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

that is all.

They were the most California of the Southern rockers and the most Southern of the California rockers. There's a strong West Coast vibe in there too, including the Byrds obv.

Patterson Hood said Petty & The Heartbreakers were the best Southern Rock Band.

oh right and they had that eagles connection too. bernie leadon's brother was in Mudcrutch. i hate to bring it up...

all roads lead to don henley...

XPS Actually his co-favorite

Doing what I do, I am often asked about my favorite Southern rock band. It’s a term I always hated (and used it with that in mind as part of a title for one of Drive-By Truckers’ albums). The question is usually prefaced with another, framed as a simple choice: Allman Brothers or Lynyrd Skynyrd?

The correct answer for me is R.E.M. and Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. On any given day, the Heartbreakers could be the greatest band on the planet.

https://bittersoutherner.com/from-the-southern-perspective/music/like-sonny-liston-tom-petty-patterson-hood

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M7l5pA3EPug

When The Time Comes
- nice Byrdsian track that says to the world you guys do whatever new punk thing you’re doing, we’re gonna be over here doing our own thing

You’re Gonna Get It
- it’s not quite there yet BUT this is an example of how Tom as singer can change the context of a song by his delivery
This COULD be threatening with a different less nuanced, less present singer
But Petty puts the focus on himself as the false-bravado clearly-lovesick dude who wishes he didnt love her so much, when this song could easily be aggressive and full dude-rejection- energy.
To me it’s an early unformed example of how Petty as a singer can do to a song what Brando could do in a movie. It’s all the little choices of phrasing & backing off insteaf of belting that make his songs so much more textured and human
Sometimes even more than the lyrics would suggest
Also so much swagger from these Heartbreakers! chef’s kiss
Love it

Hurt

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

"Thank God for California" is not something you ever heard from Florida rockers Molly Hatchet.

who are playing here in, like, two days. would almost be tempted to go see them if i wasn't afraid that a Trump rally might break out...

those little garcia squiggles have me picturing bob weir singing this for some reason. an 18-bar blues? cool!

Funky break followed by mandolin flourishes…weird

re. molly hatchet, "As of August 2, 2020, all of the band's original members are deceased. The Molly Hatchet trademark is owned by Bobby Ingram, their guitarist since 1987 (when he replaced founding member Dave Hlubek, who rejoined the band eighteen years later and stayed with them until his death in 2017). The other veteran in the lineup is keyboardist John Galvin, who has been a member since 1983 (with the exception of a break between mid-1990s). Also included in the current lineup are veteran musicians of the Southern scene, drummer Shawn Beamer, bassist Tim Lindsey and vocalist Parker Lee."

Good playing, sounds like the Dead, total filler.

would love to hear comments on this? is this the right spot to talk about this?

https://www.discogs.com/master/656871-Tom-Petty-And-The-Heartbreakers-Official-Live-Leg

My hometown Petty evangelist let me tape his copy back in the day, so used to play it regularly. Great sound quality iirc. And i always thought that Dog on the Run was a jam

Dead Petty absolutely my least favorite Petty. There's a pseudo-Dead song on Mojo, otherwise one of my favorite Petty albums, that's a total speed bump.

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

Hard pass

That's the Bonnaroo show I saw. The Dead cover was apropos there, it was in deference to the tradition (up to that point, since abandoned) of having a big jam band close out the fest on Sunday night.

Overall a really good show!

It's funny, there are complete videos online of 2 of the 4 Petty shows I saw. But not of the best one.

those little garcia squiggles have me picturing bob weir singing this for some reason

and those little mid 60s beatle gtr riffs starting at 1:44 have be pre-picturing the traveling wilburys.

i saw molly hatchet when all the original members were very much alive (as far as i know), opening for kansas, with whom i was briefly infatuated. it was a strange pairing. my only memory of molly hatchet was realizing "oh, they're the guys who do that song."

Kansas listening thread when

my very first solo rock concert was Molly Hatchet, in 1979 at age 13

Rick Danko opened!

Kansas listening thread when

― calstars, Thursday, March 14, 2024 4:05 PM (fifty-three minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

just to get a glimpse beyond this illusion?

I feel like Kansas are the group I have the hardest time selling people on, but their first five albums (and their obligatory double live album) all rule.

why late in the afternoon in the u.s. does ilm get all kansassed out?

The two songs by Kansas I know are fun/fine when they come on the radio, but I figure if I've made it this far without hearing anything else by them, then I've probably heard enough.

Those two songs are good but unrepresentative. The rest of their catalog is probably best described as "redneck Yes, plus poorly camouflaged Christianity."

lol. and true.

and they wrote a ton of lyrics! holy toledo you should check out their lyrics sleeves. they are endless. who knew kansas had so much to say?

i went to see kansas with blue oyster cult at a casino in wisconsin about 10 years ago, it was good but we were mad we went for BOC and it made it look like they were headlining but kansas headlined, maybe it was one of those co-headlining tours where they switched off every night

"Hurt": Yeah, very Arista-era Dead. Another one that feels like it came out of a jam. I like the verse melody. They're still figuring out their strengths, so they don't build more on the foundation.

Magnolia

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F6htoFxagOE

so. that is a song. i don't know if there is much to say about it other than the great sound of their music lifted them up from the generic multitudes of major label aor/rock/hard rock/southern rock acts of that time. there were sooooooo many forgettable records and bands back then and their music tended to sound like mushy soft rock even when they weren't a soft rock band. and tom petty records from the start did not sound like that. they were designed to sound awesome on fm radio. the people who thought of that first and foremost are the people you still hear on fm radio. boston, van halen, zz top, journey, etc.

agree, nice professional sound. lots of empty space, the drummer stays away from the crash symbol. so that when someone does a little flourish there's room for it. but wait, if she never told him her name, how did he find out?

Sounds like a b-side.

oh she did tell him her name. my mistake.

Fun fact I just learned: backing vocals on this track are from Phil Seymour, who played bass and drums and sang in the Dwight Twilley Band (and also sang on "American Girl" and "Breakdown").

Using Petty's "chord-changes-as-riff" approach, but I think these aren't the chords he's looking for. It's not a million miles from "The Waiting," and yet it is.

i love how the intro to "Hurt" condenses the the classic "are they tuning up or playing a song?" Grateful Dead feeling into 20 seconds

I hope everyone has a good weekend!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ord_iq9I4io

He really likes to play F#m on the downbeat huh

magnolia - *sounds* exactly as good as scott suggests, but so so thin in every other way. it's a little hard to believe this mystery-free throwaway about a one night stand could come from the same guy who wrote "the wild one, forever." it's also hard to believe he's actually going to remember magnolia a week or two from now, no matter what the song is trying to tell us, certainly not the same way he's going to remember the wild one.

Fun fact I just learned: backing vocals on this track are from Phil Seymour, who played bass and drums and sang in the Dwight Twilley Band (and also sang on "American Girl" and "Breakdown").

there's a cool bit in the mike campbell "american girl" explainer video that someone posted above about how the extended "ahhh" vocal over the ending guitar riff on that one is actually a bunch of overlapping tom and phil "ahhh"s lined up back to back to try create the feeling of one voice holding that syllable forever.

"Magnolia": Serious McGuinn solo vibes here. Could maybe stand to let Campbell rip a little on the coda.

Too Much Ain't Enough

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FJatokoNyg8

rockin'. a song where you wait for the guitar solo because you know it will probably be a good one. and it is. maybe too short though. everything sounds so good. did i mention that i like electric guitars? stonesy intro. mick could sing this one. maybe play some harmonica on it.

This is the one I was talking about that he dug out for later tours. Tied with “Jammin’ Me” for his 33rd most-played song. Must’ve enjoyed doing it live. It’s a rocker.