For Your Listening Pleasure
Jeff Buckley – Grace
I’m not very familiar with Jeff Buckley, except that it seems everyone fell in love with the guy… right after he died. That being said, “Hallelujah” is one of the most beautiful (and depressing) songs ever. There ya have it.
News to You
Andy Richter Controls the Universe is back on the air, and to the Powers That Be at Fox: THANK YOU, CHICO! What a great early Christmas gift…
A little late this week, so a lot to catch up on… For you 411 groupies, check out Evocator’s Wish List where for some reason I’ve been blessed with a giant magnifying glass and some butter. Ha!
Iago Ali has RETURNED (and prayers go out to his mom — hope she’s feeling better!) with a great Pop Culture Locket where he discusses 2002’s songs of the year in an outstanding column, as always.
Oh, and my brother Chris is one of the newest additions to 411’s wrestling staff, and has a great debut column here that I suggest even you wrestling doubters check out.
As for the latest music news, it looks like Snoop’s looking to take Eazy E’s spot for the upcoming NWA reunion. If you read my column last week, you know how I feel about hall of fame bands replacing a key member, but I’ll wait and see how it sounds before I pass judgement. In similar news, a few months after singer Dave Williams’ body… “hit the floor,” Rob Zombie’s taking his place on the new Drowning Pool song scheduled to be on the upcoming Daredevil soundtrack. These things never cease to amaze me…
Runnin’ Down a Dream
Hey, if you’re gonna swipe column ideas, you might as well borrow from the best, so taking a page out of ESPN.com’s Bill Simmons, here’s a “running diary” of the Friday, December 13, 2002 Tom Petty/Jackson Browne concert at Madison Square Garden…
BUT FIRST, let me just say that going to see Tom Petty at MSG was 100% my girlfriend Nicole’s idea — I wasn’t psyched about going, but figured I know most of his hit songs, the Garden’s maybe the best venue to see a show or event, and it would make her happy (EXTRA-important this close to Christmas). Turns out that I’m glad I went, and will probably be burning a copy of his new Last DJ CD sooner rather than later. Hey – he’s anti-corporation, so he won’t mind that right?
8:00 PM — Nicole and I walk into the arena and take our seats in the middle of Jackson Browne’s set. He’s got about six people on stage: four “standard white musicians”, a younger black guy on keyboards, and Katherine Wilson: a hot, black woman with very cool dreads playing percussion and backing him up on vocals. Every band needs one of these: a backup vocalist/percussionist who’s on a level above everyone else in looks, stage presence and talent. She could belt out a lyric, too (I could just tell by looking at her).
8:02 — It’s the first Hilarious Crowd Distraction (HCD) of the night: your standard blonde, 40-year-old woman, standing in the front row, dancing her ass off… while the other 19,999 remain seated. And typical of every HCD I’ve witnessed — she’s got moves that she must have invented (either that or one of her “friends” taught them to her as a joke); you know, just picture Elaine from Seinfeld, and mix in a little Al Gore, and you’ve got what I’m talking about. Priceless.
8:14 — Jackson Browne’s best song of the night. Of course I can’t recall the name, but he did mention it was dedicated to Heartbreaker guitarist Mike Campbell, and it was a cool, bluesy tune that got the crowd’s attention, just in time for…
8:22 — He plays his Greatest Hit (the name of it escapes me now… sense a trend?), followed by band introductions, and TWO cheap crowd pops: “Thank you Tom Petty” and “We love you New York!” Dammit, even I got suckered into cheering after that. There must be something built into the human instincts that make it impossible to ignore such an obvious ploy for audience reaction…
8:27 — Time for Jackson Browne’s OTHER Greatest Hit: “Running on Empty”, and by now the crowd has reached all new levels of polite excitement, just as his set ends, and we prepare for…
wait…
wait…
it’s coming….
“LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, TOM PE…” — but not so fast… it’s time for the indescribable forty minute intermission.
8:51 — Still no Heartbreakers, so Nicole and I break out the “year in review” issue of Entertainment Weekly. Can you believe all of this happened in the same year?
–The utter collapse of Michael Jackson’s career (and any dignity he may have had left)
–R Kelly and Jay-Z release an album together… yeah, THAT took off, didn’t it?
–E! debuted The Anna Nicole Show, and people actually watched it
–Lance Bass actually thought NASA would let him into space
—Celebrity Boxing, Glitter, at least TWO Ice Cube movies, and plenty more that I’m sure to cover once I get around to writing a year in review column of my own…
In the meantime, please wake me up when 2003 gets here… or at least when Tom Petty finally hits the stage!
9:11 — The lights go down, and… is it? Could it? “Hey, baby,” says Mr. Petty, and the Garden crowd is officially putty in his hands. He’s got more of an all-star lineup, including Heartbreakers like Mike Campbell that have been playing with Tom Petty for 30+ years, and probably the best keyboardest-who-plays-on-everything-but-who’s-name-you-still-don’t-know, Benmont Tench. And no sooner than the lights go down…
9:12 — Yep, that’s right. The old folks start lightin’ up — and there’s just something amazingly surreal about a crowd full of mostly fortysomethings getting’ their weed on.
9:15 — The band segues from the great opener, “The Last DJ”, to “Love is a Long Road”, and Tom is rollin’ along just fine. THIS, my friends, is what a rock band is supposed to sound like, and they even look like a band (as opposed to the very generic aura of Jackson Browne’s posse). They may look like a band fronted by David Spade, but a band nonetheless.
Separated at birth?…….
9:21 — While it took Browne until the last two songs to get the crowd’s attention, you can tell that these fans are here to see Petty. Check this out:
Tom Petty: “How are you tonight?”
Crowd: “WOO!”
TP: “Yeah, we’re not half-bad today ourselves!”
Crowd: “WOO!”
TP: “This next song’s from our new album…”
Crowd: “[Lighter] WOO!”
TP: “But we’ll play some older songs, and dig deep into the catalogue…”
Crowd: “WOO!!!”
9:24 — Fuck Bruce Springsteen, “Have Love Will Travel” show’s who the real people’s band is… the song is simple, straight-forward, to the point, and has sweet lyrics that anyone can feel:
How about a cheer for all those bad girls/
and all the boys that play that rock and roll
They love it like you love Jesus
It does the same thing to their souls…
9:26 — Time for Audience Participation, as everyone around us go completely nuts for “Free Fallin'”. I noticed something cool about the stage set-up, too. Instead of video screens suspended from the rafters or mounted up high behind the stage, the video is actually behind the band, making sure you don’t take your attention away from where all the action is happening. Very cool stuff there, and I hope I start seeing more bands use this type of set-up.
9:32 — Next up is another song from the new album, and I gotta hand it to this guy — he knows how to mix in new songs with old favorites. Trust me, this is not something that’s very easy to do, and you always risk “new music time” becoming synonymous with “bathroom breaks”. “When a Kid Goes Bad” is a cool, bass-heavy song with a solid beat, and Mike Campbell really sounded great here.
Speaking of Mike Campbell — here’s another reason you know Tom Petty’s a rock star, not just a musician. He knows how to present himself. Think about it, you have this David-Spade lookin’, long-haired, girly hippie wearing what can only be described as “Don Imus boots” and performing in front of a bunch of clean-cut frat boys and their dads. And what does Petty do? He makes sure to spend the majority of his time on stage alongside someone that’s creepier-looking than him. I mean, on the Creepy Rockstar Scale (CRS), Petty’s a solid 5 or 6… while Campbell rates a good 6.5 or 7. That trick is the sign of a wily veteran (see Mick Jagger).
Some other CRS rankings:
–Alice Cooper: 8
–Michael Jackson: 10+
–Marilyn Manson: 7.5
–Keith Richards: 10
–Bob Dylan: 5
–Slash: 3.5
–Widro: 1.25
–W. Axl Rose: 6
You get the gist.
9:33 — “Shadow of a Doubt” from 1979’s Damn the Torpedoes is up next, and I start craving a beer. Of course, I don’t feel like leaving my seat, and since I’m surrounded by baby-boomers, the only drinks the venders are bringing around are of the wine variety. Wha?
9:42 — First official air-guitar citing: Section 334, Row F. You know who you are.
9:45 — NOW it’s time for some rockin’… “I Won’t Back Down”, “You Don’t Know How it Feels”, and the best necrophilia rock anthem of all time, “Mary Jane’s Last Dance”.
10:06 — You ever go to a concert and all of a sudden there’s one of those weird “awkward silence” moments? We just finished cheering for “Mary Jane”, but instead of saying “thank you” or starting up a new song, Tom just walks over to get a sip of water (and take a drag of his cigarette), and the crowd DOESN’T KNOW WHAT TO DO. Do you use all your energy and cheer through the water break? That runs the risk of prematurely burning out… I mean, you have to conserve energy for the rest of the show. At the same time, you want to be respectful… this can be stressful stuff. Fortunately, the awkwardness only lasts a couple of minutes, as Tom heads to the microphone for a “Thank you, New York!” declaration, and the audience accepts their cue as band intros start.
10:10 — My night is made, when the band breaks into “Handle Me With Care”, the hit single by the last great super-group, the Traveling Wilburys (Petty, George Harrison, Bob Dylan, Roy Orbison and Jeff Lynne, for those of you keeping score at home). What’s amazing isn’t that they “covered” this song (followed by a sweet version of The Byrds’ “Feel a Whole Lot Better”), but that some kid behind me didn’t know George had died. No one’s ever deserved a punch to the kidneys more than that guy.
10:18 — My new favorite Tom Petty song is next, “Can’t Stop the Sun” — an anti-Corporate America piece that really filled up Cablevision-owned Madison Square Garden with sound. Irony’s a bitch, eh?
10:25 — The HCD from Jackson Browne’s set is now joined by a rather Weeble-shaped woman.
10:37 — Tom goes off on Corporate America in a fun little rant, and I have to say he’s much more personable than I thought he’d be going in. Cracking jokes, some self-deprecating, all over the place, giving lots of thanks, and SMILING the ENTIRE TIME. Nothing beats seeing a veteran artist/performer enjoying his work so much…
Petty then breaks out the acoustic guitar, that’s bigger than him, and runs through “King’s Highway”, “Learning to Fly” and “Yer So Bad”.
10:51 — Amazingly, he rocks yet ANOTHER solid song from the new album (“Lost Children”) and the crowd goes to sleep… “Refugee” wakes them up, but the Heartbreakers start going overboard with the jamming (which only about half the crowd are into at this point) as they close the set with “Runnin’ Down a Dream”.
11:08 — Now here’s the part I don’t understand, but maybe I’m just not humble enough. The crowd realizes this was the last song, and they ERUPT into a standing O… Now, if I’m Tom Petty, I milk that for as long as I can… I have the lighting technicians tease the crowd a bit… send a roadie out to tune the guitars (it’s always so funny when the roadie gets the massive pre-encore roar from the crowd, followed by the fans’ reaction once they realize he’s not part of the band)…. But four minutes later, and Petty & the Heartbreakers are out there for rock-solid performances of “You Wreck Me”, “Oh Carol” and the grand finale: “American Girl”.
11:30 — The concert’s over, and we leave, satisfied. You can’t beat over two hours of music, and you can’t help but leave happy after you’ve spent your evening with a true rock star who loves what he’s doing and never lets the smile leave his face. It’s even hard to get mad at that forty-minute intermission….
Until next time… peace. love. moe.
– Matt
Till My Head Falls Off can be found weekly on 411 Music (old columns are archived in the pull-down menu below). Already hit everything on 411? Matthew Michaels also contributes to 1-42 and is getting ready to launch his own site, moodspins, in early 2003.
