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

This album would definitely land VERY differently for me without The Waiting right up top. I'll withhold overall judgment til the end, but I'm wondering, what's the basic narrative behind it? I know about the label feud concerning its pricing, but was it something they started working on before DTT fully took off? A rushed set of sessions amidst a frantic tour schedule as their star quickly rose? A blank-check luxuriation in the studio? And how did it land with critics at the time?

It did well critically and commercially. I still rate it as one of his top five best.

Haven't read the linked story (paywalled, but accessable via in cognito tab), but should be of interest

Tom Petty made his first Rolling Stone cover in 1981. This is the cover story: https://t.co/JqpZj3t8Fo pic.twitter.com/Lg8P61da36

— Richard Deitsch (@richarddeitsch) October 2, 2017

i like how in that interview i posted way up there somewhere tom says he thought that after he made a big stink about record prices that other artists would rally around him and nobody did! haha! oops.

Does anyone know how much of this stuff was played live in the early days, up to or around the first album? I assume Petty and cohort ran into the problem a lot of bands face, with a backlog of bangers they burn through before suddenly facing the challenge of writing new stuff between tours, with the distracting pull/perils of success beckoning and the label breathing down their necks.

Oh man I am gonna be insufferable with Long After Dark, fair warning.

Featuring some of my fave Petty album tracks, and iirc Springsteen's favorite Petty song, at least at the time.

JiC, that's what I've been wondering about. This album has been feeling like "somewhat underwritten material, but the band is really on fire from steady touring." I'm enjoying each track on some level, mind you, it's just feeling a little easier for me to find flaws. (So I hope I'm not coming off as a nit-picker to those who love this record wholeheartedly!)

Does anyone know how much of this stuff was played live in the early days, up to or around the first album?

To confirm my suspicion I just looked at thepettyarchives.com and early setlists include only songs from the debut, YGGI, and covers (i've always loved the way they do "Cry to Me"). Mid-1978 DtT songs get added to sets. My suspicion was that Hard Promises was kinda written on the fly. Not until June 1981 do Hard Promises' tunes show up.
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Letting You Go

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UzIG1KYBTDs

i have no memory of that being a video. i will make no great claims for this song. some good lines. i like the summer house mention.

The video is really cute! And genuinely funny. Nice fit for this lightweight, goes-down-easy tale of woe. One of my favorite cuts on this album so far.

this is pleasant. another one that wouldn't be out of place on a j geils band record. the bridge goes to unexpected melodic places. has there been a TP song yet with a satisfying relationship?

Here Comes My Girl and The Waiting, right? And Listen to Her Heart, depending on how you think things are gonna turn out.

j geils-y for sure, but i think john mellencamp was taking notes when writing "jack & diane"

sounds a bit like an updated buddy holly track

I like the guitar sound.

"Letting You Go": Yeah, trying out the J. Geils AM Gold Soul thing. Is that a buried harpsichord or mandolin under the middle-8? Tench's organ is very River-era E-Street Band.

I like the guitar sound.

Mike and Tom might have the best collective meat-n-potatoes tone in classic rock and roll. You can hear every year of their vintage amps and guitars.

A happy Tom Petty birthday to Ilxor Sang Freud today!!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1t4ygBn6NJM

whoa thanks!!!! it is not really my birthday -- who knows what i might have put in whatever profile you're looking at -- but this will last me all the way to 8/26.

those midnight specials are great. i've been feasting on them. i don't really remember them going up to 1978. maybe they didn't run them in ny?

I didn't know this:

The series was canceled by NBC at the request of Dick Ebersol as part of a deal for him to take over the then-ailing Saturday Night Live. Because there was no time for NBC to develop a new show from scratch in light of the urgent SNL situation, The Midnight Special was replaced by SCTV, a weekly Canadian sketch comedy series performed by members of the Toronto satellite of Chicago's The Second City improvisational troupe. That program, in turn, would later be replaced with another music show, Friday Night Videos, in 1983, also produced initially by Ebersol.

zzz

Wanna be astounded? Friday Night Videos *ran until 2002* (the last few years it was strictly a comedy show)

haha i only know facebook time!

it seems like they are being more generous with whole episodes on Youtube of the MS. i am all for it. i think they actually wanted people to pay for them. or still do. reminds me of that dumb wolfgang's vault from way back. which might still be a thing, i don't know.

A Thing About You

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ZquPbwmDa4

peppy!

i like it! this would have made a nice album track on either of the first two lps.

Underappreciated gem, this one. Great buzzy little rocker. Never a single as far as I know but I definitely heard it on rock radio now and again.

Plus, Emmylou Harris and Southern Pacific had a top 20 country hit with it.

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

nice one, has a bit of Marshall Crenshaw sound on the chorus.

"thing about you" is one of the most "what if buddy holly lived and made music in the 1980s" songs ever and i love it

I like the Southern Pacific + Harris cover!

I had totally forgot about this very solid and enjoyable song! peppy, yes. Petty's breathless delivery of the chorus injects a hint of urgency beyond what's there in the lyrics.

apparently Southern Pacific got on the country chart with their own cover in 1985, and then again with the Harris duet in 1990. i like the vocals, but for me both versions are hampered by that increasingly airless, blank "karaoke track" sound, increasingly sought after by country producers in those days.

Insider

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x7bjXWzms5I

He and Nicks harmonize like pros.

He wrote for Bella Donna but at the last minute asked for it back.

*wrote it

why do i love it when an album title comes from the lyrics of a song that is not a title track? i just do.

i guess i came around to adult contemporary when i realized it was just power pop with pretensions. nice tune. he crawled through the briars?

https://sharonsflorida.com/plants-page/native-vines/smilax-in-central-florida/

oof -- looks prickly.

"why do i love it when an album title comes from the lyrics of a song that is not a title track? i just do."

same!!! it always feels special when that lyric comes around.

otm

"insider" is one of my absolute fav petty deep cuts

Lynch makes this song for me. A lot of lesser artists would have let it be just a mellow strum-and-sing, and the vocals (Petty and Nicks both) are great, but Lynch practically taking a drum solo through the whole goddamn thing is what elevates it.

The humility of the performances impresses me, from the instrumental fills to Petty and Nicks never soloing or jumping over each other's lines.

yes the restraint and tension are perfectly balanced

"you've got a dangerous background," what a great opening line

this was the period when iirc Nicks was begging Petty to admit her as a Heartbreaker; astounded, he said she couldn't because "you're a girl."

Petty and Nicks never soloing or jumping over each other's lines

otm. they were so goddamn good together. their sensibilities blend so perfectly. loooooove this song. love that turn in the last verse: "i'll bet you're his masterpiece / i'll bet you're his self-control."

has a bit of Marshall Crenshaw sound on the chorus.

very otm re "thing about you."