In Which Doctor Casino Listens to Classic Rock Classics for the First Time

xpost omg

Continuing my experiment of picking random adjacent videos for songs that didn't have videos in-thread: "Your Love" over "Peace Frog" reeeeeeally points out how weird and empty Outfield's world is... there is just no matching up these two versions of rock at all. However, clean-cut Outfield guy happily declaiming about blood being up to his ankles is kinda cool. It seems to work best with Outfield starting at 0:20 so you skip over the "arrival" of the band.

that is possibly the greatest interview sequence i've ever read!

But when I asked for another spoonful he changed--he said, "I didn't come all the way up here just to get you hooked on another substance!" Then he left

said in a Margaret Hamilton witch voice, followed by disappearance in a puff of purple, lilac-scented smoke.

Oh wow, the fuller story of Stevie and Prince is better than I'd hoped for.

somebody should option the stevie and prince story and turn it into a screenplay.

This is totally great. Not very CR but that's okay.

i think that's the main reason i left it off my cr ballot in favor of "edge of seventeen," but it's one of the omissions that has been haunting me. (the george harrison thread revive, meanwhile, made me question my decision to overlook "what is life." ilm, you are filling me with small regrets this week.)

we need a different poll for like the period from Van Halen through Soundgarden

the one I secretly regret leaving off is "missing you" but hey, not CR

agree

ha! agree we need a Golden Age of AOR poll or agree "missing you" is not CR but is K-CLASSIC?

both

We need more genre polls, I'd totally be willing to run a power pop one

I've never heard these Pretenders and Stevie Nicks songs on CR radio and don't think I know them. "Brass in Pocket", "Room on Fire", "Edge of Seventeen", yes.

Where is the poll that lets me rep for I Can Dream About You?

i'm fascinated by the discussion on all of these threads of what does and does not constitute classic rock. so, speaking of stevie nicks ... does this?

SONG #22: TOM PETTY & THE HEARTBREAKERS "YOU GOT LUCKY"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mtLpZWNyM0I

i love that video

note to dr. c: the song itself does not start until the kick drum intro at 1:12 in the official video; all the soundtracky stuff before that is video-only. but it's a classic tp video.

also, if i can trust my ctrl-f skills, this song was not discussed at all in either the nominating or voting threads.

NB: Tom Petty is not fond of this song. Sez it's one of the few times he wrote a quickie single.

He's wrong.

In my failed attempt at a CR ballot this was my top petty track and in my top 10 overall

Which is to say. Petty on petty not otm

I think this was the only Petty track on my ballot. Very surprised to find he's dismissive of it.

He spends a lot of time in that (excellent) Paul Zollo Conversations With... book dismissing it. He's not high on Long After Dark generally. He's not crazy about "Change of Heart" either.

First synth on a Heartbreakers record too.

To answer the original question, Tom Petty feels unquestionably CR to me. Don't think there's a CR station in the country that doesn't have at least 5 Petty songs in rotation.

I mean, one of his top songs is about sex AND America, he has a "no-nonsense" persona, seems like a "traditional" guy even if he uses synths and sometimes sounds a little Byrds-y.

And if I'm being less charitable toward CR, there's the contempt for women in songs like "You Got Lucky" and "Breakdown"

I never thought Petty's CR bonafides were in question

As I finalized my cr ballot, I was kinda surprised to see that my go-to heartland rock bro was CougCamp (the only artist to land tracks on both my best and worst tracks lists). Most of the nommed Petty and Segar cuts are kinda played out for me at the moment. And The Boss is up there in Beatles 'outside of it all' land.

I love Tom Petty so much, I had a hard time cutting any of his songs and I was tempted to write some more in but I couldn't break my rule of three songs max for any artist. Two of his songs were in my top ten and one was number one.
"Change of Heart" is so great, just hook after hook, Tom, you silly man.

contempt? I hear a lot of self-doubt in lines like this:
Girl, if you can do better than me/Go, yea go, but remember Good love is hard to find

I nixed everything by Petty, Mellencamp, Seger, and Steve Miller in my first cut. Not sure if I know this one though tbh. Will listen some time after this Moss Icon record.

i was most definitely not questioning petty's classic rock bonafides in my original question. i was wondering, though, about the classic rock community's feelings toward this particular synth-pop track from 1982.

Petty is an amazing lyricist. Seemingly tossed-off lines that stick in your mind forever. He's up there with Chuck Berry and Iggy Pop in that regard.

My first impression is that this is some bullshit even by Tom Petty standards, which probably means that I agree with his self-evaluation here.

His new one, which review I filed three nights ago, has some pretty good bullshit.

the synth parts on "You Got Lucky" do scream "this is some bullshit" but I love them regardless

Sorry FCC, I misinterpreted what you meant by that question upthread! And for the record, I love almost all of Tom Petty's big radio hits.

Petty in general is classic rock without question and in a way without peer: his late 80s and early 90s hits flowed almost directly into the format, practically before they stopped getting "modern rock" airplay. This is without having to wait for the chronological adjustments that added so many acts and songs not originally part of AOR-land, and they're not token inclusions either. I admit I don't hear "You Don't Know How It Feels" often, and "You Wreck Me" is in steep decline... but the Full Moon Fever hits are practically his signature songs at this point, and "Learning to Fly" and "Mary Jane's Last Dance" are also mainstays - not sure anything similar could be said of any of their 'peers,' whoever that would be. I only gave him one vote in the big poll, but with a longer ballot I'd have given him at least three, and that's not including those later songs. He has a good knack with a hook, an energetic band, and a great voice, he just sounds great on the radio.

As for You Got Lucky - well, this is CR. Borderline CR, in the way "Urgent" was: this is a roots-rocker getting synthy and these things can be grandfathered in so long as there are still guitars in the mix (and a real piano, I think). This actually has quite a lot of those even though the basic synth line is setting the tone. I'm liking it. Some nice sonic contrasts between the sparse verse and the richer chorus. Wow, the overdubs on Petty's voice on "good love is hard to find." That's pretty lush.

Jeepers, the solo... right at the edge of really goofy cartooniness here. You could almost believe Petty comes back in with "Yeah, you got cold!" to cover up for the increasingly bum notes he's hitting. Can't place what this is reminding me of so much - video game music for sure, maybe something with a horror vibe like Castlevania. Also stuff like "Sunglasses At Night," for sure.

Second listen: loving the little synth flute riff most of all... it sounds so much like consumer-grade Yamahas of a later generation. I knew a bunch of playing-each-other's-living-rooms bands who rock these kinds of sounds in the early 2000s. Actually, the whole palette of this song kinda feels like that, only difference is how hi-fi this is. The plot is a little hard to work out in detail through Petty's kind of slurred mushmouth delivery, but for me he's always been pretty good at conveying a feeling without necessarily saying much. On the downside, this leads to my gripes with "American Girl" and its silly refrain, but for this kind of wounded-jerk-lashing-out song it works I think. Here's Petty the dejected creep, working out his misplaced anger late at night on LiveJournal. I can't say why, but I do think the song wants us to see the title as a bitter declaration from an angry guy we don't always identify with.

I could see myself eventually liking this as much or more than "Don't Come Around Here No More" (which I'm always happy to hear, what a wonky mix of sounds and the main groove is fantastic). Compared to that one, this isn't as easily sung along to, which is a problem for classic rock classics... but it has a bit more going on and reasons to stick around for the full running time. This must have seemed like a serious left turn coming after the Hard Promises material. Good little mood-piece.

Petty didn't get 'modern rock' airplay in the late 80s/early 90s, did he? Thought he was all over this format?: Billboard Number One Album Rock Tracks 1989

But yeah, the line between contemporary album rock and 'classic rock' was pretty blurred at that time.

for me he's always been pretty good at conveying a feeling without necessarily saying much

otm.

Jeepers, the solo... right at the edge of really goofy cartooniness here. You could almost believe Petty comes back in with "Yeah, you got cold!" to cover up for the increasingly bum notes he's hitting.

this is one of the things i love most about this thread -- zeroing in on odd little details that lots of people (me, for example) stopped noticing years ago and/or just kind of take for granted without thinking much about them. i assume those bum notes are their own commentary on something or other, or maybe they just thought it was a cool sound, mike campbell going overboard on his whammy bar not in search of notes but in search of sound effects.

for the record, I love almost all of Tom Petty's big radio hits

me too. he's a consummate singles artist for me. i loved virtually every single he released for a good 20 years. there are plenty of album tracks i like, but very few that i really need.

So far this thread is totally tl;dr for me, but based on the rave reviews I think I've got to find a way to catch up one of these weekends.

join in anytime! the thread kind of starts over every time we do a new song.

Make up your own words- we did!

Sorry, ma, forgot to check out the genre.

written 20 minutes after you posted it.

:)

It's got too many posts.

Go
while you can

Have been worried my last couple have been tl;dr with too much excursus on genre. I gotta get back to where it all started - with the music, man. Casino 101.8 is taking you there for the long drive home.