RIP Tom Petty

a+ album

only early into Zanes but: Tom & Brooce venn diagram overlaps the most clearly with childhood/teens. Music isn’t a hobby, it’s the pieces of a ladder you build to get the FUCK out of your hell. you make it your job to be the best & surround yourself with the most talented people you can to ensure you stay out.

Pretty much every Tom Petty CD is now on back order on Amazon.

...and have been since about last Tuesday! Thanks to reductions in ready stock, this is becoming par for the course with them whenever a Classic Rock icon or such dies. I remember when Jack Bruce passed a few years ago, shortly after hearing the news I dropped in to pick up the Cream albums I was missing only to find them already on back order for a few days. I noticed a similar thing earlier this year with Gregg Allman.

It's kind of a shame MCA never really got a proper Petty reissue program going. They only ever remastered ...Torpedoes, Hard Promises, and Long After Dark*, all independent of each other and with the former getting a deluxe double disc treatment w/b-sides and live stuff as well. I don't know if there were ever plans for the other four, but I do know that Let Me Up had been in print for many years as a cheapie budget CD (I remember seeing it and not picking it up from the $5 bin at Best Buy in the early 2000s). An expanded Full Moon Fever would seem like a no-brainer, although it still sounds pretty good for a 25+ year old CD.

*Warner Bros. did the two Shelter albums (which Petty owned the rights to) in the early '00s as well.

Another interesting thing about Petty on CD is that almost everything he did up through Wildflowers is/was available as budget catalogue titles for about $4-$7 a throw. A few of the Warners albums are OOP, but generally can be found easily and cheaply. For instance, I think Echo was heavily overprinted upon release. I got my copy for about $5 at a record show in 2000 or so from a guy who had a stack of sealed copies that weren't promos, cut-outs, or from a CD club.

P4k has retrospective reviews of s/t, Damn the Torpedoes, Full Moon Fever and Wildflowers up today.

I just realized, no Petty songs have appeared in commercials, right? I don't recall him making a public point of not selling his songs to advertisers, but I also can't think of any instances of, say, "American Girl" being used to sell jeans.

"You Don't Know How It Feels" sells weed iirc

ha

Glad to see "You Got Lucky" on that digital chart, albeit toward the bottom. I haven't heard or seen much of that in the past week's flood of Petty. It's a great song and also the video was a pretty big deal at the time -- I remember friends who were lucky enough to have MTV talking about it a lot, its post-apocalyptic shtick was very Road Warrior/early '80s dystopian. The beginning of him as a real MTV guy.

I just realized, no Petty songs have appeared in commercials, right? I don't recall him making a public point of not selling his songs to advertisers, but I also can't think of any instances of, say, "American Girl" being used to sell jeans.

― Montgomery Burns' Jazz (Tarfumes The Escape Goat), Tuesday, October 10, 2017 8:59 AM (fourteen minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Runnin Down a Dream has to be in something

maybe it was in a bumper in a football game, or another sports-related thing

Runnin' Down a Dream was used incessantly in the NBA playoffs a few years ago.

Interesting how "The Waiting," which Petty felt was as sure a hit as he could write, still can't crack that list of best-selling songs.

It's the hardest part.

no "Refugee" either!

Glad to see "You Got Lucky" on that digital chart, albeit toward the bottom. I haven't heard or seen much of that in the past week's flood of Petty

They played it for the first time in 20-something years on this last tour.

Runnin' Down a Dream was used incessantly in the NBA playoffs a few years ago.

― Chris L, Tuesday, October 10, 2017 10:41 AM (fifty minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

True, but that's not really the same thing as using a song in an ad. I think sports broadcasts are a different animal -- they don't need an artist's permission to use a song during a game, though they certainly have to pay out royalties for whatever songs they use.

It was the official song of the network's playoff coverage that year iirc, I would assume they had a fairly lucrative deal worked out for that.

Ah, yeah, that's definitely more than x song played going into a commercial break.

T.P. & Peter Gabriel checking in on their daughters' joint art show in 1999.

https://i.pinimg.com/736x/e4/43/f5/e443f5f33548e5a4b37d9a350533577c--peter-gabriel-tom-petty.jpg

Jason Isbell did “Refugee” @ the Ryman on Sunday night

http://www.rollingstone.com/country/news/see-jason-isbells-ripping-cover-of-tom-pettys-refugee-w507990

Petty was a big Lakers fan so in my eyes its not quite the same as say a Kia commercial.

yeah Petty wasn't a nerd who called stuff "sports ball" so he probably thought it was cool

Music isn’t a hobby, it’s the pieces of a ladder you build to get the FUCK out of your hell. you make it your job to be the best & surround yourself with the most talented people you can to ensure you stay out.

― Squeaky Fromage (VegemiteGrrl), Monday, October 9, 2017

OTM. Still can't recall whether it was Petty or someone else who said that his greatest musical talent was his unique knack for convincing people not to go to college.

Jason Isbell did “Refugee” @ the Ryman on Sunday night

http://www.rollingstone.com/country/news/see-jason-isbells-ripping-cover-of-tom-pettys-refugee-w507990

― Squeaky Fromage (VegemiteGrrl), Tuesday, October 10, 2017

I'm afraid to listen. Is it good? The Wilco and DBTs covers did my heart good but honestly kinda sucked.

i was trying to think of actually good Tom Petty covers and was having trouble coming up with any ... anyone have a favorite?

Sharon Van Etten, "Stop Draggin' My Heart Around"

https://youtu.be/KiH6Dtwz-aU

isbell did a few covers this week it turns out... "even the losers" solo guitar pretty moving actually

https://youtu.be/5R0XnkPYw9g

and to my great relief his refugee is legit

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xsERVz6-xRw

With the Heartbreakers as backing band, no less.

oh yeah, the cash covers are good! forgot those ...

Sharon van Etten can do a mean Stevie Nicks, haha

i like Melissa Etheridge’s cover of Refugee
it’s quieter but her voice suits it

https://youtu.be/KONLrSI2_Y0

and I love this Matthew Sweet & Susannah Hoffs cover of Here Comes My Girl

https://youtu.be/__q1sS5vSKc

(except they go too slow on the chorus & i want to hurry them up)

!!!

ok i just stumbled on this & it might be my favorite TP cover from the past week

Chris Stapleton doing Learning to Fly
idk maybe i just love his voice but i think he kills it
https://youtu.be/FzWXO_Il8So

not a cover at all, but a sweet, adorable homage. the pooh sticks, "the wild one, forever":

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GhfXuubw1x4

I've been on a Tom Petty binge for the past year or so and have been reminded how much I really, really dislike most of his videos. Maybe it's because they were on all the time, I don't know. But actually the "Here Comes My Girl" video (him and the band playing alone in a room) is great. He was so charming on stage in those early days, and it really captured that.

I honestly thought he made a mistake doing "Won't Back Down" on the post-9/11 TV special. Playing right into W's agenda.

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

https://scontent-atl3-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/22492011_10214902824431986_2552834980319831246_n.jpg?oh=873025aa40b8e9cdfbe9fbfe2ca60e2b&oe=5A6D4C2C

OOPs.

https://scontent-ort2-2.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/22491652_10154976969810496_3707255343680371963_n.jpg?oh=b5ca8834d3427e33fa1fb8a022ab0638&oe=5A6E8C16

is that Gary Hart

not sure if serious, but anyway - that's jerry lee lewis (great balls of etc)

2/3 through Zanes bio, goddamn so good. I thought the Bogdanovich doc was good but man Zanes really peers into the dark corners & gives so much more nuance, i love it

I was in Austin over the weekend, and a friend hooked us up with Austin City Limits passes. We only went for maybe an hour or so, saw a bit of Spoon, saw a bit of Chance, then left. A couple of days later I saw a roundup whose headline implied lots of tearjerker moments. I thought, really? Who in the world would elicit tears at this latest in a long line of now anonymously corporate events? Gorillaz? Jay-Z? So I read the article and, indeed, at least one of the BS tearjerker moments was an artist so happy to be there they got weepy. Um, yeah. But another emotional moment cited was when the fest played over the PA Tom Petty doing "Free Falling"from a past live at ACL. That's how lame these festivals have become. If you want something truly emotionally, you've got to go the archives and get yourself a pro.

Would have been 67 today.

New Rolling Stone Cover Story

Very few people beyond the Heartbreakers' immediate circle knew that Petty was suffering, at each gig, from a hairline fracture in his left hip, which he planned to deal with after the tour. "I don't know how it happened," says his longtime manager Tony Dimitriades. "I don't think he even knew when it happened." At one point, Dimitriades told Petty, "You can't tour like that." The singer responded, "Why not? I'll do it in a chair if I have to."

i love the Dylan anecdote

Dhani recounts a story that Petty once told him about the Heartbreakers' tour with Dylan – a story that "says everything about the way Tom interacted with people: honest but cheeky." Onstage one night, Dylan kept complaining that the stage lights were too bright and threatened to leave if they were not turned down. Finally, Dylan walked off, forcing Petty to coax him back on as the Heartbreakers kept playing.

In the wings, Dhani says, "Bob was going, 'Fucking lights. I'm not going back out there. It's like fucking Disneyland out there.' And Tom says to Bob, 'You've never been to Disneyland.' Bob just started laughing. Tom called him on it, straight out. They walked back out there and carried on playing."

ha, that's great -- think there's a similar story in the Zanes bio, but with the roles reversed!
man, still in disbelief that he's gone. my daughter has been playing his music constantly the past week, singing along in her little eight-year-old voice :'(