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

Beatles & Elvis man - open your third eye it’s all right there

he’s preaching to us all

also not to be uh all rockist or whatever but analog rock records from the 70s just sound so fucking good, never got better than that era

the drums are so great

otm

yeah i agree, lotta uh “warmth”?
or some other nebulous word

Not just rock records either, there's a reason '70s funk is such a trove for hip-hop. It's the beats and bass and whatever, but it's also the vibe of it. There was this coming together of ace players and great recording equipment, in rock and soul and country, across the board.

Fooled Again: I don't mind it! There might not be enough there to justify the run time (an epic, by this album's standards), but it's okay as something to keep a moody head-bob going at the bar. There are a couple of places where it feels lik they might have been planning to come back and fill in something more sonically exciting later ("Look out!") and I'm enjoying all these swings from Tom, working out his vocal options as tipsy pointed out.

Mystery Man

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wPRSc6IBPtY

the Dead could have covered that. Phil could have sung it. did the Dead ever do a Petty song? i know Tom used to cover "Friend Of The Devil".

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

If Little Feat were a highway, this would be the little adjacent road off to the side
Nice lyric though

Dig the sound for sure. Very "country soul," no? Maybe the genre that benefited the most from that 70s studio warmth/fullness. They're really trying their hands at a lot of things on this album - anything that's rock 'n' roll, anyway.

Petty wrote this song that Dylan covered.

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

very 70s album track. get graham parker on this one. or garland jeffreys. or willy deville.

I like "Fooled Again" better than this; the biggest flaw of this album is that the two weak tracks sit right in the middle of either side of the LP. I wouldn't like it any better if Little Feat or any of those other people just named had done it either.

listening to the double disc Live at the Fillmore 1997. tons of fun covers. sounds great.

i love when they do "call me the breeze" because it completes the shelter records jj cale lynyrd skynyrd florida circle of life.

thanks for this thread, really enjoying it.

i'm from the southeast so i grew up with so much tom petty in the air that actually putting on an album would've seemed a little ridiculous, it was as much the background to my life as my dad's favorite sports. so in that sense i can see why he can seem boring or as calstars was saying, uncool. however due to comments of some ilxors, alfred i believe specifically, i started listening to him intentionally over the past few years, but i'd still avoided the debut. it just seemed like it'd be obvious, or too 50's rock'n'roll for my taste or whatever. but i have to say i'm kinda blown away by it. it has a humble love of the idea of rock that is a little self-conscious (which reminds me of paddy mcaloon minus the dreamy irony,) and yet its more confident than it has any right to be. that tom petty is from gainesville and looks like tom petty and still became tom petty through sheer force of will and desire to play the part of a rock star is what makes him so cool.

the wild one, forever is the one i hadn't heard before that most impressed me, i think it's like an all-time great song. the restraint, the lack of histrionics, the focus on a single image and moment, make it a perfect paean to the one-night stand, something that remains so small yet has the potential to crystalize into something so achingly beautiful in it's unresolved in/significance. to make more of it would be embarrassing but to make less of it would be dishonest

one of the things that surprised me about my late-in-life Petty fandom is how much i enjoyed PLAINTIVE Tom Petty. the guy can choke me up with sad and pretty when he wants to. i guess when i thought of his slower stuff in the past i thought of big rock radio ballads. but there is later stuff that is smaller and more delicate. can't think of examples off the top of my head but we will get to them. "angel dream". that's one of them.

Great posts.

"Mystery Man": Heartbreaker Reggae! It was '76, after all. It was, like, a law or something. Everybody in the biz must *try* doing Reggae (if you hadn't already done so -- Zep, Paul Simon etc.).

A very "First album, middle of side 2" track.

Mystery Man has such good Southern vibes, musically feels like an Allman Brothers song or something, just such a nice easy groove & Mike’s lead guitar part is so goddamn ~pretty~ it practically sparkles. They are establishing their chops on this record, for sure.

Also gives me a bit of a Van Morrison vibe vocally kinda, or maybe just the tone in Tom’s voice here

Anyway, this song is a good time.

xxpost Scott yeah I love plaintive Tom too.
He’s never too cool to tell you just how sad or lonely he is. But it’s not an earnest soul baring like Elvis -Petty is a little more circumspect so even when you feel what he feels, he’s not scooping his heart and soul onto a platter. He keeps something for himself too.

terrific run of posts today/tonight, thanks y'all.

one of the things that surprised me about my late-in-life Petty fandom is how much i enjoyed PLAINTIVE Tom Petty. the guy can choke me up with sad and pretty when he wants to. i guess when i thought of his slower stuff in the past i thought of big rock radio ballads. but there is later stuff that is smaller and more delicate. can't think of examples off the top of my head but we will get to them. "angel dream". that's one of them.

― scott seward, Thursday, March 7, 2024 4:28 PM (three hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

"crawling back to you"

Also gives me a bit of a Van Morrison vibe vocally kinda, or maybe just the tone in Tom’s voice here

Anyway, this song is a good time.

― werewolves of laudanum (VegemiteGrrl), Thursday, March 7, 2024 6:49 PM (four hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

i definitely thought of van morrison, partially the vocal but something about the tone of his voice in combination with the vibe of the song

"crawling back to you"

top five Tom Petty

i definitely thought of van morrison, partially the vocal but something about the tone of his voice in combination with the vibe of the song

the particular way he vamps on the last line of the song for 25 or 30 seconds has a very vanmo quality to it, though van, to be fair, might have gone on for more like 25 or 30 minutes.

yeah Petty keeps a lid on that lol

Luna

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9fOKtWW8Xvo

that is a weird song. i don't have any memory of that song. i love how he says the word "shiver" like a toddler.

i have no recollection of this one either. maybe it's the onset of full moon fever? that break with the triplets on the keys doesn't really merit its multiple appearances.

What a strange vocal.

"Mystery Man" is a nice groove and they play it well, again the song feels a little slight

huh "Luna" is really odd! I like it though...the organ and weird little pomp breakdown in the middle is like...fuckin Procal Harum or something

like the least "Tom Petty" Tom Petty song I've ever heard

but i'm into it for some weird reason

If "Breakdown" was an emulation or anticipation of Nicks-era Mac, the triplet rhythm and supernatural theme of this song makes me think of Bob Welch doing "Hypnotized".

This led me to check if Petty ever played a show with Boz Scaggs (apparently not).

Weird strings at the fadeout!

out of curiosity, how would you check that? is there like a 1-page gigography that you can ctrl-f?

Yep, right here!

The intro/outro to Luna is so playful and great, and love the Christmas carol instrumental after the verses (whotf thought that was a good idea? Genius!) Would be a great soundtrack for a midnight Christmas eve drive home to your girlfriend/boyfriend.

Real strong juxtaposition of atmospheres in the three parts of this song. Not a stand out, but interesting enough to give your time to it with a smile

BTW these threads are so great. Always a pleasure to read through

kinda makes me think of The Band’s “Chest Fever” - Petty’s weird vocal spunds a bit like he’s doing Richard Manuel

apparently it’s all cobbled together from a one-day jam session which may account for it’s oddness

there’s a bit about it here though idk this dude’s sources

https://somethingelsereviews.com/2014/04/29/into-the-great-wide-open-tom-petty-and-the-heartbreakers-luna-1976/

Xp thus sang Freud. This so would be a bore without that instrumental. The chord the strings play at the intro after the drum fill establishes a key to the song that wasn't suggested in the intro playing before it. Nice little surprise.

The instrumental gets more ridiculous the more I play this song. I feel like I'm laughing at this song rather than along with it, but that's not a negative criticism imo. Childlike "wtf who thought of this? laughter is key to a lot of music I like at first listen

afraid this one is doing the least for me off this LP. i get what it's going for, but it's forgotten when it's over. idk if the early 70s Procol Harum organ/mood thing really plays to this group's strengths, but it's interesting that it was part of their repertory despite the focus on Elvis and the Beatles etc. i guess it was just part of the lingua franca of working 70s rock bands.

"Luna": COWBELL! I kinda like this one, mainly because of the atmospherics. Tench & Lynch carry it. Still, very "Side 2", and gets bulldozed by the closer.

Tench Petty & Lynch carry it.

Reading the blog entry now.

this song is terrible what are you all on about

yr mom is terrible

Where's your sense of humour calstars?