Thanks to having one of the most brutally ironic album title/cover combinations in the entire history of rock’n’roll, there’s been this air of almost prophetic doom bestowed upon the last album Lynyrd Skynyrd released before the plane crash that tore out their heart just three days later. But if that crash never happened — if frontman Ronnie Van Zant, emerging recently-added guitarist Steve Gaines, and Steve’s sister / backup singer Cassie Gaines had all lived — Street Survivors might sound more like the rejuvenating and carefree celebration it was meant to be. Granted, the pall of “That Smell” hangs over the LP more than it could’ve otherwise, though it stands out regardless through its sheer blunt-force damnation; as a Southern-gothic confrontation with the path from narcotic self-medication to death, it’s practically the most haunting straight-edge anthem of its time and place. But aside from ’71 demo leftover “One More Time” — a classic love song in the you’re-bad-for-me-but-I-need-you tradition — and the straightforward sad-and-lonely simplicity of breakup song “I Never Dreamed,” the only other truly deep reckoning with ennui is the Gaines-written and sung “Ain’t No Good Life,” a blues-rocker elevated by its no-future ambivalence and the album-closing finality that its author’s death added a ten-ton weight to. Still, the real heart of Street Survivors as it was intended is in the good-time songs. The flirtatious yet friendly groupie come-on “What’s Your Name” is too affable to be sleazy, the just-folks approach to social savviness in “I Know A Little” is too self-aware to seem ignorant, and there’s a winning blend of humility and defiance in “You Got That Right” — a Van Zant/Gaines co-write/co-lead that provides their most fitting anticipatory self-eulogy: “When my time’s up, I’ll hold my own.”