Drive-By TruckersAlabama Ass Whuppin'

Sweaty, beer-soaked, and gloriously ragged. You can practically smell the cigarette smoke as three guitars churn and snarl over Patterson Hood's whiskey-drawl holler. Recorded across small Athens and Atlanta clubs in fall 1999, this is the bar-band Truckers before anybody knew them. "The Living Bubba," a defiant salute to a musician who kept gigging while dying of AIDS, gets its definitive take, and "18 Wheels of Love" turns into beer-soaked comedy. The rowdiest document before the legend.