I like Tom Petty as much as the next guy. And of course with Rolling Stone touting Mojo, TP's latest four stars it gave me some incentive to purchase it. After all, TP hasn't rocked out since Let Me Up (I had enough) and it's hard to tell why that has. Oh sure, TP would stick a rock and rolling song on his ultra popular Full Moon Fever and Into The Great Wide Open but you'd never knew it with Jeff Lynne's ELOized sound. And I suspect that kicking Stan Lynch out of the band, The Heartbreakers lost that distinct sound, nothing wrong with Steve Ferrone whose sat in quite well the last 15 years but Lynch's looseness is missed by me. With Mojo, Tom goes for a one take feel and a sound toward Chicago styled blues but this album seems to miss the mark. It's too long at 65 minites and the guys, although playing well, seemed not that interested in the songs that Petty thought up. In fact, the only song off Mojo that I liked enough to play more than once was the hard rocking I Should Have Known It, which at least Petty upped the beat and sounded alive. But the rest of the songs just sound blah. Hard to figure since the last album, which was the reunion of Mudcrutch and that album I enjoyed from start to finish but with Mojo, it sounded like Mudcrutch rejects. I still wouldn't count Tom Petty out; perhaps the next album will be that hard rocking return to his late 70s sound. Maybe then he will get his Mojo back but not on this Mojo.
Yesterday while researching TP, I did put on his 1976 debut Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers (Gone Gator/WB/Rhino) and that album would introduce us to the up and coming rocker and his band. I can tell you that during that Bicentennical year I didn't hear American Girl nor Breakdown on our FM station. Perhaps KRNA did or the long forgotten KFMH 99.7, in fact I didn't hear Breakdown till it came out on the FM soundtrack on MCA. The Byrd's influenced American Girl was covered by Roger McGuinn and I heard that more than TP's. While critics embraced it, I perferred the 1978 followup You're Gonna Get It to which FM radio played I Need To Know and Listen To Her Heart which proved to be great power pop rock and roll. But Shelter Records went down in the hole and Petty found himself on Backstreet/MCA for his breakout 1979 Damn The Torpedos and the overplayed Refugee and Don't Do Me Like That. But then I lost interest on Hard Promises after hearing the cute but again overplayed The Waiting but perhaps I'll take another listen to it since Best Buy has that CD for 8 bucks.
When I hear the early TP and the later day, the one thing is clear is that the early albums clocked around 30 to 35 minites whereas his last couple albums have gone over 60s minites, not counting the Highway Companion solo album done for American and Rick Rubin. A classic Tom Petty album remains 2 and a half or three minites long and gets to the point. Most of the stuff on Mojo is over 4 minites and drag on forever. I guess the key point is Anything That Is Rock And Roll Is Fine With Me but don't bore me on overlong songs that go over 5 minites. Till then, I remain sure that the best Tom Petty was his appearance as Lucky on King Of The Hill.
Two days removed from Michigan and looking at the pictures that my girlfriend made for me on a CD-R it all remains a blur to me of what we did on our vacation. We didn't go into Detroit, we stayed to the west of that. I know she loves to take pictures of me but I was very uncomfortable of seeing the ones taken when we were playing minature golf. I think she took about 40 pictures of me whereas there was only one picture of her in the whole thing. I looked like a degranged Al Bundy in some of them. Unfortunly the best ones of me at Encore Records were taken on her cellphone and are probably lost for the ages. And unfortunly way too many of me at the golf course. I think she should have kept those for herself.
When I was gone from here, my brother said it rained all but one day while gone but thankfully no water in the basement although the grass wasn't mowed due to very wet grounds. My friend at work Sonya said that her trailer court got flooded out by 2 inches of rain in one hour, which also turned downtown Iowa City into a waterway on the road. And the forecast calls for chances of storms for the next full week which is going to send me into a tizzy once again if we get another damn stalled front on top of us. But this is the joy of living in the great midwest in June. The most rainy month of the year and again we are over surplus in soil moisture too. So I'm still waiting for that drought that is owed to us but I'm sure we get more rain instead.
Lucky us.
