The Atlanta Rhythm Section





Dog Days was ARS first masterpiece and an album that still stands with their best. It showcases a band that has found its groove and is taking its music to a new level. Featuring another fine collection of songs about themselves and the South, the band displays a growing array of musical styles and approaches that are very different from where the rest of Southern Rock was headed. Overall, it's a faster paced album that what had come before, featuring six uptempo songs and two beautiful ballads-all originals. It opens on some high notes with the rocking Crazy leading into the buildup blues and breakout jam of Boogie Smoogie. A couple of lighter tunes lead into a ballad that is ballad that is a beautiful evocation of the South Dog Days. For the second album in a row they show off their chops with an instrumental Bless My Soul. The album closed with another classic ballad of Souther images All Night Rain. While other bands were striving to claim the mantle of kings of Southern rock, ARS had started making music no other Southern band has ever been able to duplicate.

Song by Song

	1. Crazy (Buie/Nix/Daughtry)-3:07
		The album starts off in overdrive with a guitar solo leading into meditations on the times. Vocals, keyboards and guitars build into a musical crescendo rocking harder than anything ARS had recorded before, with Ronnie Hammond's vocal expressing the band's disdain for those who "powder your nose and paste on your glitter."

	2. Boogie Smoogie (Buie/Nix/Bailey)-7:57
		Their first longer recorded work, this begins as a slow guitar-and-harmonica blues that recounts ARS' frustration with audiences who "just want to boogie." It then accelerates into a roadhouse stomp that boogies as well as anything to come out of the South, but with an emphasis on melody and tone seldom matched elsewhere.

	3. Cuban Crisis (Buie/Nix/Cobb)-3:50
		The mood lightens up with this lilting, uptempo remembrance of a Saturday night on the town in Ybor City, FL and the characters encountered there.

	4. It Just Ain't Your Moon (Buie/Nix/Daughtry)-4:50
		The rocking rolls on with track that drives home the notion that some things are not meant to be, and incorporates some of ARS' classic tempo changes to beautiful effect..

	5. Dog Days (Buie/Nix/Daughtry)-3:35
		A classic. Dean Daughtry's keyboard leads Hammond's vocals through a melody that rises and falls, with lyrics that capture images of life in the South during the heat of summer. At the end of the second chorus, the song suddenly and dramatically changes tempo, and guitarist Barry Bailey takes over, leading the band into a driving musical interlude before returning to a closing keyboard coda.

	6. Bless My Soul (Cobb)-4:00
		An instrumental blues shuffle, featuring solid ensemble playing and some great guitar soloing.

	7. Silent Treatment (Buie/Nix/Bailey)-6:15
		A subdued but intense rocker about a mysterious woman and a pickup in a "loud Hotlanta honkytonk." Tempo changes are again used to great effect both to create mood and build a sophisticated musical framework.

	8. All Night Rain (Buie/Nix/Daughtry/McRee)-3:10
		The album closes on a lighter note with this ballad featuring guitars, piano and Hammond's conversational vocal. Again, Southern summer scenes are evoked both in words and sounds. "Can't you hear the thunder, see the lightning cross the sky?"