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

this song works for me. reminds me of an updated garage rock song. the sound is so simple and tom petty by this point just OWNS this sound. new romanticism flourishing all around him and electro robots hovering over his head but there is tom working those ancient riffs like his life depends on it.

he does have an undeniable sound here but in this case, to me, it sounds like it's propping up a one-story song. maybe it's also why i don't care for most of the garage-revival bands from this era.

Here we go! I love Long After Dark so much. Partly I will make the case that it is a top-tier Petty album — easily in my top 5 — but partly also I know it's because this is where my personal investment in Petty really takes off. I got this album for Christmas! It was one of a handful I had asked for, and this is when my total record collection was probably still under 15 or 20. Seminal to 13-year-old me. I thought he looked cool on the cover, I loved the red tinting, I loved the evocative title. And I think that side A is basically as strong an album side as you get in the whole catalog.

To that end, I love "One-Story Town" as a kick-off. Sets mood for the album, which teeters between defiant and defeated all the way through but never gives up (or, for that matter, backs down). Plus when I was 13 I was deeply impressed by the casual way he sighs "The same shit goes down."

Stan Lynch never sounded so good than on LAD.

lol, i don't recall reading x'gau's T.P. reviews. what a dick!

is "stop draggin" the only petty song to get a weird al parody?

lol, i don't recall reading x'gau's T.P. reviews. what a dick!

― gneiss, gneiss, very gneiss (outdoor_miner), Monday, April 22, 2024 10:23 AM (five hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

nobody deserves to be compared to billy joel

lol, i don't recall reading x'gau's T.P. reviews. what a dick!

You could build a hell of a solid record collection just by collecting everything Christgau hates and ignoring everything he likes (unless there's a second opinion available).

it happens twice a year like clockwork: i agree with unperson!

You Got Lucky

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WeeRjAOEg3o

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mtLpZWNyM0I

MTv!

take your pick. song or early iconic mtv video that would end up influencing a generation of dusty rock band videos.

it's really weird how the shittiest glib dickhead music critic got to be "the dean"

yeah, but, deans are usually reviled and/or feared and/or made fun of, right? it just reminds me of the guy in Animal House.

ignoring everything he likes

You'd have to forego Miles Davis!

good late night driving song -- sounds more like 1982 than his previous stuff.

...and the new york dolls. xpost.

Tench reportedly hated playing the synth.

This song only got to #20 (it did top the mainstream rock tracks chart) but thanks to MTV it felt ubiquitous, no?

this song was part of the landscape, sure -- and i wasn't a big mtv watcher so it must have been on the radio a lot.

...and the new york dolls. xpost.

was gonna say just this. and also loads of wonderful music from Africa

You'd have to forego Miles Davis!

That's why I added the caveat "(unless there's a second opinion available)".

I hate the New York Dolls and always have. And Christgau and I have very different tastes in African music, I think. But back to topic. I liked this song a lot when I was, like, 11. It was one of the first 45s I ever bought. I guess I heard it on the radio, because we didn't even have TV, never mind MTV, when I was a kid.

it felt ubiquitous, no?

absolutely
xxpost

yeah, I would think the whole band endured the production of this song with gritted teeth, having to do something like devo and those foo foos who can't play real instruments in England. Who's the one guy in the band who was the least "are you sure Bob or the Stones done it this way," according to Zanes or Zollo?

I would say also Mad Max/Road Warrior was a big big influence on video directors…

Petty calls Benmont their enforcer or purist -- he's the one who dictates what they can do.

Yeah, Petty said the Mad Max film had impressed all of them.

this was an early mad max mtv homage though. before journey and others?

road warrior only came out the year before.

Yeah, Petty said the Mad Max film had impressed all of them.

It didn't make it into my book, but someone told me a story of running into Cecil Taylor walking out of a showing of The Road Warrior. He loved it.

“you got lucky” is possibly my favorite petty song. perfect but if late night sleaze, incredible arrangement (campbell’s baritone guitar >>). also if tench hated playing the synth too bad, because that’s one of the legendary synth moments a decade that did not lack for them

yeah love that synth so much

The usual don't-trust-the-creator axiom applies.

Classic tune, and I feel like the bed of slightly mournful synths with tasty guitar licks gave Mike Campbell some ideas.

Deliver Me

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4sXP17MbvBQ

Is it my imagination that the riffs sound tougher and the drums louder?

Yeah I think the production has taken an ‘80s turn here although I don’t know what exactly Iovine did to juice it.

I think “Deliver Me” is great, one of my absolute favorite Petty album cuts. Big crunchy riff, soaring chorus. And the bridge gets me:

Sometimes I wonder if this is worth the trouble
Sometimes I wonder if this is worth the fight
I never have made my mind up about it
I've just decided to let it all ride

I feel ya Tom.

this one comes back to me postage due. but i don't want to stop the tom love. it does sound great while it's transpiring.

this sounds like something he might have written for del shannon or roger mcguinn. for some comeback album. their version would have lots of female backup singers. or maybe not. i dig it. i like the E Street piano. i'm realizing throughout this whole thing that i am a very definite tom petty ALBUM listener. i enjoy his whole album experience. divorcing things and listening to them one by one is a little challenging. songs that would just flow into the next album track taken on their own can sound different to me. i dunno. its weird. he obviously had a ton of great singles. but i think of him as an album guy.

i was thinking that too. this one might be bolstered by the change in tone from the previous one.

Stop Draggin'...: Def know this better from Weird Al's version, which never did much for me. But it's a charming little thing. Kinda feels like an album track elevated to single staus by the all-star teamup. Stevie's voice slots perfectly into the Heartbreakers in "bluesy groove" mode, and makes a great pairing with Tom's... Not sure she could have really made it work for every tune in their setlist, but it's an appealing thought experiment and I wish they'd tried it for at least one legendary tour and associated live album.

A One Story Town: Hmm. Feels like a return to the underwritten territory of the second album. Feels like they arrived at the "story: building or narrative?" conceit, and were satisfied with that. Once again, the band is energetic enough... and one riff is like a much more rootsy, garagey version of "Material Girl," which I dig. But the "she was just seventeen" verse, even if it's intentionally gross, is not working for me.

You Got Lucky: Here the "intentionally jerky narrator" thing works, and dovetails with the cold synthy soundscape. I gave this a thumbs up on the classic "Classic Rock Classics" thread, and I still dig it, even if the main synth riff sometimes hits my ears as a charmingly shoddy demo rather than a New Wave update of the Psycho strings, and the solo is almost parodic. The real save is the secondary and more convincingly Kraftwerky synth riff. I kinda wish that, in the Stop Draggin' way of things, this had been recorded by Gary Numan and the Tubeway Army and then redubbed with Tommy's lead vocal. But it's good.

lol a Tubeway Army version of You Got Lucky is an amazing idea.

Circling back on "One Story Town," I think it's worth mentioning that the entire song betrays its opening lines about "I'm for standing up/I'm for breaking free" — this guy's not going anywhere and he knows it (no matter how many 17-year-olds he hits on). Which are also the opening lines of the album. Overall this a record of frustration, resentment, being stuck and outta luck, in or out of bad relationships. But it has a lot of energy for being a bummer.

lol a Tubeway Army version of You Got Lucky is an amazing idea.

― a man often referred to in the news media as the Duke of Saxony (tipsy mothra)

seconding!

some real sweet Tench action on Deliver Me here

fwiw here's the minimally-attended ilm poll of this album that I started (lordy) 15 years ago.

then one day the feelin just died: Tom Petty LONG AFTER DARK POLL

C+ ?!?!?! WTF Christgau

he was particularly stuck up about petty. thinking long after dark is prob the best album qua album of petty's heartbreakers run. i still believe he's primarily a crafter of great singles, as each album has 3 or so songs that absolutely tower above the rest, but he definitely cared about creating a good album experience. and even the lesser tunes have some great heartbreakers moments to liven things up

I'm thinking it too but I've a special affection for Let Me Up (I've Had Enough0

Speaking of singles, tomorrow we get one of my faves (though overlooked and under-compiled).