Tag: Even The Losers

The Sunday Six

Celebrating music with six random tracks at a time

Yep, hard to believe it’s Sunday again. While I find it amazing how another week just flew by, on the upside, this also means it’s time again for my favorite feature, The Sunday Six. For first-time visitors, these weekly posts are mini excursions exploring different styles of music in zig-zag fashion over the past 70 years, six tunes at a time.

My picks for this installment include instrumental acoustic guitar music, classic rock & roll, rock, soul and pop rock. The journey starts in 2021 and then makes stops in 1959, 1979, 1967 and 1995 before it comes to an end in 2003. All on board and fasten your seatbelts!

Hayden Pedigo/Letting Go

As is often the case in this series, I’d like to start with an instrumental track. This time, instead of a jazz tune, I’ve picked some lovely acoustic guitar music by Hayden Pedigo, a 27-year-old American artist whose music I first encountered about a month ago. According to Wikipedia, Pedigo started taking guitar lessons as a 12-year-old. His diverse influences include Stevie Ray Vaughan and Ry Cooder, as well as artists of the so-called American Primitive Guitar style, such as John Fahey, Robbie Basho, Daniel Bachman and Mark Fosson. Pedigo has also studied Soft Machine and King Crimson, and jazz artists like Miles Davis and Pharoah Sanders. In 2013, he released his debut album Seven Years Late. Since then, seven additional records have come out, including his latest, Letting Go, which appeared on September 24. Here’s the title track. I find this music very nice, especially for a Sunday morning.

Chuck Berry/Little Queenie

Just in case you dozed off during that previous track, it’s time to wake up again with some classic rock & roll by one of my favorite artists of the genre, Chuck Berry. I trust the man who John Lennon called “my hero, the creator of rock & roll” needs no further introduction. While of course no one single artist invented rock & roll, I think it’s safe to say rock & roll would have been different without Chuck Berry. Apart from writing widely covered gems like Maybellene, Roll Over Beethoven, Rock and Roll Music and Johnny B. Goode, Berry influenced many other artists like The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, The Beach Boys, Faces, The Yardbirds and The Kinks with his electric guitar licks. Here’s Little Queenie, which Berry wrote and first released as a single in March 1959. The tune also became part of the soundtrack of the rock & roll motion picture Go, Johnny Go that came out in June of the same year.

Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers/What Are You Doin’ in My Life?

Let’s keep rockin’ with a great tune by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers: What Are You Doin’ in My Life? I have to credit my streaming music provider for including the track in a recent “Favorites Mix” playlist. While this song is on my favorite Tom Petty album Damn the Torpedoes from October 1979, it had not quite registered until it was served up to me recently. I think it’s fair to say Petty’s third studio album with the Heartbreakers is better known for tunes like Refugee, Here Comes My Girl, Even the Losers and Don’t Do Me Like That. What Are You Doin’ in My Life? is more of deep track. Like most of the other songs on the album, it was solely written by Petty.

Sam & Dave/Soul Man

Next I’d like to go back to the ’60s and some dynamite soul by Stax recording artists Sam & Dave. Soul Man, co-written by Isaac Hayes and David Porter, became the R&B duo’s biggest U.S. mainstream hit surging all the way to no. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100. The tune was first released as a single in September 1967 and was also included on Sam & Dave’s third studio album Soul Men that came out the following month. The backing music was provided by Stax’s excellent house band Booker T. & the M.G.’s. In fact, the exclamation in the song, “Play it, Steve,” refers to the band’s guitarist Steve Cropper. Sam & Dave performed as a duo between 1961 and 1981. Sadly, Dave Prater passed away in a single-car accident in April 1988 at the age of 50. Sam Moore is still alive and now 86.

Del Amitri/Roll to Me

I had not heard of Del Amitri in a long time until I did earlier this week on the radio. In fact, other than the name and that tune, Roll to Me, I know nothing about this Scottish alternative rock band that was formed in Glasgow in 1980. During their initial run until 2002, the group released six studio albums and two compilations. Since Del Amtri reemerged from hiatus in 2013, it looks like they have mainly been a touring act. Only one live record, one compilation and one studio album have since appeared. Notably, the latter, Fatal Mistakes, came out this May, 19 years after their last studio album. The band’s current line-up includes original member and main songwriter Justin Currie (vocals, guitar, piano), along with Iain Harvie (guitar), Kris Dollimore (guitar), Andy Alston (keyboards, percussion) and Ash Soan (drums). Roll to Me, written by Currie, is from the group’s fourth studio album Twisted from February 1995. It also was released separately as a single in June that year and became their biggest hit in the U.S. where it reached no. 10 on the Billboard Hot 100 – quite a catchy pop rock tune!

Pat Metheny/One Quiet Night

And this once again brings me to the sixth and final track. I decided to pick another acoustic guitar instrumental: One Quiet Night by Pat Metheny. While I’m very familiar with the name Pat Metheny, I believe the only music I had ever heard before is American Garage, the second album by Pat Metheny Group from 1979. That’s easily more than 30 years ago, so I don’t recall the record but oddly remember its title. Metheny who has been active since 1974 has an enormous catalog between Pat Metheny Group, his solo work and other projects. One Quiet Night, written by him, is the title track of a solo acoustic guitar album he released in May 2003. It won the 2004 Grammy Award for Best New Age Album. Both my streaming music provider and Wikipedia tagged it as jazz, the genre that first comes to my mind when I think of Metheny. Whatever you want to label it, it’s nice instrumental music and shall close this post.

Sources: Wikipedia; Discogs; YouTube

Second Tom Petty Posthumous Album Out

Career-spanning compilation features hits and two previously unreleased recordings

The title pretty much says it all. The Best Of Everything is a compilation of Tom Petty’s amazing music from his 40 years as a recording artist, largely focusing on his better known songs. Released yesterday, it’s billed as his first career-spanning collection of hits. Unlike last September’s An American Treasure, the 38 tracks for the most part were taken from past albums. There are two exceptions: For Real, a previously unreleased tune, and an alternate version of the title track that restores a lost second verse.

While to a longtime Tom Petty fan like myself it’s not exactly news what an outstanding songwriter he was, it’s still impressive when you see the track listing. Free Fallin’, Mary Jane’s Last Dance, Saving Grace, Breakdown, Refugee, American Girl, The Last DJ,  Runnin’ Down A Dream and Even The Losers, to name some of the gems, surely make for a beautiful collection. While I would say American Treasure is more for die-hard Tom Petty fans, The Best Of Everything is a terrific compilation for folks who know just a few songs and would like to further explore his music beyond the fantastic first Greatest Hits mid-career collection from November 1993.

Tom Petty_The Best Of Everything Collage
Released via Geffen Records/UMe, The Best Of Everything is available as a 2-CD or 4-LP set

To make it truly career-spanning, it would have been nice to include a couple of tunes from The Traveling Wilburys. Sure, it’s fair to note the supergroup wasn’t Petty’s band. The Wilburys were primarily initiated by George Harrison and Jeff Lynne, and their songs were credited to all members. Unlike Mudcrutch and Petty’s solo albums, Mike Campbell and Benmont Tench, who helped put together The Best Of Everything and last year’s compilation, had no involvement with the Wilburys. There may also have been legal reasons for keeping the supergroup’s material out. Still, adding two tunes featuring Charlie T. Wilbur Junior on lead vocals would have been cool, in my humble opinion!

Let’s get to some music. I deliberately skip the big hits. The track order seems to be a bit random. Perhaps part of the idea here was to spread the bigger hits throughout to keep the more casual Tom Petty fans engaged. The number of YouTube clips from The Best Of Everything is still limited, so I’m borrowing clips from the original albums, as needed. The first tune I’d like to call out is Dreamville from The Last DJ, the 11th studio album by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, released in October 2002. I’m glad they included this beautiful ballad, which definitely is not among Petty’s big hits.

I Should Have Known It is a nice rocker with a great guitar riff – my kind of song! Perhaps not surprisingly Campbell was a co-writer for this guitar player type of tune, which appeared on the band’s 12th studio record Mojo from June 2010. “I was glad that was on there, because I’m really proud of that track and that performance,” Campbell noted during an interview with Variety, conducted together with Tench and Petty’s eldest daughter Adria Petty, who was also involved in assembling the collection. “It showed a band in their later development still doing quality music.” Listen for yourself!

Next up: The alternate version of The Best Of Everything, another great tune! Originally, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers recorded it for their sixth studio album Southern Accents, which came out in March 1985. Even though I own that record on CD, frankly, I had forgotten about the song.

Scare Easy is a track from the first Mudcrutch album simply titled Mudcrutch, which appeared in April 2008. Initially formed in Gainesville, Fla. in 1970, Mudcrutch was the predecessor to The Heartbreakers. After recording some demos and releasing one single that failed to chart, Mudcrutch broke up in 1975. It’s kind of remarkable they lasted for more than four years. Then, in August 2007, Petty reunited the band. In addition to Campbell (guitar, mandolin) and Tench (keyboards), the lineup featured the other two original members Randall Marsh (drums) and Tom Leadon (guitar), with Petty on bass and lead vocals.

The last tune I’d like to call out is For Real. This previously unreleased song also wasn’t available on any bootlegs, so until it came out as a single a few weeks ago, it’s something even fans hadn’t heard before. According to Rolling Stone, the track was recorded in August 2000 and is “a declaration of purpose” by Petty. “That song to me sounds like Tom reporting from his heart — reporting from the front,” Tench told Variety during the above interview. “It may sound like it’s meant to be a summing up of a career or something, but it’s not, really, because it’s almost 20 years old. We weren’t quite as long-in-tooth and gray then.” I think Tench is right, though it’s the perfect tune to close out the collection.

“When I went back through all this stuff… I don’t want to get heavy with it, but it’s very emotional, in being nostalgic, because we were never nostalgic when we were working,” Campbell told Variety. “We never looked back. We just always were looking forward. But Ben and I were forced to look back as we went through this stuff, and we both had an epiphany about how we have a legacy that has integrity. We were sad, but also very proud of what we’ve done.” Who can blame them.

Added Adria Petty: “I feel like Ben and Mike haven’t had a second to process this, what the next chapter can be, and I think for us, it’s kind of the same. Ben had a baby for the first time six or seven weeks after my dad died, and he’s been deeply in love and entrenched in that. It’s a really horrible thing to have to process both things at the same time, so he probably finally has a little space to just focus on that. Mike’s going to be on the road with Fleetwood Mac through April. He had his first grandchild right after Dad died. There’s a third generation of Heartbreaker kids coming in that are all amazing.”

Benmont Tench & Mike Campbell
Benmont Tench (l) and Mike Campbell, August 2018

So after two major compilations, what else might be in store or in the vault I should perhaps better ask. “There a bunch of really great stuff,” Tench told Billboard. He noted early Mudcrutch recordings, demos from The Last DJ and music from the period of Hypnotic Eye, the final studio album by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers from July 2014.

Campbell would like to explore a live album from the band’s shows at the Fillmore from 1997 to 1999, he explained to Rolling Stone. “For me, that was almost the pinnacle of the band just being totally spontaneous night to night to night. We might throw in a Grateful Dead song that we just learned that afternoon. We recorded every show and we had guest artists from Bo Diddley to Roger McGuinn to John Lee Hooker. And I know, in my memory of those 20 nights, there’s an amazing album in there.” That surely sounds like a great idea to me!

However, both Tench and Campbell want to be mindful about further releases to make sure the quality is right and Petty would have wanted to release the material. Adria Petty agrees. “I don’t want to inundate the fans with “Hey, here’s another record!”,” she told Variety. That’s a good thing!

Sources: Wikipedia, Tom Petty official website, Variety, Rolling Stone, Billboard, YouTube