View the Premise and Ground Rules for Revisiting Vinyl.
Filed between: Peter, Paul & Mary and Wilson Pickett. (Of course it is.)
Refugee
Here Comes My Girl
Even the Losers
Shadow of a Doubt (A Complex Kid)
Century City
Don't Do Me Like That
You Tell Me
What Are You Doin' in My Life?
Louisiana Rain
Even though he still plays it live some, Louisiana Rain is absolutely a deep cut on an LP that has four of the biggest songs in the classic rock canon. And it's beautiful. If you've never heard this song, do me a favor - do yourself a favor - go listen to it right now.
My Overall Rating of the Tracks Separately:
Duh. REQUIRED LISTENING (4/4 stars). Seriously, if you haven't heard every song on this record, you owe it to yourself to check them out.
If Revisiting Vinyl is my ongoing love letter to popular music, then this entry will be my long-distance marriage proposal.
Everybody loves Tom Petty. My punk uncle - whose cassette collection included both The Dead Milkmen AND The Dead Kennedys - had "Full Moon Fever." So, did my straight-laced, fundamentalist dad. I have seen both of them tilt their head back and croon along to Yer So Bad. And I have done so myself many, many times.
My friend Jonathon said once that you can listen to any Tom Petty song and think "I could've written that." And he immediately followed it up with "but no, no you couldn't." Petty is that perfect storm of Dylan and The Beatles that so many artists have gone insane trying to find.
Petty is unquestionably southern rock. He's firmly new wave. He's arena gold. His songs are immediately sing-along-able. He may be the most FM-radio savvy artist of all time. And those genres aren't periods in his career; that's what he puts into every song.
"Even the losers get lucky sometimes." That's how we all feel. That's what we all want to believe. And that's why we all love him - he's the underdog sports movie of the musical world.
So, is it an album? Hell, yes. Thank you, Mike Campbell. Thank you, Benmont Tench. Thank you, thank you, Thomas Earl Petty.
Up next, "Donovan in Concert" by Mahalia Jackson. Just kidding, it's by Donovan.
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