Brings the chills.
What are you listening to now?
My friends put an EP out. Itâs on all the streaming services. Aaron and Stos wrote all the songs and play guitar and bass respectively, Kenny plays drums. Aaron (James Bond) recorded and engineered it in his home studio. They love Steely Dan, Rush etc.
Black Market Kitty
A year ago we planned on seeing New Order & The Petshop boys in Chicago but it got cancelled due to Covid. We got excited again when they announced new dates this year and same thing happened. Last time we saw them was the at Aragon ballroom in Chicago and it was lovely. Fingersâ crossed for a show in the spring.
This should probably go in the Inane Anecdotes thread, but I didnât fully grasp how much of my younger selfâs identity was apparently defined by an abnormal attachment to Tom Petty until when he passed away I had six separate acquaintances contact me to tell me.
One of my earliest memories was of hearing Free Fallinâ in my momâs car while being strapped into a car seat. I immediately pictured Tom as being a guy with black hair and a beard in a button down with a guitar and decided that someday I would marry him, if I didnât marry Marty Stouffer from Wild America on PBS first. Imagine my absolute shock the first time I saw a picture of Tom Petty and he was a blond scarecrow, possibly the genesis of my deadpan clichĂ© when asked if I have a âtype (I donât have a type per se, unless âemaciatedâ is a type⊠I like 'em hungry looking).â
The first time I ever got a CD of my own, it was a birthday present, Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers greatest hits, I was like 10.
My mom had this 1981 issue of Billboard magazine kicking around our house that I was endlessly fascinated with as a pre-teen, bizarre ads for weight gain powders and lyrics to songs in it. âThe Waitingâ was in there with the CUTEST picture of Tom Petty, so the minute we got a computer with internet, I was off to the races collecting obscure virtual photos of Tom Petty (the only other person I did this with was Beck, what the fuck is wrong with me?). One of the first songs I downloaded on Napster was âWalls (Circus).â
My favorite album by Tom Petty is Echo, and I know thatâs pretty controversial. But I bought it with my own money when I was 14, and I stayed up on a school night to watch him perform Room At the Top on Dave Letterman to promote it, and I learned how to use oil pastels by converting the black and white portraits from the sleeve into color ones. This album kicked off my absolute obsession with albums about divorce.
But I grew out of Tom Petty, in high school his stuff from the early 90âs was pretty solid stoner territory and being the child of a dead drug addict, I was puritanical about that kind of stuff since people love to tell you itâs genetic. I didnât want to âGet to the point,â or âRoll another joint,â or entertain that âMary Janeâs Last Danceâ was about quitting weed or any other tired dumb thing. Then John Mayer covered him in a radio single and I just went quiet. A secret Tom Petty fan.
Many years later I picked up the Hypnotic Eye, and I found it to be totally unlistenable, I regret that thatâs the last time I tried to engage with Tom Petty before he passed because it was a bum note to end on after all those other little (ego-induced) disappointments. Which is why I thought it was so funny my phone wouldnât stop blowing up. I guess I mustâve talked about him more than I had any awareness.
Personally, I cannot wait until they release an alternate cut of the âSouthern Accentsâ album, washed clean from every trace of Dave Stewartâs toxic touch.
And I also pine for an alternate, âde-80s-fiedâ studio version of âRunaway Trainsâ that captures the true potential of that song, like this stellar live version:
Itâs a nice genre. I love Echo. The line, âDaddy had to crash / He was always halfway there, you know,â is one of my all-time favorites. Itâs devastating. Voyageur came out right in the middle of my divorce; so that one has a special place on my divorce album list.
It seems like his kids are trying to milk every penny from his catalog, so this will probably come out some day.
It will come as no surprise, since I post about it often, that my favorite divorce album is Lemon Cotton Candy Sunset by Richard Edwards. I love to listen to âI Doâ from Buzzard against âMoonwrappedâ from this one, theyâre perfect bookends to me.