Don't Come Around Here No POLL - The Tom Petty "Southern Accents" Thread

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

Boy, that doesn't work...

I voted "Don't Come Around Here No More" because it was startling as a single on MTV at the time; and I think it's a nice vocal, with Petty trying to sound like a sitar. And it was the reason I gave this album a try back in my first exploring-the-canon phase; plus it was the highest rated Petty album in the 1990 Rolling Stone album guide, the one they said was A Statement. It took me years to get the desire to bother exploring his back catalog further. Being a former Floridian / Georgian, I get the sentiments of "Rebels" and "Southern Accents", even if I think neither is catchy enough to warrant lots of replays (or a spot on a latter-day Johnny Cash album, yeesh). I'd probably vote for "Make It Better" as my second choice.

Boy, that doesn't work...

yeah it turns out that just being southern doesn't make you a soul man. the band sounds pretty good, but he's in over his head and the horns are just too much.

i like "rebels" pretty well, until it makes its references too explicit in the last verse ("blue-bellied devils"? c'mon). "don't come around here" is pretty good as a genre fuck, but it only feels like half a tom petty song because it only is. title track is ok, bit maudlin. my two favorites are "spike" -- which i think nails its character and setting -- and especially "dogs on the run."

(probably not a coincidence that i'm voting for the only campbell co-write)

In Conversations With..., Petty describes this period as a "hell" -- the first time he and the Heartbreakers had extended time off between tours, so they fell into drink, drugs, and the El Lay lifestyle. He famously broke his hand after punching the wall in frustration over how badly mixes of "Rebels" sounded. All the best songs, he says, ended up as a B-sides.

here he is being incoherent about "dogs on the run," intercut with a nice performance of same

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z4pHIWuOzs0

He despises "Make It Better" by the way ("Just a piece of trash").

Rebels

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i remember my first encounter with "don't come around here" was turning on the radio and just catching the end of it, when it's cranking along at full speed with campbell doing his one-note-solo routine, and i thought "hey this is a great tom petty rocker." so i was kind of baffled when i actually heard the whole song. still liked it, but not what i was expecting.

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About right. Most of this is crap.

Hmm, no one picked the title track? Liked the Cash version, though it's been eons since I heard Petty's.

whoa this happened?

I would have been the vote that made "Dogs On The Run" #2

only ten votes seems surprising. voted "spike", but live versions of that song are better and now i'm sorry the title track didn't get my vote