You probably know Lynyrd Skynyrd for Free Bird, Tuesday's Gone and Sweet Home Alabama, but they also cranked out a hell of a lot other stuff. To be honest, it's all pretty much the same, and the famous songs are the best, so you're not really missing anything if you never hear any other album than "The Essential", which is really just a best of album.
After the release of
Street Survivors, a plane crash killed lead singer
Ronnie VanZant among others.
Skynyrd's First...And Last had been planned before the crash, but later albums contained no new songs.
After this point, the band had sort of re-formed from some original members and some newcomers--so some of these albums are newly recorded material, and some are just compilations of old Skynyrd stuff.
Source: http://home.halden.net/bikercouple/lsdisc.html --Reliable-looking ain't it