does tom petty have any redeeming qualities?

That live box is so damn good. Made me completely reevaluate the man.

that live box was one of the best rock things i've heard in a long time.

This thread title makes me mad every time I see it

it's your I'm sorry but Paul Simon is so overrated

Just had a conversation with someone about Tom Petty last night, actually. My friend's wife thinks he's one of the all time greats, he thinks he's OK. I think if you stick to the hits and a few select tracks, he could make a convincing, well, great. But as an album artist he's just OK. He gets massive points for helping to pull Dylan, McGuinn, Del Shannon (briefly), Roy Orbison, and Johnny Cash back from the margins, though.

heard "Waiting For Tonight" on satellite radio this morning. The Bangles harmonies are so good.

yeah he's got a LOT of songs floating around as b-sides/outtakes/deep cuts that you hear and think, "this song should be on the radio constantly!" heard "change of heart" last night - just hook after hook after hook.

I miss Stan Lynch. He was the Phil Rudd of the Heartbreakers.

Obligatory summertime driving thread revival. This is the one that got me the other day:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3RBVMRw8HpQ&list=UUsaxHr3FqbWs_6h2Xtugy3g&index=44&feature=plpp_video

They were the festival closers at Bonnaroo this year, playing the Sunday night slot generally reserved for jam bands. They did a fair amount of jamming and even covered "Friend of the Devil," and it was sort of interesting to think of them in that light. Not like it's a new scene for them -- I saw them when they toured with Dylan and the Dead in the '80s. But the most interesting thing to me was realizing that for anyone born from 1980 on, his career really starts with Full Moon Fever. The stuff before that they may know from classic-rock radio or the greatest hits albums, or they may not. Everyone knew "Refugee," but "Here Comes My Girl" seemed only half-familiar, and there was just polite silence during "A Woman in Love." Meanwhile, the stuff I think of as his mostly lesser, later material -- "Learning to Fly," "Running Down a Dream," etc -- got people all worked up.

The other noteworthy thing was just how deep his catalog really is. When you can do a festival-closing two-hour set and confidently leave out some of your biggest hits -- no "Breakdown," "Don't Do Me Like That," "You Got Lucky," "You Don't Know How It Feels," he didn't even play "The Waiting" -- it means you've got a lot to choose from. Anyway, it was a fun show. The high jam quotient meant tons of Mike Campbell, which is fine by me.

mike campbell is a treasure.

american girl is a great song. i'm indifferent to everything else he's done.

i saw one of his "deep album cuts" shows at the beacon theatre nyc a few weeks back. good but not great. the songs i didn't know - most of the selections - were fine and mike campbell really stretched out which was fine too. petty was clearly enjoying it too and his voice sounded strong but i thought the same thing i did seeing him 20+ years ago - he's curiously uncharismatic as a live performer, not bad but he lacks that certain oomph that really mesmerizes a big audience. which means in the jam band context he probably did more than hold his own.

True. I've seen him several times, and while he's always been good, he's only been great once. That was on the Wildflowers tour, and maybe he was energized by having a big hit record and a bunch of good new songs to play.

For the past decade, Petty's been not on autopilot live, but certainly comfortable in a certain zone. It's not quite jamming, but it is relatively loose, with few surprises but plenty of proficiency.

Just revisited all the Xgau Consumer Guide reviews, and man, I can't think of a single other artist he covers who is showered with more faint praise, backhanded compliments and personal derision.

The songs are cute, the riffs executed with more dynamism than usual, and the singing attractively phlegmy. And like they say at the end of other cartoons, that's all, folks.

despite his Southern roots and '60s pop-rock proclivities, he comes on like a real made-in-L.A. jerk. Onstage, he acts like he wants to be Ted Nugent when he grows up, pulling out the cornball arena-rock moves as if they had something to do with the kind of music he makes

This is a breakthrough for Petty because for the first time the Heartbreakers (his Heartbreakers, this L.A.M.F. fan should specify) are rocking as powerfully as he's writing. But whether Petty has any need to rock out beyond the sheer doing of it--whether he has anything to say--remains shrouded in banality.

it just goes to show you--no matter how much they respect the working fan, rich rock stars do tend to fill up on themselves.

And so on. And these are all mostly positive reviews!

read his Bowie reviews

Wow – he played "Rebels," "Love is a Long Road," and "Tweeter and the Monkey Man"!

Oh man, those Bowie reviews are soooo much more generous to the singer, even when the album is a stiff. At least Christgau acknowledges his talent and occasional genius, rather than grudgingly accepting his product despite him being a jerk. With Bowie, it's a failure despite his intentions and intelligence, With Petty, it's a success despite his bad attitude, banality and lack of ambition.

haha good way of putting it

Wow – he played "Rebels," "Love is a Long Road," and "Tweeter and the Monkey Man"!

― A deeper shade of lol (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, June 19, 2013 12:21 PM (22 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

"Rebels" was acoustic and slowed-down, ruminative. But "Tweeter" was a jam, in the good sense.

mike campbell's dreads really bother me way more than they should

He invented the strokes. Sort of. That could be a bad thing depending how you look at it.

The only thing I can think of that's worse-looking is that book of interviews with him.

― Matos W.K., Sunday, January 4, 2009 11:35 PM (4 years ago)

lol, this was like the best book i read last year. favorite anyway. it really inspired me for some reason. had no idea it would have such an effect.

ha yeah, i wish there were more books like that! i dunno, i like huge interviews with musicians.

this is like 10 petty songs in one song - you could say that about a lot of his songs - and yet i've probably watched this 20 times. i love the studio mudcrutch promo vids.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HlYeq5f9lqM

you know, scott, now that you mention it, i can see a tom petty influence in your posts about what's popular today

Worth seeking out Campbell's web series where he goes through his guitar collection on by one and explains their stories, what songs he wrote with them etc.

mike campbell's dreads really bother me way more than they should

― personal yeezus (upper mississippi sh@kedown),

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mike-campbell/the-guitars_b_1406937.html

Wish he would release this on DVD.

The promo videos from Petty's last Heartbreakers album are great too:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3_iBKacXIA4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5LAA6lF6uFI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rSvlJe1mwlw

And by the way, how nuts is it that Scott Thurston, who used to be in the Stooges (he plays on Metallic K.O.!), has been in the Heartbreakers for the last 20 years?

I was amazed to learn he contributed so much to New Values.

This video of Petty's 1994 Bridge Concert set is fantastic:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9unEh3WeyKc

for anyone born from 1980 on, his career really starts with Full Moon Fever.

I think that was the point of his well-timed Greatest Hits album which was wisely promoted with possibly his most famous video. And kids/teenagers were definitely fans of his hits in the early 90s. Everything between Full Moon Fever and Wildflowers (including his tenure in the Wilburies and the MTV Video Vanguard award) definitely helped to place him in a marketable void that Neil Young's lack of commercialism wasn't able to fill. During the time, the only Neil song that really got anywhere close to Tom Petty's biggest songs was "Rockin in the Free World," and he was supposedly the "godfather of grunge."

I was also amazed to recently learn about their co-writing credits during that time... Tom Petty helped with Roy's "You Got It" while Mike Campbell helped with Don Henley's "The Heart of the Matter."

He invented the strokes. Sort of. That could be a bad thing depending how you look at it.

haha More like he invented 1 thing the Strokes did in 1 song.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wcAiEzlycFk

best part of this is 40 was "he said my son looked like tom petty but in a negative way"

Likely to score his first #1 album next week, healthy numbers too.

Hypnotic Eye is pretty good and sometimes quite more ("Fautlines").

i heard a live version of "mary jane" on the xm at the place i get my hair cut. that one is the secret tp classic rock jam of my generation i do believe. the chorus pays back the try-hardiness of the verses imo. it's a good song. i'll probably check out the new one.

Fully expecting to buy the new album at Target this weekend.

Review: http://www.spin.com/reviews/tom-petty-and-the-heartbreakers-hypnotic-eye/

god old school ILM is so clueless about anything American

the chorus pays back the try-hardiness of the verses imo. it's a good song.

having back-to-back singles about weed always cracked me up

what was the other single?

i don't have sources for these things nor do i aspire to

"You Don't Know How it Feels"

"Mary Jane" was the new single on GH.

i'll have to pull out the liner notes for the copy of wildflowers i still own and haven't looked at for almost twenty years, lol.

xp nice review, alfred.

yup, in '93. "You Don't Know How it Feels" was the lead-off single from Wildflowers the following year (which was originally supposed to have a b-side called Girl on LSD lol)

xp

"about weed" would be a stretch imo

of course the new single is "u get me high" so