does tom petty have any redeeming qualities?

his U2 book cast such a spell on me that I gave the band the benefit of the doubt for many years; it's still a great read.

I think he's a great writer and a good critic - I love the U2 book, for example - but for the past x years he's been sucking on the VH1 teat so hard it hurts, which puts him more or less on par with Dave Marsh and leads him to such lame proclamations as his take on Petty (who I would not to be surprised to learn was IRL a close family friend).

If we need a calendar date when the melancholy synth begins, it's March 13, 2001, the day Discovery, by Paris's Daft Punk, was released.

wtf!

I mean, Flanagan's all but contractually obligated to say nice things about Petty (as Marsh is re: Bruce, with whom Marsh does have close family ties; see also: Marsh's "Album of the Year" sticker affixed to the last Alejandro Escovedo album - no conflict there!).

That said, I like Petty well enough. His band is great, esp. the Blue Stingrays surf disc Mike Campbell put out a few years back.

Also, per the original thread title, I hear Petty travels only with the highest quality pot, so I'm sure some will view that as redeeming.

only if he's willing to share

he's stingy. don't "petty" the weed, man, as the old saying goes.

i may have recounted this story on ilm before, but my old room mate spent the wee hours after a show here in '99 smoking ridiculous amounts of high quality pot w/ him, his gf and his tour assistant/ mgr dude.

(this is after befriending said tour manager, sneaking onto the bus and stealing TP's underwear, despite not necessarily being the biggest fan. tighty whiteys lol)

no bs, they had "TP" scrawled on the waistband. saw it w/ my own two eyes i did.

disappointing. in middle school we would sing "and i'm freeeeeee, i'm free ballin'!"

creative

Listening to the new Petty album Mojo (out tomorrow) right now. A little too long (15 tracks, just over an hour), but definitely rockin'. A few ballads, a weirdly Grateful Dead-ish (mid-70s version) song, some very bluesy stuff...I'm liking it, and definitely thinking about going to see him when he plays MSG next month.

Rolling Stone, unsurprisingly, gave this four stars

ratings very much in character

How about this? I like it even though they do.

Just about every Tom Petty album deserves at least three stars.

yeah, he's never made a really embarrassing album, has he? I thought that the Last DJ would be his embarrassing album (and the title track and a few others are embarrassing), but about half of that record is pretty good.

How about this? I like it even though they do.

― Born In A Test Tube, Raised In A Cage (unperson), Monday, June 14, 2010 3:12 PM (5 minutes ago)

:-) none of my comments were about you -- just Rolling Stone. wasn't surprised to see this get four stars when a bunch of other deserving records didn't

i remember playing echoes just once. maybe i should give it another go?

it's got some cool stuff ... i made a playlist a little while ago w/ the best stuff from echo, last dj, and lost highway and it was pretty nice.

i did like that "free girl now" song

Hmm, I jumped off the Petty train after Echo, so I've heard nothing at all from the last two save "The Last DJ" which convinced me I really didn't need to pick that one. I am, however, encouraged by what I've heard off of Mojo and the advance praise.

the music bizness shit on last dj is cringe-worthy, but there are a couple nice ballad-y things -- "blue sunday," "you and me" ...

I was taken at the time by Echo's "Room at the Top."

Don't Pull Me Over is terrible.

petty deep cut of the day - "no second thoughts" - yeah yeah ooh yeah yeah.

Yes! That is the mother of all obscure Tom Petty songs. He doesn't have many slow ones that are better.

yeah, great song -- super loose, too. sounds kind of like he might be barely remembering the lyrics, or maybe even making them up on the spot.

It's just the normal noises in here.

have just played some of the songs from his greatest hits thing. i'm seeing it all in a bit of a different light at the moment. i'm hearing a dude trying reeeeally hard and not getting very far at all.

"Have Love Will Travel" is quite a lovely song I was turned on to lately -- from "The Last DJ" album.

That live box is so damn good. Made me completely reevaluate the man.

that live box was one of the best rock things i've heard in a long time.

This thread title makes me mad every time I see it

it's your I'm sorry but Paul Simon is so overrated

Just had a conversation with someone about Tom Petty last night, actually. My friend's wife thinks he's one of the all time greats, he thinks he's OK. I think if you stick to the hits and a few select tracks, he could make a convincing, well, great. But as an album artist he's just OK. He gets massive points for helping to pull Dylan, McGuinn, Del Shannon (briefly), Roy Orbison, and Johnny Cash back from the margins, though.

heard "Waiting For Tonight" on satellite radio this morning. The Bangles harmonies are so good.

yeah he's got a LOT of songs floating around as b-sides/outtakes/deep cuts that you hear and think, "this song should be on the radio constantly!" heard "change of heart" last night - just hook after hook after hook.

I miss Stan Lynch. He was the Phil Rudd of the Heartbreakers.

Obligatory summertime driving thread revival. This is the one that got me the other day:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3RBVMRw8HpQ&list=UUsaxHr3FqbWs_6h2Xtugy3g&index=44&feature=plpp_video

They were the festival closers at Bonnaroo this year, playing the Sunday night slot generally reserved for jam bands. They did a fair amount of jamming and even covered "Friend of the Devil," and it was sort of interesting to think of them in that light. Not like it's a new scene for them -- I saw them when they toured with Dylan and the Dead in the '80s. But the most interesting thing to me was realizing that for anyone born from 1980 on, his career really starts with Full Moon Fever. The stuff before that they may know from classic-rock radio or the greatest hits albums, or they may not. Everyone knew "Refugee," but "Here Comes My Girl" seemed only half-familiar, and there was just polite silence during "A Woman in Love." Meanwhile, the stuff I think of as his mostly lesser, later material -- "Learning to Fly," "Running Down a Dream," etc -- got people all worked up.

The other noteworthy thing was just how deep his catalog really is. When you can do a festival-closing two-hour set and confidently leave out some of your biggest hits -- no "Breakdown," "Don't Do Me Like That," "You Got Lucky," "You Don't Know How It Feels," he didn't even play "The Waiting" -- it means you've got a lot to choose from. Anyway, it was a fun show. The high jam quotient meant tons of Mike Campbell, which is fine by me.

mike campbell is a treasure.

american girl is a great song. i'm indifferent to everything else he's done.

i saw one of his "deep album cuts" shows at the beacon theatre nyc a few weeks back. good but not great. the songs i didn't know - most of the selections - were fine and mike campbell really stretched out which was fine too. petty was clearly enjoying it too and his voice sounded strong but i thought the same thing i did seeing him 20+ years ago - he's curiously uncharismatic as a live performer, not bad but he lacks that certain oomph that really mesmerizes a big audience. which means in the jam band context he probably did more than hold his own.

True. I've seen him several times, and while he's always been good, he's only been great once. That was on the Wildflowers tour, and maybe he was energized by having a big hit record and a bunch of good new songs to play.

For the past decade, Petty's been not on autopilot live, but certainly comfortable in a certain zone. It's not quite jamming, but it is relatively loose, with few surprises but plenty of proficiency.

Just revisited all the Xgau Consumer Guide reviews, and man, I can't think of a single other artist he covers who is showered with more faint praise, backhanded compliments and personal derision.

The songs are cute, the riffs executed with more dynamism than usual, and the singing attractively phlegmy. And like they say at the end of other cartoons, that's all, folks.

despite his Southern roots and '60s pop-rock proclivities, he comes on like a real made-in-L.A. jerk. Onstage, he acts like he wants to be Ted Nugent when he grows up, pulling out the cornball arena-rock moves as if they had something to do with the kind of music he makes

This is a breakthrough for Petty because for the first time the Heartbreakers (his Heartbreakers, this L.A.M.F. fan should specify) are rocking as powerfully as he's writing. But whether Petty has any need to rock out beyond the sheer doing of it--whether he has anything to say--remains shrouded in banality.

it just goes to show you--no matter how much they respect the working fan, rich rock stars do tend to fill up on themselves.

And so on. And these are all mostly positive reviews!

read his Bowie reviews

Wow – he played "Rebels," "Love is a Long Road," and "Tweeter and the Monkey Man"!

Oh man, those Bowie reviews are soooo much more generous to the singer, even when the album is a stiff. At least Christgau acknowledges his talent and occasional genius, rather than grudgingly accepting his product despite him being a jerk. With Bowie, it's a failure despite his intentions and intelligence, With Petty, it's a success despite his bad attitude, banality and lack of ambition.

haha good way of putting it