better album than any of Skynyrd's studio recordings....

Today's mainstream rock "sound" has nothing to do with traditional notions of style–as in heavy metal, southern boogie or progressive rock – and everything to do with such production effects as a fat guitar sound or a hot vocal mix. Thus, a quasi-metal bar band like REO Speedwagon ends up sounding the same as one-time progressives Foreigner, and most of what's heard on rock radio is so...

When 38 Special's fourth album, 1981's Wild-Eyed Southern Boys, went platinum about three years after Southern rock had crested, it probably surprised even the group itself. The following year, this Jacksonville, Florida, band scored a Top Ten single with "Caught Up in You" (from their Special Forces LP): three perfect hooks, two guitarists and two drummers dead on the beat, plus one tuneful...

Ronnie and Donnie Van Zant may have shared a last name, but the two brothers' respective bands couldn't have been more different. On Tour de Force, 38 Special sound less like Lynyrd Skynyrd than Journey. Strip away the Sixties rock garb and the Southern-boogie instrumental lineup (dual guitars and drums), and you have a closet West Coast AOR band. Forget any grittiness or sweaty, good-time...