YOU RANK ME BABY, YEAH YOU RATE ME 1-2 - ILM Artist Poll #71 - Tom Petty (results)

yeah he did very well on early kroq, which ok he was doing well on pretty much any rock station circa 81, but he was still getting airplay from them even after they'd completely made the transition to modern rock and ac/dc and seger were way in the past. i can kinda see it and wonder if that aspect of him helps explain why he thrived when alt-rock hit while mellencamp and esp springsteen suffered (or for that matter why he kinda dips when those two hit their commercial peak).

Wow, yeah. I hadn't made the corollary between Petty's mid eighties slump and Mellencamp and Springteen's commercial peaks.

No one has asked him what might've happened if he hadn't hooked up with Lynne?

His move through producers post-Iovine is interesting. He was obviously looking for new ways of doing things. I think Rick Rubin was the best match, but Lynne was weirdly in tune with the late '80s pop market. (I say weirdly because it's not like anyone would have predicted in 1983 that the ELO guy would be a major presence five years on.)

Wonder if his Dave Edmunds album would've been a bigger hit in 1989.

TOM PETTY POLL RESULTS PART ONE: THE TRACKS

• 22 ballots
• 113 tracks receiving votes

um, PART TWO dammit

counting down top 40 tracks, with ties sharing a slot in the interest of inclusiveness

i got a poll at the top of the world tonight

Even POLLS Count Down

Here comes my POLL

http://i.imgur.com/OuB8elM.png

40. Casa Dega - 60 points (4 votes)
http://youtu.be/U6wAR1rVbLs

kickin' off with a b-side, i like it!

Petty: Cassadaga is this really odd place in Florida that is filled with fortune-tellers. There are all kinds of psychics and fortune-tellers in the whole town. It's this really small place. And I wrote that by putting myself in the mind of someone who went to Cassadaga. Though I spelled it wrong..."

Dunno if it still exists tbh

xpost w/Today I Learned on Wikipedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cassadaga,_Florida

Cassadaga (a Seneca Indian word meaning "Water beneath the rocks") is a small unincorporated community located in Volusia County, Florida, just north of Deltona. It is especially known for having a large number of psychics and mediums, and has consequently been named the "Psychic Capital of the World". [sic]

http://i.imgur.com/gUYh1Vp.jpg

39 (TIE). A One Story Town - 63 points (3 votes)
http://youtu.be/T9dZSFX5Z8M

yeah!

love the hooky lead guitar wail on the chorus

nice! love em both

re: that wailing guitar, I really really wonder what petty's career might have looked like if he'd gone solo (as the label wanted) rather than stick with the gainesville guys who became the Heartbreakers. impossible to say, but i suspect it would have been much smaller. campbell's leads really function as a second vocal, to the extent that most of the tracks are nearly impossible to hum without including his fills.

http://i.imgur.com/tzbfP6z.jpg

39 (TIE). Kings Highway - 63 points (4 votes)
http://youtu.be/OdqDeBzqlP0

back from rio > into the great wide open

zuh i don't know why i thought jeff lynne was involved in the former

well tom and the heartbreakers are on it, anyways

great ending on "Kings Highway," those guys know how to end a song

kings highway's a good'un. couldn't quite make my ballot but i'm really happy to see it place. seems like it would have a lot of potential if anyone still made mixtapes lol

http://i.imgur.com/FUuirUi.jpg

38. A Thing About You - 70 points (4 votes)
http://youtu.be/hDRQ1glcEcs

another one i really like that didn't quite fit onto my ballot

fucking love "Kings Highway." Got lots of airplay fall '91. I'm sorry ITGWO didn't make the album shortlist.

i don't recall ever hearing it on the radio in NYC or LA. just "learning to fly" and "into the great wide open" over and over. if they'd played "kings highway" i might have bought that one!

http://i.imgur.com/XwuH1zw.jpg

37. A Face in the Crowd - 71 points (3 votes)
http://youtu.be/z_umeMtV4QU

"Kings Highway" and (especially) "Out in the Cold" were in constant AOR rotation in late '91 and early '92.

Love that 12-string arpeggiated hook!

I used to think "Out In The Cold" was one of their early songs--our Classic Rock Station at the time used to add new songs by "Classic" artists to the rotation, and that one got alot of play.

...and Petty hates it, according to the Zollo book.

http://i.imgur.com/1ljT7vB.jpg

36. Something Big - 79 points (3 votes)
http://youtu.be/5wIOhq1J89c

(last one for the evening. we'll cover more ground tomorrow)

TOO LOW!

"A Face In The Crowd" way too low -- it was in my top 10!! People really don't rate this song? I think it's the best track on FMF.

i noticed while putting my ballot together how many "A _____" song titles Petty has, funny that they make up 3 of the 6 songs unveiled so far.

"Face" is one of those songs that was a rock radio staple in the '90s that has faded away since then, i used to dig it but it never got near my ballot

I didn't vote for any Full Moon Fever songs. It was the first cd I ever sold off (to one of my teachers who was a Jimmy Buffett fanatic).

FMF was my #2 album (my #1 was the Through the Years anthology).

I was really surprised when Wildflowers came out and was excellent because I'd found the Jeff Lynne era so boring.

had two post-Lynne albums in my top five.

Everything about Jeff Lynne production is indeed super boring, but many of the songs on FMF are among Petty's best and succeed despite being LYNNE'D!

Can't say the same for ItGWO.

GTFO

I only put one Lynne-era track on my ballot (but King's Highway would have made my top 30).

Of the roll-out so far only voted for "A Thing About You," which is one of my favorite TP rave-ups. But much love "One Story Town" and "Something Big."

i think the 80s Lynne production works better on some songs than others (and more often w/ Wilburys than w/ Petty solo) but there are some undeniable songs from that era (3 on my ballot). the new ELO album is really good and manages to fuse the '80s Lynne sound with the classic ELO sound and somehow not come off totally dated.

I don't find the Lynne production obtrusive, and to my ears it wasn't like Petty traveled a great distance from 'Runaway Trains' to 'Love Is A Long Road'.

"Something Big" was one of the toughest cuts on my ballot. Great song, great phrasing on the vocal... I get why Dylan liked it so much...

Eh, I got enough.

This has been a good resource for me this morning.

4 years…

if I had this one back, I would have rated “room at the top” a lot higher. I guess when it came out I didn’t know enough about the world or about Petty to pick up what it was putting down, but at the moment I can’t think of another song by anyone that captures the moment of knowingly choosing to escape into a high any better, self-pity and all. plus campbell straight rips on it.

I wish Amos Lee’s take was available anywhere. I only saw it the one time but it felt like the only cover I’ve heard that really nailed it, Jason Isbell included.

RIP

this set by Mike & Benmont at Tom’s 70th birthday special was so good, made me miss him all over again

but also: I still marvel that these incredible folks were part of his ~band~ for crying out loud. Like Elvis, yknow? he was so good that THESE are the guys who make their career backing him up when they can set any stage on fire in their own right.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=URr83yI-tQM

Peter Bogdanovich's four-hour documentary is on Kanopy, and I've been watching the whole thing sporadically today. I was a little skeptical that it needed to be four-hours because the band's existence was never eventful the way Dylan, the VU, the Beatles, etc. were culturally or just as news, but it's highly entertaining so far. Petty himself is just a naturally good storyteller and these are good small anecdotes, one after another.

Anyway, I missed this poll, but if I had to rate the albums, using Rolling Stone's 5-star scale:

Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers (1976) ****
You're Gonna Get It! (1978) ***
Damn the Torpedoes (1979) *****
Hard Promises (1981) ****1/2
Long After Dark (1982) ***1/2
Southern Accents (1985) ****
Let Me Up (I've Had Enough) (1987) ***
Full Moon Fever (1989) *****
Into the Great Wide Open (1991) ***
Wildflowers (1994) ****

can't rate the rest as I don't know them as well

Upon revisiting, I'd actually downgrade Hard Promises and Full Moon Fever to 4 stars apiece. Very uneven albums, they're like half great and half forgettable.

Anyway, after seeing that Petty doc, I got curious and dug deep into all things Tom Petty. Besides listening to the albums, I started digging for articles and found this harrowing, angry one on Howie Epstein's death, published in his hometown magazine. This could've been a documentary on its own, but I think it gets 10 or 15 minutes in the doc (which to be fair is not an insubstantial chunk compared to other topics covered by the same film - but it still means losing most of the details): https://www.milwaukeemag.com/HeartBreaker/

Aw, that's a sad story. Poor Howie. Super talented guy.