My Middle Name Is Earl - The Official ILM Track-By-Track TOM PETTY Listening Thread

Didn't "You Wreck Me" start out as "You Rock Me"?

Stop rockin' my heart around

I def knew the 70s/80s radio hits, but Free Fallin was when I really got on board, and when I saw them Feb 20, 1990 (one day shy of turning 14) "Free Fallin'" had just crested in popularity (at least radio-wise), I remember a feeling coming from the band onstage and in the crowd of the show being this pent-up release, I mean they played it back-to-back with "Won't Back Down" at nearly the start of the set, like everyone was just enjoying this feeling of being back on top.

But the biggest moment was TP opened a trunk on stage and there was huge light underneath the stage that we could see from the kind awkward, almost behind the stage, section our seats were in, it lit up the whole arena, or least it felt like it and he pulled out the top hat and they did "Don't Come Around Here No More" and the place went bananas.

It was my first concert and it really did a number on me

I was ending my freshman year of high school when Full Moon Fever was released, so Petty was always this weirdly cool star well into 1997. I never NOT knew him as a radio/cultural/MTV presence. Of course, I was too young for the DTP/Hard Promises peak and for the Let Me Up doldrums -- an album by the way I will have a lot to say about when we get to it.

I fell behind a little bit, but just here to say I never heard The Wild One, Forever before and that one part of the song sounds so much like Donny Iris' "Ah! Leah!"

Or I guess the other way around given when they were released.

he does have more songs about things being "around" tho

He's the poet of around, like Bernard Sumner's the poet of love.

always enjoy this song when it's on. I struggle to reconstitute any part of it once it's over, except the "playing on your radio" part, which is indelible. the sound/stomp of it just works tho. you'd never mistake it for The Sweet but there's a pinch of that magic. feel like it could be a real grower as i spend more time with it.

enjoying all the personal Tommy journeys. wish i had more of one to share! becoming a radio listener in the mid 90s, he was just already part of the firmament, the big hits were mixed right in with the songbook of songs everyone knows, in continuing rotation.

Strangered in the Night

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gC9FDx3HISw

bob dylan's bastard florida baby on vocals. just bypassing the whole roger mcguinn thing altogether. those guitars! yum. i will talk more later. gotta go work a 45 collection. one that includes tons of stuff that tom probably loved. i definitely saw some mitch ryder and del shannon in there.

which came out first -- this or dwight twilley "i'm on fire"? i guess the twilley song. basically the same riff. the vibrato effect on the harmonies also straight outta dwight twilley. trying for a stagger lee saga?

Mike Campbell's like Lindsey Buckingham: a terse soloist who thinks like a producer-arranger (which he is).

There was a great interview with him in TapeOp where he stressed that all his solos were always totally worked out and never too long, because the band was consciously writing for the radio, aiming for hits.

Twilley vibes

bob dylan's bastard florida baby on vocals. just bypassing the whole roger mcguinn thing altogether.

tom petty? bypassing roger mcguinn???

another good one! sort of a power-pop take on a CCR riff. a lot of meat-n-potatoes classic rock acts would have let the tempo sag, or let the solo wander into a two-minute, spaced-out "night" sections. the drive towards early R'n'R 45 greatness is keeping them focused. everybody sounds great too. one of my fave tracks so far.

That opening riff's a grabber.

"Strangered In The Night": My other big keeper from the deep cuts from this one. I think I first this album some time in the '00s as a "Classic Disc" airing my old local Classic Rock station did as weeknight at midnight programming. This was the immediate standout for me then too. A Springsteen (by way of CCR) street scene stripped for speed and devoid of any romance.

the vibrato effect on the harmonies also straight outta dwight twilley

No coincidence: Twilley sings harmony here!

Thematically his first nighttime narrative — Perry’s a very nocturnal guy, “Long After Dark,” “Nightwatchman,” “we smoked cigarettes and we stared at the moon,” “Straight Into Darkness,” “all the bad boys are standin’ in the shadows,” etc.

I don’t think he was much for sunrises, unless he happened to still be up.

Petty! Not Perry! Stupid autocorrect.

Tom Perry=Walmart Great Value Petty

Tom Perry = Rick Perry’s younger brother who leads a cover band doing Tom Petty songs rewritten with right-wing messaging. “We don’t/ Have/ To let in these refugees”

So I checked out the Conversations With... book from the library again! On today's song:

That was the first session I brought The Heartbreakers down to. They were watching that go down, and they did the next song, and I overdubbed them onto the track. And that's when I stopped being a solo artist.

"strangered in the night" is okay, nothing too special, feels like it needs a better chorus that's not there

lyrics are...something

I love “Strangered In The Night” but the syntax/title breaks my brain bc it’s such a weird word

like i get it for the song but my brain does not enjoy reading the title, it’s reminds me of weird shitty metadata from an mp3 rip
i wanna correct it so bad!

but the song itself? Boss. Cool as hell.

Strangered in the Night by an Angel of the Morning

that reminds me that i always had a problem with "Vivrant Thing" by Q-Tip. just seeing the word repelled me a little. kinda like Trump's ""Bigrant problem" thing. the mayor of the town i live in calls the town "rurban". don't like that either. i don't know why i'm even typing all this...

i should really take it to that ILE thread...

Don’t Strangerer Around

strangered anger

Strangered, Then Fiction

xpost lol

jim gordon on drums

Fooled Again (I Don't Like It)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iIh3hMRIAbk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P5GwA6Zri4M

i like the sound on that live clip. this song is all atmosphere.

not my favorite tune on the record. that minor-to-major thing is nice but not that nice. sort of a proto-"here comes my girl"?

it's a cool riff, not so much more. the live version is pretty cool tho

studio version can't help but miss that ripping campbell solo and ultra-atmospheric intro

"Fooled Again (I Don't Like It)": More Synth Action! Weird little varispeed break @ around 1:56 forecasting those similar bits on Torpedoes. This is the first one so far that kind of outlasts its welcome, certainly could have faded out sooner, although the length might have worked if they'd thrown a screechy "Miss You" sax* over the extended coda.

*Remembering just after I typed that we're actually 1 1/2 years before "Miss You".

Also right at the top we get an early pronounced appearance of a Petty Power Grunt.

Sounds like he just expelled a big one

That vocal choice will increasingly become a problem.

The spidery guitar lick and the synth are cool, but this track is filler.

Fooled Again
I dunno about all these lukewarm
comments, guys- this one kinda rips? it’s got a lot of atmosphere & anguish & a killer groove

Specifically in my own weird brain it sounds like a cross between Seger & Alice Cooper

something about the first verse & slow build specifically reminds me of Alice’s I’m Eighteen - different arrangemts & tempos obviously but they feel like cousins or something maybe idk

and um his voice sounds great? wtf have you not heard of anguish? He’s been fooled again! He doesn’t like it!

It's not one of my faves, but I do like the range of phrasings and tonalities he gives to "I don't like it" at different points in the song. One thing on this album is I think you can hear him trying to figure out his voice and what he can do with it.

he sounds pretty angry singing it live.

i'm hearing maybe a little springsteen "darkness on the edge of town" moodiness (speaking of albums that won't be out for another couple years). but more anguish. and less, um, song.

this track is filler

yes

He doesn’t like it!

haha I picking up on that

not a bad song but I can't remember it already (I realize I've never actually heard this album before which is weird for me)

feels very first album to me, like he's honing in on what he does but it's not all quite there yet

it's actually kind of cool in that way it's going to end with American Girl, like just this transcendent moment