Song Of The Day 8/29/2014: Molly Hatchet - "Dreams I'll Never See"

Southern Rock Week: Molly Hatchet are Southern rock's most Nietzschean band and it ain't even close. That's just going by their album covers. Take a look at the packaging for Flirtin' With Disaster. That rippled, intent muscled superman festooned with metal drapery, his eyes penetrating his unseen target, businesslike and vicious, nothing but dumb force of will standing between him and that cracker barrel of Louisiana Hot Links. Yes, I realize there's potentially a whole homoerotic subtext there as well but let's not read too deeply into it. For now let's just focus on his Nordic Redneck fury and make his destiny a little more convenient.

"Dreams I'll Never See" actually helps us kill two birds with one Viking catapult in the Southern rock department: Molly Hatchet and the Allman Brothers. It's the cover of the song compactly called "Dreams" from the first Allman Brothers album from 1969. Molly toughened it up like shoe leather and threw it on their self-titled debut as well. Molly switched out the original's light jazz swing with an insistent, gutty rock strut. I don't often use the word "strut," but whenever I do I get a mental image of a guy wearing tan Angel Flights walking through downtown Denver. No, wait, the busy part of a Denver suburb. Take your pick.