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

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.

stoked for Wilbury Week btw. I grew up with that album - one of a very small number of cassettes permanently stowed in my mom's car, along with the similarly formative Graceland and Billy Joel's Greatest Hits I & II. so I've known every moment of those songs since way before i knew who Petty was, or how musicians used instruments to make sounds, or anything.

Handle With Care

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1o4s1KVJaVA

Dirty World

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MmrRlmc-bRU

we interrupt your regularly scheduled programming...

God, I love these songs.

“Handle With Care” felt like such a nice surprise. I was intrigued but skeptical of the Wilburys project but then I heard that and was like, oh, they actually wrote some songs!

The story is so often told it's almost apocryphal. George needed a b-side, he had the music for the verses ready to go, then he and Jeff Lynne asked if he could use Dylan's home studio. Roy Orbison tagged along. George picked up his guitar at Tom Petty's on the way to Dylan's, so Petty asked to come too. George and Lynne wrote Orbison's bit, the others collaborated on the rest of the lyrics. Harrison got the song title from one of the amp crates. The happiest of accidents.

Dylan says "Dirty World" is his attempt to write a Prince song.

"Handle With Care" one of those rare examples of a song that definitely sounds like it was written by 5 people and its still good.

"Dylan says "Dirty World" is his attempt to write a Prince song."

haha, what the??? that definitely makes it funnier. that is truly funny. he had listened to Prince, right?

You know who could probably do a good cover of "Dirty World"? Tav Falco.

Dylan, credited via his Special Rider Music publisher, wrote "Dirty World" (according to Harrison and Lynne's recollections on the documentary, Dylan and all the other band members gave their input to the song by pitching in funny lines to complete the lyric line "He loves your ..."[7])

five speed gearbox

quest for junk food

i was gonna say, we should poll the things loved by the guy in "Dirty World"

it's Petty delivering "bottled WAAAATer," right? that's a great moment.

service charge!

Handle With Care couldn't have been a better mission statement for the Wilbury project if they'd planned it that way. It so convincingly conveys a bunch of Dads (who happen to be millionaire rock stars), enjoying themselves in the garage (which is a state-of-the-art 1980s recording studio), playing a song that's fun to play and has enough songwriting meat on the bones for them to actually find it interesting after all these years.

There have been so many albums by aging rock stars that aimed to inhabit this relaxed "five guys in a room" music-maker space --- surely this is one of the best? It helps that Harrison's weary middle-aged litany of woes has the ring of truth (though I can't recall anything about him going to night school). And then you throw in Orbison on the hook, who essentially can't help but make this hoary old love-and-loneliness stuff sound transcendent.

There's a bit that several of the Wilburys have told about how they'd grab each other go, "I can't believe we've got fucking Roy here!"

As a Petty fan I love that he got to be in a band with those guys, can you imagine? You're this kid in Florida growing up on all of that and you end up in a band with Dylan AND a Beatle, plus Roy f'in Orbison? Plus obviously the Lynne connection was crucial.

What was the perception at the time in terms of Petty's membership here? Did he lend the group youthful street cred, or was it like "wow, he really is washed up, I guess?" Or was Harrison's recent success lifting everybody's boats?

I think mostly the former, he was the MTV star of the bunch. Tho Cloud Nine definitely gave Harrison some spark too.

Petty's crankiness meant he was a less blithe spirit than some of the older Wilburys.

Dirty World definitely the lesser of these two songs, but a total dopey charmer, letting the album settle quickly into its easygoing pace. I like the "oh-oh-oh" backing vocals (though if there's anywhere on the record I could do with a little less Lynne cleanliness, it's probably there). And again, the extra cooks in the kitchen add more changes and amusements, like the "dirty world, it's a dirty world" section. I imagine that's George's idea, and it's a good one.

I'm very ignorant of Dylan post-Street Easy, so the sexed-up lyric seems of a piece with "New Pony," but I gather he has a big born-again Christian phase somewhere in there also. Not sure how exactly this all fits in, but the song is really more about the fun you can have singing about this stuff, than the stuff itself. It's fun!

Rattled

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r_7FAEvjN7M

Last Night

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

"Rattled" is my least favorite Wilburys song. Totally expendable. Dave Edmunds could've written better.

The Orbison bits on "Last Night" are hilarious.

"rattled" is a hookless genre exercise. "last night" verges on too cute. but it is cute. i wonder what this album would have sounded like if roy wood were at the helm instead of jeff lynne.

good short film on the first album.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SUQ_gj-biIc

George looks so happy.

I've always liked "Last Night" as a cod-reggae trifle. Big OK Boomer vibe, but in a likable way. (True of the album as a whole, obv.)

this thing is exhausting to watch. that same beat and tempo for so many songs. such a slog. still like those george and roy hits and i will always love the TP songs but the rest of it...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oKvCS7nXHe4

played the wilburys album yesterday and “last night” calmed my newborn so i have to like it

"Rattled" is fine! It could do with a less clattering recording of the rhythm section, but no song with Roy Orbison doing that little purring "rrraaaow" can be all bad. I get that it's a little bit "Paul McCartney album track with special guest Cliff Richard" but, I mean, that's kinda who these guys are.

"Last Night" definitely risks falling into Gone Troppo territory, but the chorus is a real charmer, and once again there's infinite value in having Roy pop in for two lines while everyone else contributes unpretentious backing vocals. As for our thread's protagonist, this is easily the most relaxed and in-the-pocket Petty's sounded for several albums now. Probably his best showing since "Dogs on the Run" - and notably, he seems to have entirely shed his weird bag of strangled and swallowed vocal tricks. I have to wonder if Lynne or Harrison or someone pushed him in that direction.

"She lowered the boom" is a rather odd choice of images, though.

That's the line that apparently pissed off the PMRC (no joke).

I discovered Petty during the Poppy Bush Interzone era of albums, so to listen to his early gargle-whine came as a shock.

lol whereas I was a bit "who is this mellow crooner??"

(with the Lynne stuff in particular, which will never be my favorite. but I'll go on about that when we get to Full Moon Fever.)

But you were fine with Wildflowers, no?

Oh yeah, one of his best.

And his singing isn't my issue with the Lynne stuff, I think his voice mellowed quite nicely. Just don't like the production.

Not Alone Any More

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cko3dBWiyus

Congratulations

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5uNnVjcRqZ0

i really like that roy song despite the jeff lynne roller rink sound.

and i like dylan's vocals on "congratulations".

oh I love that Lynne synth -- it's simulating Roy going down the drain.

I think I read that Dylan brought "Congratulations" almost fully written and they helped change a few of the verses.

two good ones, where the kitsch in the arrangements work in the songs' favor.

i'd totally buy that about Congratulations, it sounds like mostly dylan (except the harmonies when singing the title!)