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

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

let me up the album was a very pleasant surprise for me in general. i hadnt heard a note of it before and figured its absence from greatest hits albums indicated a dud. how wrong i was, it’s no frills even by petty standards but there is a kind of petulant joy that animates the rockers and the more poignant tracks provided the first real evidence of the vein he’d mine with wildflowers (still prob my fav petty-related thing)

very otm

The album was contractual obligation: no producer, just a well-rehearsed unit in a studio jamming after touring with Dylan. When the album became his biggest commercial flop and the arson happened, he pretty much disowned it. I think it's the most relaxed thing he's recorded to date, without which we get no Full Moon Fever. Then George Harrison came into his life.

We return to the next chapter on Monday.

with the Wilburys album: now i'm thinking i'll just post two tracks a day? it would take 5 days. and any b-sides i'd add on day 5.

and then on to full moon fever.

does that sound okay? i was looking and thinking maybe just doing songs with petty lead vocals but he sings on everything and has no clear lead on anything. and obviously he helped write everything.

sounds good to me.

"let me up" probably my favorite from this album. i love the "gimme shelter"-ness of it. great tempo for rocking out.

I am down with a Wilburys daily double

I don't love this album. There are some OK songs on it, but it was always destined to slide into obscurity. Every band that exists for long enough puts out placeholder albums, and this is exactly that. I think it was damaged commercially by releasing "Jammin' Me" as a single (also, how the hell does that song open the album?), and by its ridiculous cover art, which makes it look like a goddamn Squeeze album or something. It might have done better if "The Damage You've Done" had been the first single.

"Jammin' Good" did just as well as previous Petty singles, though. "The Damage You've Done" sounds like an album track.

lol "Jammin' Me."

Even if the single itself is successful (the broad American public does love a novelty song), releasing a track like that as a single damages one's brand. The vibes are off.

I have a soft spot for this album, not least because I saw him on the tour for it and it was a good show. Definitely the end of the first part of his career.

How Many More Days: another nice one! I'd submit this as a better album-opener than Jammin' Me. i like how the guitars seem to just loop away in the background on their own project, contributing to the mood and momentum without landing on a really obvious, studio-focused groove.

Let Me Up: again, some nice looseness here, even a few moments that feel like actual rhythmic errors that they decided to just leave in. something about this is reminding me of Pearl Jam after they met Neil Young.

the last three tracks really course-corrected this album for me. not enough that I'd say I like it overall. if the Heartbreakers are fresh out of really fantastic *songs*, I'd definitely prefer them getting somewhat sloppy jams on tape, over trying to polish one or two vaguely hook-like ideas into radio-ready form and hoping for hits.