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

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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.

This is one of the songs that kind of prefigures Full Moon Fever imo — the lightness and ease of it, bordering on facile but with a nice kick.

This one's okay. I've given it a few listens today, without it really making much of an impression, but at least there's nothing egregiously misguided about it.

Ain't Love Strange

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NXysGNwC0w4

i dig this one! jaunty.

"well, it can get you in the back boy"

i like that opening line.

nice one! verging on country crossover with that tuned-down telecaster.

and with just a tiny spoonful of "Don't Do Me Like That" in that insistent opening!

this is nice. i'd take more of it!

I like this:

Well, it can make you string barbed-wire
Around your little piece of ground
Yeah, for emotional protection

How Many More Days

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

Van Morrison's favorite Tom Petty song.

kidding. you guys would have believed me though maybe.

It was their makeup person's favorite Petty song, though! This is true.

i would have believed you! weird song -- rushed nervous vocals reminiscent of van. it sounds like mike campbell's open tuning has him fighting to keep the slide solo in the key of the song.

Also improvised in the studio

The Van Morrison call-out is otm, this has a Big Music vibe to it, like someone was listening to the Waterboys. It's fine as such.

Let Me Up (I've Had Enough)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TeZICly3Qdw

i'll take that over the black crowes any day.

Make That Connection

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1DsbFIJTFm4

"make that connection" the only b-side as far as i can tell. a very no-frills album.

I won't front: "Let Me Up (I've Had Enough)" is top ten Petty. I love the way the bass tugs at the chorus, and Benmont and Stan hold up their ends.

did “let me up” soundtrack any “i’m trying to figure out my life but can’t” montages in 80s comedies? cause it should have