It’s Great To Be Alive
Wow, that’s uncharacteristically optimistic for me. I usually top out with “It’s Great Not To Be Dead.” I guess a week in sinus hell can change your perspective. It happened to me.
I started on a Tom Petty kick on Friday and that has followed me into today. I was listening to some TP and I strolled over to his web site to see if there were any announcements of import. Boy, was there. The Traveling Wilbury records are being re-released June 12. The albums, Vol. 1 and Vol. 3 have been out of print for more than 10 years. This is easily going to be one of the coolest releases of the year.
This has me so excited that I’ve dusted off my Soundstage DVD — I’m watching it now — so I could listen to the only version of “Handle With Care” commercially available- well, at least by one of the Wilburys. Petty started playing the song in concert a few years ago. I actually got to hear him play it in Atlanta. It’s also included on this DVD along with one of my other favorite Petty songs, the rarely played “Crawling Back to You” from Wildflowers.
As cool as it is to be able to hear “Handle With Care” and “Crawling Back to You,” the best part of the Soundstage DVD is “Melinda.” It’s a song that has not (yet) appeared on a Petty record, and that needs to be rectified. I remember being surprised it didn’t make it onto Highway Companion, but then it hit me: HC is a solo album and this song belongs to The Heartbreakers, particularly keyboard wizard Benmont Tench. The Heartbreakers, like Springsteen’s E-Street Band, are one of the great backing bands in rock history. Unlike the E-Street Band, The Heartbreakers don’t often extend their songs into freeform jams or explorations. They make an exception on “Melinda,” and it makes you wish they’d do it a little more often because the song and the playing are terrific.
There is a point during the song where you can see Petty, Mike Campbell, and Ron Blair watching Tench with the same amazed looks as the rest of the audience. These guys have been playing together for more than 30 years and they can still surprise and impress each other. Tench is a national treasure and you really should see and hear him. It is stunningly beautiful and amazing musicianship.
I also spent some time listening to the She’s the One soundtrack. He did all the music for that film and there are some great, great songs on that album. Wildflowers is probably my favorite of his records, and it was originally conceived as a double album. Many of the songs from She’s the One would have been part of Wildflowers had it been released as a double. As it is, Wildflowers is 15 songs and over an hour long. These is a lot of great music on these two albums as separate entities. It would have been interesting to hear them combined and released as one.
Filed under: Tags: Musical Musings and Random Ramblings, Tom Petty
