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

i was on a panel with david grubbs once and i decided not to gush and play it cool but those SB albums meant a ton to me when i was a teen. he was very nice. and he knew my friend john armstrong who was also a louisville person. i knew john in philly though.

I'm cool with "End of the Line," another mostly Harrrisong ftr, which you can hear in the chords.

It'll All Work Out

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mVEXkLht6hQ

tom discovers zen, mandolins, three-quarter time. pretty nice. no wonder springsteen likes this; it was created in his image.

One of his best ballads.

Yeah lovely little song.

Lovely is the word. As the thread goes on I've come to be fond of all these songs in the "No Second Thoughts" lineage, and this is the most fully worked out. Very pretty arrangement, nice unhurried performance. A welcome return to form.

Forgot about this one. What a great song!

My Life / Your World

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uzAkM1-Gdn4

getting his j.j. cale on again like the old days. man, what a difference two years makes. though the chorus isn't a j.j. chorus.

j.j. cale may be too kind? i think we're in don henley / mark knopfler territory. yet it somehow hangs together.

I get Knopfler vibes. He's trying to write another story. Shrewd lyrics.

it has that synth sound in it that i was already tired of by 1986. a korg?

that same sound that new age people loved so much.

scott, I just sent you and email…

I don't mind. You know who did? Benmont Tench, of course.

people should thank the stars if their generation doesn't have a name.

this is great!

https://www.thepettyarchives.com/archives/newspapers/1970s/1978-06-05-villagevoice

that is some of the worst writing I have read in a while, sorry

haha, i love it.

<3

people don't quote george bernard shaw enough these days!

Let Me Up I've Had Enough is a pretty good record, but all the best songs are on side 2

shhh it'll all work out!

i like this record so far. i don't remember any of it which helps actually. it feels new to me. though i know i've played it more than once in the past. i like how it sounds. yeah, it has some of those era-appropriate cliches sound-wise, but it has an openness that i like and i do not miss the overblown iovine or stewart echo chamber effect that creates that dumb faux-bigness. neither one of them was phil spector. (not saying they weren't talented i just think they both went way overboard as the 80s went on. look what jimmy iovine did to my beloved simple minds. i'll give you alive and kicking. right in the snoot! not the 80s, but is there a good book about the making of Bat Out Of Hell? i do love that album and i would love to know where todd began and jimmy ended. and there are some days when i love everything about Making Movies and other days when i think: why does it have to sound like it was actually recorded in a roller rink? he was so in love with that nostalgic happy days rocky horror drive-in teen pop aura/sound and it just kinda curdled on him. thank god he could fall back on being a billionaire mogul.)

Think About Me

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5eZDzlGl84o

Nothing major, a good time.

never saw this before. a week before he died.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f4kmZpXGqlw

but yeah "think about me" another reinterpretation of the 60s pop chestnut that TP & HB loved so much. they knew how to it that's for sure. doesn't feel like out and out nostalgia somehow even though it totally is.

"how to do it"...

i saw the rolling stones last night and am in a sympathetic mood for this devil, who can rip off "the last time" any time he wants.

that shapiro piece in the voice was great. if you're going to overthink an album it might as well be petty's second. i miss that paper.

My Life / Your World: I like the instrumental passage at the beginning. The main track just seems a couple BPM too slow. I don't mind the basic sound, and it goes by pleasantly, though without leaving an impression.

Think About Me: These last two albums are making me feel so aesthetically conservative, but it really does seem like, as the New Wave and even the Byrdsy aspects have slipped away, the band really is best suited to swampy boogie numbers and other variations on southern blues-country-rock. At least, if they're gonna knock out a filler track and have it come through the speakers as a good time.

"Think About Me" has a real Chess blues feel to me, like a lost Bo Diddley track. An unobtrusive toe-tapper, would sound good in a bar.

just figured out that when it's not "the last time" it's "good lovin'."

All Mixed Up

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4m7-pt7bcDY

now that is a tom petty song you don't hear every day.

i almost sense the ghost of dave stewart when i hear that one.

This one, believe it or not, once in a while gets stuck in my head.

The third single iirc

Although this is one of the Campbell-produced ones, it sounds chintzy -- not a dis! It's in keeping with the album's garage band ethos.

i like the slow rockin' stones groove. (saw them again last night -- need every last drop.) i could live without the accordion-sounding thing.

from video i have seen it definitely looks like you are getting the last drop from the stones....ooof.

still sound good though. they just really look like they need some soup and a nap....

aww they looked like they were having a good time last night. no one was complaining.

that little intro again feels like a Talking Heads impression, tho this time more of a piss-take. song itself is... god, that synth brass is so canned and awful.

really there's not a song here, it's listenable because it's Tom Petty and his great band the Heartbreakers but .... what was that awful Billy Joel song with the dude from Foreigner? "Just Wanna Hold," I'm gonna say. someone posted "The Heat Is Not On," and that's where I'm at here. everyone involved was, indeed, all mixed up imho.

oops, it was actually in reference to "Modern Woman."

The Heat Is Not Quite On

― Eazy, Thursday, November 9, 2017 9:17 AM bookmarkflaglink

A Self-Made Man

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E8kNnb08l7Q

Petty said that Johnny Cash almost covered it.

a little bit kinks-like? ray davies had a better "ironic" voice.

I like this one, not much to it but the combo of the blues-vamp verses and Byrdsy chorus works for me.