What's the deal with John Hiatt?

not a big deal then.

I like him for his guitar-scrubbing stuff like "Angel", and thought Stolen Moments and Master of Disaster had some gems, but figure I'm partial toward him because he's from my hometown. I haven't listened to his newest yet, but have it queued up now that you've reminded me of him.

He was briefly "New Wave" before Bring the Family sort of broke him through. Those records aren't bad -- Slug Line, Two-Bit Monsters -- but the anti-disco "(No More) Dancin' in the Streets" really grates. All of a Sudden is (over?)loaded with synths; I always liked it. Nick Lowe produced half of Riding With the King. By the time of Stolen Moments he was incredibly boring and, as I recall, preachy about his new-found sobriety. Proceed?

I have Bring the Family and Slow Turning. They're fine, but I've never felt the urge for more. "Memphis in the Meantime" is pretty perfect.

from rolling country thread '07:

Watched the 1980 movie Cruising, reissued this month on DVD, via Netflix last night, and what really blew me away (has anybody ever pointed this out before?) was the music. ... One of the most AC/DC-sounding Bon-Scott-talk-rhythm songs, I thought, was one called "Spy Boy" by John Hiatt, who later mellowed out and had country crossover hits or hints of them anyway. I remembered a noble if not entirely successful ZZ Top imitation or two on his OK mid '80s Warming Up to The Ice Age, but this morning suddenly I'm really wondering about his early, new wave era stuff, when people were calling him the American Elvis Costello. Was it a lot better than people have ever led me to believe, or what? (Though wasn't he beloved by Trouser Press, at least? Rolling Stone Record Guide seems ambivalent about him, and Christgau suprisingly seems to think he had a few moments in the '80s):

http://robertchristgau.com/get_artist.php?name=john+hiatt

Another random Hiatt question, for Mekons completists: Is the alleged "John Hyatt," who appears with Jon Langford and other Mekes on the Three-Johns-like country-punked-Detroit-rock-tribute-as-I-recall (I liked and probably even reviewed it somewhere at the time, but sold it eons ago) 1988 Jelly Bishops EP Kings of Barstool Mountain mentioned in the below link, actually John Hiatt?

http://www.mekons.de/tom1.htm

I actually trashed Bring The Family in Creem when it came out, by the way; struck me as your usual ho-hum boring sober maturation move. I've been curious about Slug Line and Two Bit Monsters for years -- one of them, I think Trouser Press may have even named album of the year when it came out, and he wasn't even British!

i don't own any john hiatt records. and i've got lots of records. i don't own any john prine albums either.

lots of those dudes bore me. i don't even like steve earle.

speaking of new wave, this album is really bad:

http://www.blackenedheart.net/images/24178f.jpg

Ry Cooder was never new wave, I don't think! Though I guess if any of his albums was, it was that one. (I've never heard any I liked, myself, but I've never tried that many either. And I kinda hate Steve Earle too. Or at least I hate his singing voice.)

i wish i still had a copy of Information by Dave Edmunds. I loved that album in 1983.

"Information"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8C8NX0JlOj4

"Slipping Away"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jM9DAySyIL0

i have owned a ton of ry cooder albums over the years and i always think i'll play them eventually and i never do. i've gotten rid of some without ever playing them. maybe those were the good ones.

Dave Edmunds was new wave before he went new wave! (Not sure what I mean by that. He "went new wave" by linking up with Jeff Lynne, right? But I will always swear by Repeat When Necessary myself.)

"revered by Rosanne Cash, Bonnie Raitt"

two more people i never need to listen to. and same goes for emmylou harris, just in case she reveres john hiatt too. she probably does.

i will swear by it too!

i just meant 80's MTV synth new wave.

i love every dave edmunds record up to and including information. i never heard the jeff lynne one after that.

everyone should just buy dave edmunds records! fuck john hiatt!

there is a john hiatt song on twangin'!!!!

"Something Happens" (John Hiatt) - 3:13

i love twangin'. one of my fave dave edmunds records. not as great as repeat when neccesary or tracks on wax 4, but good all the same.

Emmylou Harris is useless, always has been!

Bonnie Raitt is probably useless, but I have a couple of her albums anyway. Which I never listen to. I liked one single she did in the '90s though.

Rosanne Cash has only become useless since she got rid of her new wave haircut. Before that, she was OK. Though for all I know Eve Moon was way better.

But these days I'm into Southwind-era Moon Martin.

i just got that southwind album a month or two ago. i dig it. maybe even more than the two moon martin albums i own.

worst new wave album ever:

http://cover6.cduniverse.com/MuzeAudioArt/250/253095.jpg

best new wave album ever:

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41FT8M72DFL._SL500_AA240_.jpg

Rosanne Cash is weirder, funkier, and earthier than you think, Scott. Before 1987, at any rate.

I spent most of my (slow) work day looking at John Hiatt clips on YouTube. Boy, he really DOES ape Graham Parker's vocal mannerisms, doesn't he? "Warming Up the Ice Age" is the kind of tense, Pat Benatar mid eighties flash-pop of which Elvis C. was no longer capable; and "Have A Little Faith In Me" sounds like a Randy Newman song for a Disney film.

I shall ever cherish the listener letter to NPR where they decried the profile of John Hiatt, since NPR was the listeners "refuge from that awful Heavy Metal music".

Didn't he do a "satirical" song about Cobain smashing his guitar on SNL, as if it wasn't a phenomenon that had been targeted as far back as Blow Up? Or was that John Prine?

John Prine is much, much funnier than Raitt and Prine. Also better.

xhuxk -

The John Hyatt of the Jelly Bishops is the guy from the Three Johns, not the guy being discussed here.

by the way, I heard a new song of his on the radio yesterday and wondered if there was an ILM thread.

I like him. His new album is about as good as his last awesome album, 2001's The Tiki Room is Open. There are four or five albums in between of varying quality and line-ups (the Goners, the NMiss All Stars, etc). He's sort of the David Letterman (I think they're both from Indiana???) of the Middle Aged Singer Songwriter Set. He's dry and smart and comes off as sorta highbrowish, but I think he's actually shooting for Pop.
I saw him a year ago with Lyle Lovett, Joe Ely and Guy Clark in a songwriter-circle style show. He's a good storyteller. He did the smashing guitar song, and talked about how he was on a treadmill or a stationary bike or something when he saw "some band" on MTV...so, he's at least aware of his relationship to his subject.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hrv0Jh-067E

Didn't he do a "satirical" song about Cobain smashing his guitar on SNL, as if it wasn't a phenomenon that had been targeted as far back as Blow Up?

that's this, which is the title track to the only hiatt record i own. i never heard it was about kurt cobain, but it could be. that album's ok. i guess it never made me want to get another one.

conflating him with john prine is understandable on one level -- like, bonnie raitt has had hits with songs by both of them -- but really unfair to prine, who is smarter, sadder, funnier and writes better songs.

Emmylou Harris is useless, always has been!

oh you just hate folksingers. there are good ones! (you love mellencamp even though he's spent a lot of his career trying to be a folksinger, but i guess that's because he's really a rock singer no matter what.)

I don't know much John Hiatt. But I do know that Emmylou Harris is a damn fine singer.

F'real. Classic for the duets with Gram Parsons alone.

US 99 in Kankakee put him in with the New Wavers, sounded better that way.

Hey, I like plenty of folksingers! (I even own, like, eight Kingston Trio albums or something!)

But yeah, maybe I should've just said that I have never had any use for Emmylou. But I know other people do. (Not all that huge a Gram fan either, come to think of it. I used to like a Burrito Bros album once, but not enough to keep it, apparently.)

What is US 99 in Kankakee?? (I'm actually curious! I'm guessing a radio station rather than a record store, but it sounds more like an Interstate.)

I like where this thread is going because we've obviously identified a sub-genre of something (like, say, yacht rock). And I have most of the general shrugging 'eh' feeling for it that Chuck and Scott do.

I think I first became aware of said sub-genre of something when Mink Deville got an Oscar nomination for his Princess Bride song and performed it at the ceremony and I thought, "Wow...how boring."

if yr talking the new wave people hear, i think you can chalk that up simply to the production values of the era. if yr talking just a pop slice of AAA, i think we're about 20 years late.

Nah, it ain't just production values, and it ain't AAA. More like, when Costello (Parker/Jackson/ Pretenders/etc) hit, you had all these sort of vaguely hard rocky, vaguely folky Southern rock or pub rock or whatever kind of roots-music stodges putting a new energy and bite into their songwriting (and their band's and/or L.A. studio hacks' playing) to get on the radio (via the dress-up-as-new-wave-because-that's-what's-happening-in-the-modern-world route), which some of them did. Made for great stuff, but didn't last long -- or maybe it's just that, by the mid (even early) '80s, they all started running out of gas, from Costello, Jackson, Parker, Lowe, Hiatt on down. That's when Triple A happened. But before it did, this music rocked! (Johnny Cougar's real early stuff actually had a lot of wannabee Costello in it too, but he's one of the few of these guys whose LPs got better from there -- at least until they started getting a lot worse.)

"Spanish Stroll" by Mink Deville is a totally awesome song. Up there with Garland Jeffreys' stuff of the same vintage and same general thematic concern. Plus, Mink covered Moon Martin's "Cadillac Walk," right? (And didn't Moon also write "Bad Case Of Loving You," which Robert Palmer hit big with?)

A guy I'm wondering about now is Billy Falcon, who put out a good (or, at least it seemed good to me at the time) self-titled Parker/Costello-wannabe album (later called Improper Attire, according to Wiki) in '79 which I don't think anybody but me noticed, and then...well, I'm not sure what happened to him after that. I assume he blanded out like everybody else. (His daughter Rose put out a real nice teen-pop maxi-LP on Columbia in '03 though.)

Falcon had a small '91 hit co-written and produced by Jon Bon Jovi called "Power Windows," I think.

Yeah, I'm pretty sure he's done some writing for Nashville guys since then, too. Just not sure what.

Some related threads:

Pub Rock

Origins of Pub Rock

Recommend me more stuff like Graham Parker's Squeezing Out Sparks

Graham Parker C/D

Oh yeah, this is a real good one:

Bands in the "Rockabilly/R&B/Rock'n'Roll" chapter of the 1980 new wave guide I just bought for http://www.ilxor.com/ILX/ThreadSelectedControllerServlet?boardid=41&threadid=46178 off a seemingly homeless guy set up on the sidewalk of St Marks Street

And Rose Falcon's '03 record was a maxi-EP or mini-LP (on CD = like, eight songs), not a maxi-LP, duh.

I was subjected to a lot of John Hiatt throughout the late 80s, early 90s. Bring The Family and Slow Turning were pretty sharp roots-rock albums. But I really want to vet those new wave albums mentioned above. I'm really partial to the song "Slug Line" - it has a great Costello-esque melody and bitter lyrics about the music industry. I definitely prefer him as an angry young man.

Apparently, the guy is beyond prolific. His music publishing company has a cabinet full of DAT tapes, each of which are full of songs. Thousands of songs.

hasn't he made most of his money as a songwriter anyway?

More like, when Costello (Parker/Jackson/ Pretenders/etc) hit, you had all these sort of vaguely hard rocky, vaguely folky Southern rock or pub rock or whatever kind of roots-music stodges putting a new energy and bite into their songwriting (and their band's and/or L.A. studio hacks' playing) to get on the radio (via the dress-up-as-new-wave-because-that's-what's-happening-in-the-modern-world route), which some of them did. Made for great stuff, but didn't last long -- or maybe it's just that, by the mid (even early) '80s, they all started running out of gas, from Costello, Jackson, Parker, Lowe, Hiatt on down. That's when Triple A happened. But before it did, this music rocked!

assemble that group if you want, but while i wasn't around at the time, it seems to me any parallels between the brits and the americans are rooted more in rockcrit parlor games than reality. afaic the Americans were always 'AAA', which subsequently
'happened' after a few years of critical mass formation.

xp(Actually, maybe it was at least partially production values that made these guys new wave in '79 or so. But so what? Those were really good values then! And also, in lots of cases, they were marketed as new wave, even when -- e.g., Lowe, Hiatt, Martin, Parker, Edmunds, Gomm, etc. -- they'd clearly been journeymen since long before Seymour Stein etc. invented the term. But "new wave" was a marketing stategy in the first place. So if labels called them new wave, they were right, right?)

Not sure I get gabneb's "reality" claim, either. In 1979's reality, I don't think anybody was using the phrase "Triple A" (don't think I even heard that until the late '80s.) And the music sounded a lot different by the late '80s, too; the hard rock element had largely been excised. So where is the "parlor game"? (Also not sure I get his Brit/ American dichotomy. There was really no mid '70s American music called "pub rock," but there was clearly U.S. music that filled a similar niche here, from Springsteen and Seger and such people on down.)

wiki informs he did hang out with lowe and went in that direction when he stopped selling in the late 70s and had a euro fanbase, so i'm at least somewhat wrong. but i think placing him in that group has at least as much to do with his voice as with his content - despite the twang, he's got that semi-de-accented singing style (heavy on the stretched-out vowels and swallowing some of the consonants) that goes over well overseas.

That first Alpha Band record also explored the new wave/roots-rocks/post '60s quirkiness aesthetic. And that was before new wave, I think. I kind of put Alpha Band, T Bone, Hiatt, some Cooder, David Lindley's X-ray whatever band in this category.

xp So how was Hiatt's "content" different, then?

The Euro fanbase thing is interesting -- might help explain why Trouser Press's Anglophiles liked him so much.

I heard the new one Same Old Man. It has this awesome blue-eyed/southern soul song called "Hurt My Baby." He is dramatic, as someone pointed out. But I dig this song. It's one of them raspy-dude tunes somewhere between the Boss, Michael McDonald and Starbucks adult contemporary. Yet, it's a really convincing and hypnotic ballad.

anyone ever listen to that Little Village record? they were like the Asia of triple-A

"That first Alpha Band record also explored the new wave/roots-rocks/post '60s quirkiness aesthetic"

that's a great record! that band was on to something.

They were. I hear all kinds of early ideas in that album: new wave roots rock, Violent Femmes-like agit pop, an 80s-but-its-still-the-70s update of Warner Brothers circa Randy Newman, Ry Cooder, Van Dyke, etc.

Your the first Alpha Band fan I've kinda met. Cool.

I used to have a copy of their first album, but it never clicked; probably didn't give it enough of a chnce....Got rid of it when I got rid of all my solo T-Bone Burnett albums. (There's another guy on the ground floor of AAA...) Now starting to regret that; figure I should have at least kept his first three (including the Pazz & Jop-winning EP). Rebought Proof Through The Night for $2 a few weeks ago; like it a lot more than I expected to like it.

Xgau was a an Alpha Band fan, too, sort of:

http://robertchristgau.com/get_artist.php?name=alpha+band

Yeah, T Bone is major figure in this thing. I want to hear his album pre-Rolling Thunder/Alpha Band: The B-52 Band & the Fabulous Skylarks I bet Scott has.

more people i don't ever listen to: kris kristofferson and john stewart. kris should have done a new wave version of blame it on the stones.

i do listen to gordon lightfoot though.

more people i don't ever listen to: john stewart

That's just crazy talk.

John Stewart's "Gold" - Classic or Dud?

Kris makes sense though, given he may well have the worst singing voice in the history of the human race.

more people i don't ever listen to: john stewart.

-- scott seward, Friday, 4 July 2008 22:56 (5 minutes ago) Link

this is really good:

http://members.aol.com/clackclack/bloodlin.jpg
-- scott seward, Friday, 13 July 2007 05:01 (11 months ago) Link

WHICH IS THE REAL SCOTT SEWARD????

(and california bloodlines really is pretty good.)

> Kris makes sense though, given he may well have the worst singing voice in the history of the human race.

I'll see your Kristofferson and raise you Bruce Cockburn - or Jimmie Dale Gilmore, your choice.

i like california bloodlines! i just never want to listen to it.

another person i never listen to: john hammond (the younger)

when i was a kid i had a john hammond album with a cool cover. he was on a motorbike and wearing a leather coat. never listened to it though.

i like this cover too:

http://www.wirz.de/music/hammond/grafik/mirrors4.jpg

this is the one i had when i was a youngster:

http://popsike.com/pix/20060307/4846121947.jpg

my favorite singer-songwriter in 1975:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=rSUh2b1ufi4

wore that 45 OUT, lemme tellya.

John Hiatt always sounded like Costello to me, who also sounded like Graham Parker. Except John Hiatt sang worse than Costello. I guess I would put him in the tradition of successful Nashville songsmiths who are also you know troubadors and performers in they own right, and everyone lets them get by on vocal personality. I like "Memphis in the Meantime" and I believe I have an excellent Carl Perkins cut on that one around here somewhere. John Hiatt was "new wave" in Nashville, as I remember, and a cause celebre so to speak--in that sense of "what a great songwriter and what a personality! and yet he doesn't sell that many records! Fortunate he's a successful songwriter in his own right.." that kind of thing, and of course, he's quite skillful as a songwriter, no doubt about it. But I'll take Prine any day--or, for that matter, Squeezing Out Sparks, which goes beyond pub rockery, right?

I mean Alfred, Riding with the King, '83, is the only one you need own...

sounds like it!

"Thing Called Love" at the cafeteria; it reminded me of this thread. Good one! (the thread, that is)

Just finished playing Riding With The King from 1983, which I found for a quarter over the weekend, and though there's a remote possibility it might take a couple listens to sink in, right now I can't figure out for the life of me why Christgau gave this album an A- and Warming Up To The Ice Age a B. I'd reverse those grades exactly, I think. Riding just sounds anemic and slick and bleh in comparison; Warming, which I've liked since the year it came out, has groove and riffs and an almost ZZ Top chunkiness at points. And while it's not like the guy's songwriting has ever killed me, Warming has way more memorable lines, not to mention hooks, as far as can tell. On Riding I guess "She Loves The Jerk" stands out a little on the first side, and "Falling Up" at the end finally gets the album off its ass a little and gets some Diddley going, but honestly I always assumed Hiatt didn't sound this bland 'til the late '80s. Will say so if my mind changes on next go round, but I doubt it will. Still curious about the guy's '70s and new wave era albums, though.

Ha, just noticed above that Edd says "Riding with the King, '83, is the only one you need own..." Sorry, I don't get that at all.

And looking back over this thread, I should mention that (1) I also found Ry Cooder's Bop Til You Drop for a quarter over the weekend; (2) this morning, by a bizarre coincidence, I mentioned both Kris Kristofferson (negatively) and John Stewart (positively) in the same post on Rolling Country; and (3) I determined this year that I think the first Alpha Band LP is okay but Burnett's B-52 Band one isn't.

We had Hiatt's Best Of playing in the store this morning and it sounded sort of meh - mostly late 80's stuff, the re-recording of Have A Little Faith In Me being a particularly low point.
Still, I would like to hear his early albums, if they're actually somehow comparable to Garland Jeffreys or Mink Deville's first.

He's imperfect, this is typical of Midwest songwriters...I bought some of his old stuff and I found I couldn't listen to 10 John Hiatt songs in a row. I think it's good for the mp3 era.

Eventually decided I like the first two songs and the last song on Riding With The King. But of those three (the other two being "I Don't Even Try" and "Faling Up"), only "Death By Misadventure" sounds like it would've been tough enough for Ice Age. And what's in between mostly sounds as weak-kneed as I suggested -- reminds me, more than anything else, of '80s-and-later Nick Lowe. Which I know some people might consider a compliment, but I never really got him either, post-Labour Of Lust.

Have you watched his videos from this period? On YouTube. Typical overstatement.

"cry love" is so... i dont know, <em>something</em>, that i cant help but like it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KvXhPKRyr7c

dig the mandolin player

Liking Two Bit Monsters from 1980, which I found a copy of for $1 last week, at least as much and probably more than Warming Up To The Ice Age, even. Just seems obvious to me that Hiatt started (or at least started the '80s -- still have heard none of his '70s stuff) sounding much tougher and more rock than he wound up, and a few cuts here ("Face The Nation," "Cop Party," "String Pull Job") have him and his band stretching out some and getting more hard-boiled than I've heard him elsewhere. Overall vibe variously reminds me of not just This Year's Model, but also the first couple Graham Parker and Joe Jackson and Moon Martin albums, and Zevon's Excitable Boy. But unlike all those other guys, I seem to have a real problem grasping what Hiatt's singing about -- I'll catch cool lines here and there, but his voice muffles as often as not, and I almost never get a clear idea what the words add up to. Only real exception on this album is "I Spy (For The FBI)," a song about stalking an unfaithful woman which turns out to be the only one he didn't write. That's followed by a couple ("Pink Bedroom," "Good Girl, Bad World") that I take it have something to do with the travails of teenage girls, but I'm not exactly sure what. (The line about the girl mixing Coca Cola with valium in "Pink Bedroom" always jumps out, though.) Might just take 10 or 20 more listens for me to figure it all out. (By the way, I'm pretty sure Trouser Press voted either this one or 1979's Slug Line their album of the year when it came out.)

And "I Spy (For The FBI)" shouldn't be confused with "Spy Boy," his song from 1980's Crusing that reminded me of AC/DC when I saw the movie (I mention it way upthread). Don't think that's on any of his LPs; need to keep hunting around for the soundtrack.

i would probably rather listen to later richard thompson albums that i would never listen to.

don't hiatt albums come with lyric sheets? i would think they would.

he's no tonio k. that's all i know.

i own 11 jj cale albums. and i listen to all of them. and he never bores me! even when it sounds like he's singing in his sleep.

i own 10 jackie deshannon albums. ditto.

jackie deshannon shits on john hiatt from a great height. (alex in nyc memorial post)

I was actually going to say that Two Bit Monsters is just about the only album I've heard lately that I wish came with a lyric sheet! (Usually I don't have much use for those things. Of the other two Hiatt albums I own, Riding With The King has one, and Warming Up To The Ice doesn't. But I bought all these used, so maybe they disappeared somewhere along the line.)

Also: Cruising I meant, duh.

Just checked The New Trouser Press Record Guide, and Ira Robbins definitely prefered Slug Line (Hiatt's "rawest and most powerful" album) to Two Bit Monsters ("repeats Slug Line's style, but with less bite"), so I'm guessing the former is the one T.P. named Album of the Year. (Also, the latter would've had to beat London Calling, which is unlikely.)

Should probably also mention that the Hiatt stuff I've heard is never really as catchy as Costello or Joe Jackson were on their first couple LPs. (But those were real catchy records, obviously. And he's as catchy as the first two Graham Parkers.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DTiDJd62y-A

I have no real Jackie DeShannon opinion, strangely enough. But Scott and I definitely see eye-to-eye on the great Tonio K.

JJ Cale always bores me. (Or always has, whenever I've tried.)

someone finally put arlyn gale on youtube! not the best song on the album though. he's searching for his inner lynott on this one.

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

i hate to call someone's music "comfort food" for some reason. mostly cuz i hate that term? most food is pretty comforting to me. but anyway jj is like that for me. and i love his songs. and i love his miniaturist sensibility. oh i like lots of things about him.

jackie deshannon is married to soft pop dweeb turned film and t.v. score titan randy edelman. he doesn't deserve her.

http://www.recordsale.org/cdpix/r/randy_edelman-if_love_is_real.jpg

Edelman looks like Andy Samberg on SNL!

still have heard none of his '70s stuff

I've liked "Hanging Around The Observatory" since it was new in '74, but his singing is VERY affected and marble-mouthed; he sounds like he's aping Randy Newman. Still have never heard "Overcoats," and then there's a four year gap until "Slug Line."

and fyi: ry cooder was in jackie's band when she toured with and supported the beatles on their first u.s. tour.

(and she used to date elvis presley AND jimmy page!)

anyway, this thread isn't about her.

jackie deshannon used to write songs with randy newman. okay, i''ll stop...

btw, xhuxk, Rosanne Cash's version of "Pink Bedroom" should help you see what Hiatt was aiming for.

i don't know Hiatt's work but i keep listening to his daughter Lilly's 2017 album Trinity Lane and it's really good imo. I included it in my 2017 country albums mix and whenever one of the tracks comes up, it really grabs my attention.

She's rad.

I like her pop's turn of the 80s album string where he was in a very Costello/Graham Parker mold.

He just cancelled the rest of his shows this year after taking a bad fall off a hiking trail. He's expected to make a full recovery though.

He had to smash a perfectly good guitar to break his fall though.

Emmylou Harris is useless, always has been!

This board seems to have been populated in its early days by people who took contrarian opinions just because.

lol that's xhuxk. Must have been having a grumpy day.