by December 28, 2020
Happily I consumed lots of music during “the break.” Beginning in June, I took a deep, deep dive into my collection. The following are random thoughts, inspired by random mix cuts and LPs:
Topping the bill for me in 2020, the October rerelease of the Tom Petty album, Wildflowers — It’s been great to hear as Petty originally conceived it, as a double album. I miss Tom Petty all the time, he was the soundtrack to growing up.
which contained the album’s running order but with the UK mixes as remastered in 2009.
Something New — Spotify has a playlists function that is pretty impressive. I really wanted to hear The Beatles’ Something New LP (those songs, in exact order) but this US-only album release no longer exists [Updating – see caption], having been deleted/absorbed into the original British albums and playlists when the Beatles released their catalog on CD in the 1980s. Then the thought came up, maybe somebody out there made a Spotify “Something New album” list. Yep!
• It’s impossible not to sing aloud to, “Tell Me Why”
• “If I Fell” — Paul trying to reach that high falsetto — in “vayyn!” — always makes me smile
• Something New: Back when John was still very much alive. Mind clear, vocals sharp
• George: heavy Liverpool accent on “Happy Just to Dance…” : “…is ev-ry-thing-GUY-I-need…” Love that!
• Every song is great. 24:47 of pure gold. Impossible to listen and not be happier
…and, sometimes you just gotta hear, “Matchbox”
The Bee Gees — What a story. So many hits. If you haven’t yet viewed the HBO Documentary, “How Can You Mend a Broken Heart,” please try. The career of the Brothers Gibb, Barry, Maurice and Robin (and younger sibling Andy), spans decades and really, four separately spaced shots at fame, all of which were successful. Barry Gibb has survived, and just one look at him reveals the pain he’s absorbed of being the last man standing. What a songwriter (Dionne Warwick, “Heartbreaker”; Kenny Rogers and Dolly Parton, “Islands in the Stream”), and there’s just nobody like him.
“Flirtin’ With Disaster,” Molly Hatchet — In 1991 a couple friends and I saw Marshall Crenshaw perform in Chicago. He steps to the mike, says, “This one started out as a joke…Well, it’s not a joke anymore,” and lifts off into a blistering, absolute ass-kicking cover of “Flirtin’ With Disaster” the likes of which almost defy description. “Seen a lot of cool shit, but that ranks right up there,” said my buddy Barclay. He ain’t lyin’.
The Feeling, “I Want You Now” — what an adrenaline rush this tune is, love it a lot. The entire 2006 Twelve Stops and Home LP delivers non-stop Supertramp-fueled song and production quality. The record deserves more, and Dan Gillespie-Sells should be less WITSEC, and more of a household name.
The Shelters, “Really Wanted You” — Tom Petty produced these guys who are out of Los Angeles. Not sure about this track (by non-member songwriter Emitt Rhodes who died in 2020), but it’s strong. https://youtu.be/WNrADTCIsj0
“Country Girl,” Crosby Stills Nash & Young — Over a Hall-Of-Fame lifetime on stage, bizarro rocker Neil Young (whom I do like) delivers greatness and crap in equal measure. On the one CSNY studio record, Deja Vu, his contribution “Country Girl” is a damn-near perfect song: By turns earnest, anthemic, soaring. Deja Vu is one of the earliest albums we three Wade kids owned.
“Stare It Cold,” The Black Crowes — This is a track that reminds me, what band would you most want to sound like? (No fair choosing The Beatles, too easy.) I’d have to put these guys high on my list.
Bob Seger & The Silver Bullet Band — Those who knew me growing up in southern Indiana (where radio station formats were cookie-cutter awful) may remember that I just lost it one day. “WHY GOD, DO THEY HAVE TO PLAY SEGER ALL DAY, EVERY DAY?” I chucked my “Live Bullet” LP and never looked back. Well, on a Sunday morning this summer, I did the unthinkable. I spun the entire Night Moves LP. After all these years, that album sounds great. “Fire Down Below” – “Here come the banker and the lawyer and the cop…”
“I’m Sorry (But So is Brenda Lee),” Marshall Crenshaw — The performer I’ve seen the most times (behind Tom Petty), is Marshall Crenshaw. His gem of a debut LP arrived just as I graduated from high school. I followed his career through IU and witnessed great shows of his in Chicago at Park West, The Vic, and Metro, and later caught him here, at Cactus Cafe and Shady Grove. While all of MC’s original stuff contains gems this Ben Vaughn cover encapsulates the Marshall vibe: a great pop song, musically a nod to the past, while also referential and irreverent.
Loggins and Messina, The Best of Friends — This is a compilation album that my brother gave me for Christmas, 1977. It still sounds great, and I got it back in the rotation at my table on the porch during the summer weeks. “Thinking of You” is a highlight here.
“Never Make You Unhappy,” Tower of Power — As this horns-rich chart classic from ‘73 popped up one morning, I chuckled as the Jim Wade (my late dad) phrase came to mind — and then I uttered these magic words — “Now there’s some -real- musical instruments, boys.” NOTE: Am being told, “Very Hard to Go” is the name of this one. I Did Not Know That.
Huge loss: Adam Schlesinger — I was saddened by the premature loss at 52 of rocker Adam Schlesinger (Fountains of Wayne), who wrote the music for the brilliant Tom Hanks comedy, “That Thing You Do.” He was the founder of three really interesting, different bands: FOW, Ivy, and Tinted Windows. A formidable talent, Schlesinger originated a ton of soundtrack and television work. Also a gifted power-pop writer and performer, he had won a Grammy, Emmy and Tony, and had been Oscar-nominated for the movie song. One recent morning, “Valley Winter Song” came up in my mix and I was marveling at the guitar work/production. Please check out a gem of a song he contributed to the band Click 5, “Just the Girl.”
“What Can I Say?” Awesome. I’m right back in grade school.
Silk Degrees, Boz Scaggs — There are albums, and there are albums one could listen to any time. Boz Scaggs once bestrode the pop charts, and now I don’t know whether anyone under 35 would even know his name, were it not for multiple riff appropriations by latter-day musical acts. Check this out [wiki]: “The producers of the movie Saturday Night Fever asked for permission to use “Lowdown” but Scaggs’ manager turned them down and instead used it in the movie Looking for Mr. Goodbar.”
Chicago II – Such a great listen. My older brother left LPs when he went overseas for a year and I ended up with lots of records in my downstairs hideaway. Both Chicago Transit Authority and II were among them, but I rarely played this one (I played “Color My World” and “Make Me Smile,” but that was about it). So this is a real time-capsule call.
Pour One Out for Eddie Van Halen — Any favorite VH songs? Give me “So This Is Love?” from the David Lee Roth years, and “Finish What Ya Started,” from the Van Hagar era.
“Give Me Love,” George Harrison — Melodic and a great radio single. Happy summer/swimming pool memories as a kid from when this was a hit. “Grace and humor and a weird kind of angry bitterness about certain things in life.” This is Monty Python’s Terry Gilliam describing George Harrison from the 2011 Martin Scorsese documentary, “George Harrison: Living in the Material World,” which I have been going back through.
“Don’t Make Me Dream About You,” Chris Isaak — Think about the coolest guy you’ve ever been around. Not the artificial, he’s-our-quarterback sort of cool, but the genuine article. The kid everybody already knows is cool. To me that dude is Chris Isaak, the Roy Orbison acolyte whose stripped-down sound (both solo and with the band Silvertone) caught everyone and held our attention in the late 1980s. How did he top his cooler-than-cool “Wicked Game?” By acting, of course, in cool movies such as Silence of the Lambs.
RIP Charlie Daniels — Listening now to “South’s Gonna Do It Again,” before it gets wished into the cornfield. “Long-Haired Country Boy” and The CDB are part of a vivid memory of driving 2.5 hours each way from Evansville to Bloomington, to watch as a Lee Corso-era Indiana football team pounded Minnesota, 42-24, on a miserably cold/wet afternoon in November 1979.
“Southbound,” by Dickie Betts (The Allman Brothers) — I am not the world’s biggest Allman Brothers guy, but damned if this “93XRT, Chicago’s Finest Rock” staple doesn’t get me every time.
Addendum*: It’s a challenge to write about classic stuff, and not have the recap become one long obituary. However: Neil Peart — who drummed like no other human ever has or will, but perhaps more importantly who was the chief lyricist for Rush — left us in January. Here’s Neil in 1988 discussing the brilliant track, “Second Nature.” “[The song] is conciliatory in its message: If we can’t reach perfection in this world then let’s at least settle for some degree of improvement. The politician who campaigns for clean air but doesn’t want to close down the factory in his area because thousands of people will lose their jobs. My viewpoint is that I’ll take as much as I can without hurting other people.”
Stuart Wade 