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Tom Petty - Wildflowers & All the Rest


oSuJeff97

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Is anyone else super pumped about this? Wildlfowers has been my "most wanted" vinyl record since I got back into vinyl ~3 years ago, but the long-out-of-print original pressing has always been stupid expensive in the secondary market.

So I was plenty pumped when they finally announced the re-issue, but now I'm even more pumped that it's being re-issued with 10 additional songs from the Wildflowers sessions that were left off the original album.  I actually had no idea that it was originally conceived as a double album (hence the 10 additional tracks), even though Wildflowers has always been my favorite Tom Petty record.

There's a great Rolling Stone article about how it finally came together after some legal wrangling with the Tom Petty estate.  It's also kind of a bummer to find out he was planning a tour where they would play all of the Wildflower songs, including the 10 additional tracks, with a bunch of guests participating like Eddie Veder, Stevie Nicks and Steve Winwood. Man, that would have been awesome.

https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/tom-petty-wildflowers-reissue-1057237/

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yeah i've already pre-ordered. i got wildflowers on vinyl with the box set that came out a few years ago, but excited about all the unreleased stuff. the you don't know how it feels demo is really interesting, with some lyrics from crawling back to you thrown in there.

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If you read the Rolling Stone article, one of the things they talk about is that they really wanted to sequence the album with the 10 additional songs the way that Tom Petty had sequenced them when he originally submitted it to the label as a double album... but unfortunately they weren't able to ever locate his notes or any copy of the original double album.

That would have been super cool, but I'll still take the 10 new songs tacked on to the end.

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45 minutes ago, stc said:

yeah i've already pre-ordered. i got wildflowers on vinyl with the box set that came out a few years ago, but excited about all the unreleased stuff. the you don't know how it feels demo is really interesting, with some lyrics from crawling back to you thrown in there.

Did you get the 9-LP "Ultra Deluxe" edition that's like $500? :D 

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3 minutes ago, slorch said:

3 years ago, today at the Hollywood Bowl, Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers played their last concert ever.

RIP.

Ugg so sad.

I saw him at the BOK Center in 2014... almost didn't go but decided to go at the last minute. SO glad I did... it was an amazing show. Steve Winwood opened and was also awesome.

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3 hours ago, oSuJeff97 said:

Ugg so sad.

I saw him at the BOK Center in 2014... almost didn't go but decided to go at the last minute. SO glad I did... it was an amazing show. Steve Winwood opened and was also awesome.

Went to the michigan show that year last I saw him as well. Hypnotic eye just came out if I remember correctly 

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I DJ'd a classic rock radio show in Chicago for two years way back when.  and a couple loved our show, and they had gone to a destination elope to get hitched.  And they called the station to get the three of us to come and play their "reception/welcome back happy couple party."  They had about ten requests and then told us to just play whatever we'd usually program on the show.  And most of those requests were Tom Petty, plus lots of friends and family requested Tom Petty songs throughout the night.  And I remember thinking we were needed to pepper in more artists between Petty songs and some drunk uncle said, "You know Tom's gonna be the House Band in Heaven one day."  I always remember that line and starting off the night with "American Girl" and everybody loved every minute of rocking out to Petty most of the night.  I am probably 10 years older now that those people but that's the beauty of Petty.............as timeless a rock musician as we may ever know.  Almost his entire catalog will only continue to improve with time and we get to be here to hear it evolve.  Thanks , Tom.  

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7 hours ago, oSuJeff97 said:

Related, music critic Steven Hyden did a ranking of the top 100 Tom Petty songs.  As always, there is room for quibbling, but lots of great stuff here:

https://uproxx.com/indie/tom-petty-best-songs-ranked/

Not a bad list at all.  From 35 on down, it's just one honest, no bullshit hit song after another.  Still unbelievable to me what TP&THB did when they were in their 40s. 

My biggest missed live show regret by a mile was not seeing Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers. 

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On 9/25/2020 at 10:36 PM, dcbc said:

Not a bad list at all.  From 35 on down, it's just one honest, no bullshit hit song after another.  Still unbelievable to me what TP&THB did when they were in their 40s. 

My biggest missed live show regret by a mile was not seeing Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers. 

I couldn't quibble with much on that list.  I like Hyden quite a bit and have always followed his various podcasts.  I was glad to see Walls get some love (it's Top 10/Top 5 Petty track for me) as well as Yer So Bad.  I put Learning To Fly ahead of Into The Great Wide Open, as far as that album goes, and I'm not as big a fan of It's Good To Be King as most people, but these are all minor points.

What a catalog.  Petty truly is the most universally beloved artist I can think of.

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2 hours ago, Al_4_ISU said:

I couldn't quibble with much on that list.  I like Hyden quite a bit and have always followed his various podcasts.  I was glad to see Walls get some love (it's Top 10/Top 5 Petty track for me) as well as Yer So Bad.  I put Learning To Fly ahead of Into The Great Wide Open, as far as that album goes, and I'm not as big a fan of It's Good To Be King as most people, but these are all minor points.

What a catalog.  Petty truly is the most universally beloved artist I can think of.

Same.  I've always thought that the "She's the One" soundtrack was fantastic, and it makes more sense how much I've loved it knowing that it was basically recorded at the same time as, and including some leftovers from, Wildflowers.

Speaking of Hyden - have you listened to his "Rivals" podcast? It's a lot of fun.  He did Jeff Tweedy vs. Jay Fararrer, Lenon vs. McCartney, Noel vs. Liam Gallagher, etc.  Fun stuff.

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Same.  I've always thought that the "She's the One" soundtrack was fantastic, and it makes more sense how much I've loved it knowing that it was basically recorded at the same time as, and including some leftovers from, Wildflowers.
Speaking of Hyden - have you listened to his "Rivals" podcast? It's a lot of fun.  He did Jeff Tweedy vs. Jay Fararrer, Lenon vs. McCartney, Noel vs. Liam Gallagher, etc.  Fun stuff.

I’ve already blown through the whole thing 10 days into harvest. I absolutely love it.
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On 9/25/2020 at 12:34 PM, oSuJeff97 said:

Related, music critic Steven Hyden did a ranking of the top 100 Tom Petty songs.  As always, there is room for quibbling, but lots of great stuff here:

https://uproxx.com/indie/tom-petty-best-songs-ranked/

The Waiting and Here Comes My Girl will always be tops for me.

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13 hours ago, Carl Spackler said:

The Waiting and Here Comes My Girl will always be tops for me.

I've never done this before, but here are my top 10 Tom Petty songs off the top of my head (not ranked 1-10 because that would be too tough):

  • Wildflowers
  • Free Fallin'
  • The Waiting
  • Mary Jane's Last Dance
  • To Find a Friend
  • Running Down a Dream
  • Refugee
  • Walls (Circus)
  • American Girl
  • The Waiting
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we lost Tom three years ago today.  Fuck me, but it still hurts like hell.

IMO they are the greatest American band.  Their list of songs as posted earlier is just amazing and they did it for a long long time.

I tell that to people and I get a funny look as I see them trying to come up with a better American band but most never do...

 

the last song he ever played live - he died seven days later.

 

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2 minutes ago, MAROON said:

we lost Tom three years ago today.  Fuck me, but it still hurts like hell.

IMO they are the greatest American band.  Their list of songs as posted earlier is just amazing and they did it for a long long time.

I tell that to people and I get a funny look as I see them trying to come up with a better American band but most never do...

 

Man I never thought about that, but shit you may be right.... certainly in terms of sheer QUANTITY of high-quality music....there may be other bands that hit "higher highs" (Beach Boys) or were more influential for different reasons (Ramones, R.E.M, Talking Heads, Nirvana, etc.) but I can't think of any that were able to maintain the level of quality that Tom Petty did for 20+ years.... I mean the dude created his masterpiece album (Wildflowers) at the age of 44.  That's pretty crazy.

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I just listened to a podcast yesterday with Jeff from PJ and they were talking about having this argument all the time and a lot of people don't consider The Heartbreakers a band.  I disagree and think they're definitely the greatest American band ever.  The other one that kept coming up was Aerosmith, but I really dislike Aerosmith.

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  • 2 weeks later...

American Girl is my all-time favorite song.  The rest fluctuate...that one has been set in stone since.....forever.    And I have long agreed with @MAROON that the Heartbreakers were the greatest American band.  Beatles and Stones for England?   People argue that.  Only other band I ever thought to compare the Heartbreakers to was maybe, The E Street Band, but to me, they are a distant second.  

I've been listening to Mojo a lot lately.  I relistened to it after seeing them on the last tour and it has been in constant rotation since. This was the only song they did from that album.  Except Campbell was playing a Les Paul and it sounded like Jimmy Page, reincarnated.  The girl I was with thought it was an old Zep song.  It fucking ROCKED.  The studio version pales in comparison.  But it shall have to do.  

 

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Picked this up at Josey this morning and have listened to it all the way through twice already.

The vinyl sounds amazing.

I can't believe most of the songs on "All the Rest" were never released... I mean, "Leave Virginia Alone" sounds like a song that would have easily been a top 10 hit in the 90s.

"Wildflowers & All the Rest" is just an amazing tribute to Tom Petty at his very best.  So glad it was finally released.

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Broken Record podcast is having Rick Rubin interview different people about this.  One was Petty's youngest daughter, Adria who was one of the forces of putting it together and yesterday was Benmont Tench.  Both were just incredible listens.  Adria found things that Rick didn't know existed and she knew a lot that Rubin didn't know.  Fantastic inside look into Petty and how he worked.  

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On 10/2/2020 at 11:55 AM, 4th&Five said:

I just listened to a podcast yesterday with Jeff from PJ and they were talking about having this argument all the time and a lot of people don't consider The Heartbreakers a band.  I disagree and think they're definitely the greatest American band ever.  The other one that kept coming up was Aerosmith, but I really dislike Aerosmith.

Uh, Van Halen?

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