does tom petty have any redeeming qualities?

That live 4CD Tom Petty box that came out last year is fucking great. First of all, the performances are from a twenty-plus year span but sound like they could have all been recorded at the exact same gig; second of all, you can get it for like $22 at Target. Highly recommended.

yeah i still need to get that live box ...

ug threads like this up top are the worst of the "good old days" of ILM

ug threads like this up top are the worst of the "good old days" of ILM

i wonder what jess thinks now?

best answer:

Good god Jess, have you never been in a CAR?
― Josh, Monday, December 31, 2001 7:00 PM (8 years ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

there was a curious form of anti-rockism that was actually anti-popism

More like anti-boringmusicism.

ah petty's ok. josh otm.

Blimey, this thread. So old, people posted with their real names!

They probably used real instruments too.

We carved out our posts on petrified papyrus.

the heartbreakers are a terrific band, even on songs i don't really like mike campbell comes up with something really distinctive -- he might be a better melodicist than his band leader.

dude wrote fucking Boys of Summer

and this is a good or a bad thing?

yeah campbell writes brilliant guitar parts, very typical of amazing guitarists that don't really get that much recognition from the guitar mag industry because they don't specialize as soloist....

me and a couple of friends were speculating that thunders and petty should have swapped heartbreakers for like 3 months and each recorded albums with the other band...that could have been pretty cool

i did not know that!

xp re: boys of summer

yep petty admitted that was a fuckup letting that go in the documentary

listen to it now, and you can TOTALLY hear that chorus as a tom petty song

"Runaway Trains" always sounded like Campbell trying to write a "Boys of Summer" sequel for Petty.

Has Petty ever covered it ("The Boys of Summer") ?

For what it's worth, I think Henley's vocal suits the snotty wistfulness of the song better than Petty's would have.

In 1984 Henley was much more comfortable with synths than Petty was.

"Runaway Trains" always sounded like Campbell...

Yes. Except he forgot to write a melody for the verses

great chorus though

He's such a riveting figure, his thread has held the top of the list for the past 40+ minutes.

In 1984 Henley was much more comfortable with synths than Petty was.

First thing I thought of too!

?? hmm....southern accents was 85, and that has "don't come around here no more" which is as much classic rock new wave as "boys of summer"

"you got lucky" is from 82 and that's pretty much a synth pop song!

Tom Petty, fronting Yazoo.

once in college i was trying to figure out how to play the keyboard part from "you got lucky" on guitar and some girl in the dorm asked me if i was playing the theme to the young and the restless

yeah, petty was collab-ing with the dude from the eurythmics so he can't have been too scared of synths. maybe he thought "you got lucky" and "don't come around here" were enough when "boys of summer" came his way.

omg mary j blige could KILL a track that used a "you got lucky" sample!

i'm tellin u ned! it IS synth pop

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTAhZKP5wCY

plus the weird ambient music in the lol mad max intro totally sounds like early tangerine dream!

guys, the intro to Louisiana Rain

s'all

what, no love for free fallin'? barely even heard it mentioned, but if you ask me it's of a much higher quality than most rock bands sellout powerballads, and is a perennial staple of my ongoing classic rock itunes playlist

"You Got Lucky" was the first to feature synths, and it got some resistance, according to Petty (he's himself not very fond of it).

totally sounds like early tangerine dream..or mid period Rush

"Don't Come Around Here No More" is not a song by a guy comfortable with synths, let alone his voice. God, that thing is so annoying.

xpost on louisiana rain

oh dip that's a good one too.

NO WAY ALFRED!!!!

don't come around here no more is awesome

i don't even know how it works, so mysterious

http://www.fortunecity.com/uproar/amused/513/alice/image2.jpg

"It's just one of those things, you just can't explain"

learning to fly >> free fallin'

(it's REALLY beautiful)

It always gives me a bit of a rush to out myself as a(n occasional) Petty listener - his records got LOTS of play in the car when I was young

Someone said upthread that it's a sound looking for a song. And Petty sings it like Dave Stewart's chewing on his feet.

I quite like DCAHNM, it's very airy

yeah, dude, don't come around here no more is a pretty rad song.

petty does sing it weird, but i like that -- what a weird vocal to have on a hit song!

Matt I think a large part of it comes from how you and I have very (VERY) different relationships to whatever could be called classic rock. Your post on the Silkworm thread about how you literally grew up with it all around you thanks to your dad, balanced out by all the newer stuff that gave you a different focus on how older sounds and styles could be reworked into something distinctly different, is a very strong articulation of your own aesthetic. But that aesthetic is not mine -- classic rock as something consciously pursued only lasted a year in high school for me, while Petty's early eighties hits are part of a free-flowing mix of many different sounds. And in both cases I have nostalgic memories by default, but no need to actively plunge back into a past that doesn't have a real hold on me any more.

I always get excited when I hear the beginning of DCAHNM, because it sounds really good, but then after a minute or so I remember I don't really like it much as a song.

i remember when i saw tom petty in 7th grade and they played Don't Come Around Here ... at the end during the rave-up, a knight in armor chased tom around the stage, but he defeated him with a big peace symbol.

I always get excited when I hear the beginning of DCAHNM, because it sounds really good, but then after a minute or so I remember I don't really like it much as a song.

^^^ yep. I tried to explain in a long post last December how this neo-psychedelia in which Dave Stewart trafficked put an electro sheen to a reactionary ethos (Mick Jagger, Dylan, and Daryl Hall would work with Stewart in the same period); it's connected to the sudden mainstream press' interest in American sounds and rockabilly (Lone Justice, Jason and the Scorchers, etc).

xpost -- Might as well have put THAT in the Burton film.

All this said, DCAHNM is nowhere NEAR as good as I Won't Back Down