Event Reminder

In my e-mail this morning, I got an event reminder for the upcoming Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers concert, with ZZ Top as the opening act.

I thought that was hilarious. Who would possibly forget THAT!?? (and that they had spent a trillion dollars on tickets)

ZZ Top, too...

This just in...

ZZ Top will be opening for Tom Petty at the Houston show on September 24.

Sweeeeeeeeeeeet.

I Should Have Known It

Damn. I can't wait for June 15 and my copy of Mojo to get here.

Tom Petty Houston Show Rescheduled, Mojo Release Date

The Tom Petty show originally scheduled for May has been rescheduled for September 24 (the day before the Rush concert I'll be attending). From TomPetty.com:

Due to a delay in the arrival of Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers’ new album Mojo, it was announced today that the first 10 dates of the 2010 summer tour will be rescheduled in September and October.

The album will be released on Reprise Records on June 15. The band sincerely regrets any inconvenience caused and hope fans can make the rescheduled dates which are listed below.

Don't forget to pre-order Mojo from Amazon here for only $12.99.

And if you're wondering why I'm so excited about Mojo, consider this:

The first thing that hits you about MOJO is that the spirit of the Mudcrutch sessions has carried on with the Heartbreakers. This is the sound of a band playing together in a room - not a studio - facing each other, all singing and playing at the same time. The music is alive, with no overdubs or studio trickery. What you hear is what they created on the spot at that time.

Tom Petty says, “With this album, I want to show other people what I hear with the band. MOJO is where the band lives when it’s playing for itself.”

Good Enough

Listen online here to "Good Enough," one of the new tracks from the forthcoming Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers album "Mojo."

It's got a real bluesy, old-school Heartbreakers sound. I like.

Mojo Available for Pre-Order at Amazon

Tom Petty and the Heartbreaker's forthcoming album, Mojo, is available for pre-order
now at Amazon for $12.99 (regular price will be $18.98).

And happy birthday to me...

Mojo

I'm not sure how I missed this until now, but this from TomPetty.com:

We are excited to announce that Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers will mount an extensive TOUR OF NORTH AMERICA this summer and also release their first studio album in eight years, Mojo, this spring.

The tour begins May 6 in Raleigh, NC and will take the band throughout the US and Canada all summer long. Special guests on the tour will include a mix of appearances by My Morning Jacket, Crosby, Stills and Nash, Joe Cocker, ZZ Top, and Drive-By Truckers.

Mojo is Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers’ twelfth studio album and is the sound of a band making some of its most exhilarating music, over thirty years into their career.

Interesting that Joe Cocker, not ZZ Top, is playing the Houston show in May. But now at least I know what Im going to be listening to this spring (and if it's half as good as Mudcrutch, then much, much longer...).

Who wants to go to a concert in May?

The Who to play the 2010 Super Bowl

From the Telgraph:

The British band have been signed up to play at the showpiece sporting event, the Super Bowl XLIV, in Miami on February 7.

Since their songs were used as the theme music for the CSI series, the group have reached new heights of popularity in the US. They are currently working on material for a new album.

Bruce Springsteen performed at last year's Super Bowl, which drew an audience of 98.7 million viewers, making it the second most watched programme in US television history, behind the series finale of Mash in 1983 (106 million).

The Who had their first hit in 1965 with I Can't Explain and only two members of the original line-up survive: singer Roger Daltrey and guitarist Pete Townshend. Drummer Keith Moon died in 1978, and bassist John Entwistle in 2002.

This is ridiculously stupid. The NFL, in an effort to avoid anything resembling "edge" in its Superbowl halftime show are sticking with aging rockers that are completely unfamiliar and disconnected to the average football viewer.

I barely know who The Who is, and that's only because I have an aunt that helped instill in me a love of Classic Rock (thanks, Aunt Peggy, btw.)

Contrary to how the article makes it sound, record numbers of people didn't tune in last year to watch Springsteen. They tune in to watch the game. I think people tuned in last year because they wanted to see a bloodbath in the form of the Steelers pounding the infamously horrible Cardinals or perhaps to root for the perennial underdog. There was also a bit of an East versus West thing happening, too. People tune in to watch the commercials, too. And, in the height of the recession, credit and housing crises and economic uncertainty people didn't go out to Superbowl parties and such as they had done in the past. They stayed home and watched the game. Even Wikipedia refers to the 2009 game as "The Recession Bowl."

As for halftime performers, there have only been a couple of halftime performers who were even remotely relevant at the time they performed - U2 in 2002, Britney Spears in 2001, Christina Aguilera and Enrique Iglesias in 2000 and Big Bad Voodoo Daddy in 1999. Everyone else who has performed has been well past their prime or their window of pop culture popularity. BoyzIIMen in 1998? ZZ Top in 1997? That's not to say that there haven't been some great, legendary performers. The Rolling Stones. Paul McCartney, Tom Petty, Bruce Springsteen, Phil Collins and Aerosmith are just a few.

But my point is that by the time these people performed, they were several years past the height of their popularity. Tom Petty - one of my all-time favorite musicians - would have been a much more natural fit in the early to mid '80s. Same with Springsteen. Same with ZZ Top. Actrually, the same with just about everyone.

The Super Bowl halftime show needs to be at least relevant. I don't think anyone is expecting cutting-edge popularity. But how about performers from within the last year or so? Jack Johnson? Black Eyed Peas? John Mayer? Miley Cyrus? Taylor Swift? The Killers?

And why does it make sense that because The Who sings the CSI theme song that they should perform at halftime? Next year if the Super Bowl is on ABC, should Psapp sing at halftime because they composed the theme to Grey's Anatomy???

The Who is a horrible choice for a halftime show and the NFL is showing us yet again how out of touch they are with the people who watch their games.

In the presence of a Legend

There are very few bands or performers around today who I would classify as "legendary." I define "legendary" as one of the best of all time. U2, Aerosmith, The Rolling Stones, Willie Nelson, George Strait ... and Tom Petty.

I've had a general liking of Tom Petty's music, although I didn't really know it was him, since grade school. I heard some of his stuff on the radio and thought it was okay. I liked the Traveling Wilburys songs that I heard. I thought his "Don't Come Around Here No More" video was really entertaining. But I wasn't a real fan. My first real "wow" moment regarding his music, when his name really was planted into my consciousness, was when I saw Silence of the Lambs. "American Girl" was featured for a breif moment in the film, and I really liked it. Then the "Into the Great Wide Open" CD cmae out. It was one of the first five CDs that I ever owned, and I like it as much today as I did back in high school when I used to play it over and over as I sat at my drawing table working on art projects late into the night. It's fair to say that "Into the Great Wide Open" and Rush's "Roll the Bones" became the soundtrack for my Junior year in high school.

I bought my first Tom Petty album in college. It was his Greatest Hits album. At the time, being a college student with little money, my policy for awhile was to ONLY buy Greatest Hits albums. And I played the heck out of it. There wasn't a song on it that I didn't like and only a couple that I didn't really, REALLY like. In 1994 I bought the Wildflowers album - breaking my non-greatest hits policy - and really liked it, too. And then a few years later in 1997 I saw a thing on VH1 about him (I think this was pre-Behind the Music). I determined that if I ever got the chance I would like to see him in concert, but still didn't really consider myself a fan. After all, what would Rush and U2 think?

Fast forward eleven years. Even though we now own several more Petty albums and his work on some soundtracks (Elizabethtown being our favorite), if you had asked me in April I still would have said that I liked his stuff, but that I wasn't really a fan. Then, driving back to Brenham from Houston late one night when Kristi's grandmother had been rushed to the hospital (it was about 3am and Kristi, Kayci and Noble were all sleeping), I was flipping through the radio stations trying to stay awake as I drove between Brenham and Bellville. I happened to land on some kind of news/entertainment show that was talking about new CDs that were coming out soon. They began talking about a CD coming out from a band called Mudcrutch and how good it was. "Cool name for a band," I thought.

Then they told the story about how Tom Petty's band before The Heartbreakers was called Mudcrutch and how on a whim he had decided to get the band back together after thirty years or so to play around (it wasn't hard to get them back together because most of the members of Mudcrutch ended up becoming Heartbreakers). They ended up cutting an album in his home studio and it was due to come out in the next few days. I was curious, but let it go at that.

A few days later I was at work listening to iTunes when a Petty song came on and it made me remember the radio show I had heard. So I did a search in the iTunes store for Mudcrutch and found it. I listened to all of the previews and really liked what I heard. It had a really cool sound, but it was a little more country and bluesy than his usual stuff. So I downloaded it and burned it to CD to listen to in the truck. I found Mudcrutch infectious. Every now and then a CD comes out that defines a certain season or period in my life. Mudcrutch defined spring 2008. I just couldn't stop listening to it. I highly recommend it.

I get iTunes new music updates every Tuesday in my e-mail. One day in July in my weekly e-mail there was a sidebar with artists who were on tour. Tom Petty was one of those, so I looked into it. He was playing at the Woodlands on August 29. I asked Kristi if she was interested and she said "no, check with Johnny." Johnny, my college roommate and best friend said he would love to go, so we got tickets. Then, the week of the show I mentioned to another friend, Misty, that I would be near her house on Friday for the show. She and her husband, Jason, went to the show as well and we all met up at on the lawn.

Johnny and I got to the Woodlands pavilion just as Steve Winwood was finishing up as the opening act. Neither Johnny nor wanted to give up out Man Card for seeing a Winwood show, so we went and had barbecue instead. Tom Petty came on shortly after and I must say it was one of the quickest concerts I've ever seen. By that, I mean that even though he played for a full two hours, it seemed like only thirty minutes. And he played all of his biggest hits. But he also played a couple of his lesser-known songs and some older stuff. And at one point he and the Heartbreakers launched into a ten-minute jam. I was a little disappointed that the newest song he played was "Honey Bee" from Wildflowers. He's released some really good stuff since then, including "Saving Grace" and "Jack" from his Highway Companion album in 2006. And he didn't do ANY Mudcrutch, which I was really hoping for. Instead of "Gloria," I wish he had done "Crystal River," which would make a really nice free-form jam. And "Scare Easy" is easily as powerful as "Won't Back Down."

I've seen Willie Nelson play live three times - twice from less than 30 feet away. As I was standing there watching the show it occurred to me that this show had a very similar feeling. There's something really COOL about being in the same space as a true legend. Even though I was about a hundred yards away from the stage, it still felt great to be there in the presence of greatness. Like his music or not, you have to admit that the man has produced a body of work that is as engrained in our culture and that he's a master at what he does. And that says nothing about the Heartbreakers. Now THAT is an under-appreciated band. Watching Mike Campbell play the guitar was just incredible. I was standing there watching a legend of rock do what he does best. Part of me wishes I had ponied up for the $150 tickets. But that's the part of me that also made me buy purple pants in Jr. High. I've found it's best not to listen to that part very often.

So that's what I did with my Friday night. I rolled back into Brenham about 12:30 and plopped into bed, dead tired but thoroughly satisfied that I had finally gotten to see a performer of whom I will finally admit to being a fan.