What's new
Fantasy Football - Footballguys Forums

This is a sample guest message. Register a free account today to become a member! Once signed in, you'll be able to participate on this site by adding your own topics and posts, as well as connect with other members through your own private inbox!

Classic Album Discussion Thread: The Kinks-Lola Versus Powerman and the Moneygoround, Pt. 1 (2 Viewers)

falguy said:
A lot of Eagles dislike in here.  I think this is a great album. Not many albums where I can say I like every song.  This one qualifies for me.  The Last Resort is one of my favorite songs and I never get tired of listening to it.   The live version on Hell Freezes Over is even better. I don't really understand what's not to love about this album but to each their own.
Click to expand...
Since I didn't like classic rock until a little later in my life, I am not tired of some of these classic rock bands like others are.  The Eagles will never be one of my favorite bands but I own and love the Hotel California album.  It is a fun album with good songs.  The guitar solo is one of my favorites.  It fits the song perfectly.  And, as pointed out by others, there are some other really good songs on the album that feel timeless.    

 
I didn't realize how big of a Petty fan I was until he passed.  I have a few albums and listened to them all frequently.  I cannot pick a favorite though.  Refugee is a fantastic song.  It is tough to pick a favorite Petty song but American Girl, Learning to Fly, and You Got Lucky are at the top.  He wrote a lot of great songs over a large number of years.  Too bad he left us way too soon. 

 
Back in the day, I had a thing for Maria McKee from Lone Justice. For the youngsters, they were on the fringe of being popular for a couple years, so I won't hold it against people that never heard of them.

Anyway, I never knew THIS SONG was written by TP. It took me over 30 years to find that out. Here is HIS VERSION.

 
Thread crossover - Don Felder taught Tom Petty to play guitar

Tell us about the Tom Petty Florida connection. You taught him guitar?

Yes I did. I was working in that music store in Gainesville and like I said, the only way I had to make money was after school I would go teach guitar in this music store. One day this kind of scrawny, scraggly blond-haired kid came in and wanted guitar lessons. I started teaching him guitar and we became friends and I went over to his house a couple of times. He had actually set up a microphone in one of the rooms in his house and he was playing bass in this little band. He wanted to learn guitar so he could play guitar instead of just bass in the band. So I went over to his house and was hanging around and he would play songs. Then I tried to help this band called the Rucker Brothers, which Tommy played bass in, and they had two guitar players named Rodney and Ricky Rucker. It was a little bit of a train wreck because the two guitar players didn’t know how one should take a step back while the other takes the floor and one would play rhythm and one would play lead. They were just both kind of trashing away so I organized and arranged some of their songs a little bit so they made a little more sense that way. I went to a few of their shows and just kind of hung around. It was a very small town and between Tommy and his band, the Rucker Brothers, and later Stephen Stills and I had a band. The Stephen left and Bernie Leadon arrived four or five months after his departure. Bernie kind of stepped into Stephen’s spot playing guitar and singing. The Allman Brothers were there during the school year and on weekends playing fraternity parties. During the summer the only place to work was over on Daytona Beach, so all the bands from Gainesville would go over and work off the strip on Daytona Beach or a dance club or off of the pier. So everybody knew everybody.
Click to expand...
https://web.archive.org/web/20110831013938/http://www.gibson.com/en-us/Lifestyle/Features/don-felder-0811/

 
The Byrds’ first two albums,  Mr. Tambourine Man and Turn Turn Turn! won’t be discussed here per se, since they’re considered “oldies” and not classic rock. But these albums created folk rock and the “California sound”. Both Tom Petty AND the Eagles were their heirs. 

 
Anarchy99 said:
Back in the day, I had a thing for Maria McKee from Lone Justice. For the youngsters, they were on the fringe of being popular for a couple years, so I won't hold it against people that never heard of them.

Anyway, I never knew THIS SONG was written by TP. It took me over 30 years to find that out. Here is HIS VERSION.
Click to expand...
Saw Lone Justice twice and Maria by herself twice. Love her. 

She hated that song. Hated the lyrics. But Benmont Tench is on her recording. 

 
timschochet said:
The Byrds’ first two albums,  Mr. Tambourine Man and Turn Turn Turn! won’t be discussed here per se, since they’re considered “oldies” and not classic rock. But these albums created folk rock and the “California sound”. Both Tom Petty AND the Eagles were their heirs. 
Click to expand...
Byrds are also very much classic rock IMO, but we've beaten that dead horse enough. In terms of albums, could always go with Sweetheart of the Rodeo, but that might be too obscure.

 
Anarchy99 said:
Back in the day, I had a thing for Maria McKee from Lone Justice. For the youngsters, they were on the fringe of being popular for a couple years, so I won't hold it against people that never heard of them.

Anyway, I never knew THIS SONG was written by TP. It took me over 30 years to find that out. Here is HIS VERSION.
Click to expand...
Of all the artists who've come along since i left the music biz, it's between her & Sufjan Stevens for who i'd most want to manage. The world would be a much better place if i could have. She still does great work but no one yet has shown her the error of beating the #### out of every note she performs and that is truly unfortunate. Just too damn talented....

 
wikkidpissah said:
Of all the artists who've come along since i left the music biz, it's between her & Sufjan Stevens for who i'd most want to manage. The world would be a much better place if i could have. She still does great work but no one yet has shown her the error of beating the #### out of every note she performs and that is truly unfortunate. Just too damn talented....
Click to expand...
McKee is undeniably talented but she overemotes like a contestant who gets voted off in the fifth week of American Idol.

Her 6 minute piano rendition of Springsteen's "Backstreets" is the damnedest thing.  It's the musical equivalent of a technical draw in boxing where both the singer and the song are too battered to answer the bell for the final round.

 
I've been a huge Petty/Heartbreaks fan for a long time - one of my top 10 bands/artists for sure.

My Uncle John gave me his first record when I was a little kid, and said it "didn't get any better than that". So sentimentally the first album is probably my favorite, but I can make the case for Damn the Torpedos and Hard Promises as well. Petty never really changed his style much but the guy wasn't resting on his legend laurels either. He put out good music until the very end. I think Highway Companion stacks up favorably against any of his recordings, and I listen to it often.

Some one once said Petty had the best opening lines to his songs of any songwriter and I can believe that - he hooked you in right away. Miss him a lot.

ETA: oddly enough I never really considered him classic rock - although he most certainly is objectively speaking - to me he was his own genre.

 
Last edited by a moderator:
Eephus said:
McKee is undeniably talented but she overemotes like a contestant who gets voted off in the fifth week of American Idol.

Her 6 minute piano rendition of Springsteen's "Backstreets" is the damnedest thing.  It's the musical equivalent of a technical draw in boxing where both the singer and the song are too battered to answer the bell for the final round.
Click to expand...
I worked with a similarly-talented artist in the 70s (great guitar player too) who could not temper her power or tendency to groove into vocal fetishes (common w female artists) and who actually resented the "next Janis" mantle everybody wanted to throw on her as disrespect. I was halfway to showing her her better angels when i got fired/sued for poaching her. It has greatly frustrated me since (esp since i spent the rest of my career in the psych arena - either counseling or gambling) to see artists who could have been a voice for us all, like McKee & Stevens, go awry simply because no one had the strength or will to get them to their core.

ETA: BTW, that clip was incredibly exhausting

 
Last edited by a moderator:
I like a lot of Stones songs but do not like Jagger's voice.  It is easy to understand why the Stones are one of the greatest rock bands of all time and an argument can be made that they are the greatest rock band.  I love the variety in their song writing and sound of the songs.   The best thing about the Stones is that their songs remind me of this hot blonde girl in college that I dated.  She was a huge Stones fan but as crazy as she was hot.  The crazy ones are always killers in the sack.   

 
There are really only three Tom Petty albums I like most or all of, and Damn the Torpedoes is one of them.  Wildflowers is undoubtedly his best, IMO, but this one is not far behind.  

 
Bruce Springsteen- Born to Run (1975)

Side One

Thunder Road

Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out

Night 

Backstreets

Side Two

Born to Run

She’s the One

Meeting Across the River

Jungleland

Personally there are albums of his I like more, but this one is considered THE Springsteen record. Thunder Road is my favorite, possibly my favorite song of his period: it’s a great rock epic. Jungleland would be too except it goes on a little too long (I used to get it confused with Land Of Hope and Glory, yet another long epic.)  The title Song is fine but- and I know this blasphemy- I don’t love the sax. I like it on some songs but on Born to Run it’s too scratchy, it grates on my ears. 

 
Just a personal taste, as I respect what he’s done, but I despise Springsteen more than any other artist. Just grates on me and it’s not an easy thing to say in my area (NYC metropolitan region) where he is so revered.

All that said, I love  Jungleland.

 
Last edited by a moderator:
zamboni said:
Just a personal taste, as I respect what he’s done, but I despise Springsteen more than any other artist. Just grates on me and it’s not an easy thing to say in my area (NYC metropolitan region) where he is so revered.

All that said, I love  Jungleland.
Click to expand...
grates on me also.  It's like he's giving birth when he sings.

 
Only dug Springsteen live once and i had no idea who he was. In the early 70s there was a bar on the corner of Lansdowne St (the street behind Fenway's Green Monstah and home to Boston's 1st great rock club, the Boston Tea Party) that was a converted drug store and i doubt could hold 100 people. Walking by one nite, heard some righteous tunes and saw over 100 people hanging the curb outside the bar. Asked who it was and didnt recognize the name but the band played all evening and there was almost as many people in the street diggin it as in that U2 rooftop video by the end. Couldnt remember the name except it sounded Jewish so didnt know who it was til a heard Rosalita on the radio.

 
My kids were introduced to Springsteen through this video. To them, he was the “Whip Mah Hay-er” guy for the longest.

Its the Springsteen stereotype, but he doesn’t always sing like that  :D

 
I will echo the lack of love for The Boss.  He has a handful or so of songs I like enough to actually turn on, but that's where it ends.  Jungleland is one of those tunes. 

 
Never got into Springsteen at all. Only comment I have is that all the Long Island kids at UB worshipped Springsteen. FWIW.

 
I like the Born to Run album, and my favorite tune on it is the title song. My favorite Springsteen album is his dark album Nebraska. As far as the music he has done over the past decade or so, I really enjoy his 2006 Pete Seeger tribute album We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions. 

 
Born to Run was released the week I started my Junior year of high school.  The only other kids I knew who liked Springsteen that were my friends from the marching band.  Dan Braun had a portable cassette player and played the album in the back of the bus.  Springsteen's reach was still pretty much limited to the FM dial in those days.  The singles didn't get played on pop radio until Hungry Heart.

It didn't seem like it at the time but the three year gap between this album and Darkness may have helped his career.  The mythology of the Boss grew at a slow crescendo fueled by the self referential mythology of the songs on Born to Run.  It also gave Springsteen years to hone the followup album and a lot of prime era songs to release from the vaults in the artist's middle age.

 
Meeting into Jungleland. 12 of the best minutes of music I've ever heard. And the perfect ending to one of the best albums I've ever listened to. 

 
Eephus said:
Born to Run was released the week I started my Junior year of high school.  The only other kids I knew who liked Springsteen that were my friends from the marching band.  Dan Braun had a portable cassette player and played the album in the back of the bus.  Springsteen's reach was still pretty much limited to the FM dial in those days.  The singles didn't get played on pop radio until Hungry Heart.

It didn't seem like it at the time but the three year gap between this album and Darkness may have helped his career.  The mythology of the Boss grew at a slow crescendo fueled by the self referential mythology of the songs on Born to Run.  It also gave Springsteen years to hone the followup album and a lot of prime era songs to release from the vaults in the artist's middle age.
Click to expand...
self referential?

 
Chaos Commish said:
self referential?
Click to expand...
It was a poor choice of words. 

My point was the lyrics weren't autobiographical of course, but his fans came to associate Springsteen with the Billys, Sandys and Wendys that populated his songs.  Their stories amplified his status as an everyman hero.

 
Last edited by a moderator:
Thunder Road was one of a small set of rock and pop songs I mixed in with lullabies when singing our babies to sleep.  They were too young to care and I got burned out on the rock a bye babies and itsey bitsy spiders.  Thunder Road, Cheap Trick's Surrender and the theme from Gilligan's Island helped me keep my sanity while dead on my feet with newborns.

 
For me, I didn’t love Springsteen as a kid.  Then a number of years ago I downloaded this album kind of on a whim and now I consider not liking him as a kid one of my regrets in life...when I could have gone to any of his number of shows (having grown up in NY area).

10th Avenue Freeze Out is awesome, but for me the whole album is quintessential Boss.  

 
I was in grade school (early 80s) when some concert album, or multi album collection of Bruce's came out (too lazy to look it up).  I was at a neighbors house where a bunch of us neighborhood kids were hanging out.  One of the kids, two years older than me, made us all listen to it and was raving about how awesome it was.  Starting that day and every day since, I have been confused by the worship.

Don't get me wrong, I won't turn off the radio if he comes on. but I never search him out.  Maybe part of it was that his most reviered work came out before my time so I didn't get to experience it in the moment, but I don't get why he is held up so high as a legend.

 
Ranethe said:
Never got into Springsteen at all. Only comment I have is that all the Long Island kids at UB worshipped Springsteen. FWIW.
Click to expand...
Odd. I was born in Queens and raised on Long Island and Bruce was not very big there at all. Billy Joel (naturally) was huge among the older people and Led Zepplin seemed to be the most popular band among teens.

Anyway I went to college in NJ (Seton Hall) and Springsteen was played everywhere - people had song lyric quotes hanging on their walls. He was god-like among the Jersey people (which was most of the SHU population). I started hated him. My sophomore year Tunnel of Love was released that summer and I dreaded going back to school. People got annoyed when I said I couldn't stand Bruce.

Anyway, years went by and in my late 20s / early 30s I really started liking the guy. I finally broke down and went to see him. It was at Giants Stadium a huge venue, yet it almost felt like that small bar wikkid was describing a few posts up. It was like a giant party where everyone was best friends. I even bumped into my sister randomly.

I now think pretty highly of him as a man and as an artist. His voice can be grating perhaps, but he's one of the great American songwriters and his band (which to his credit he has kept mostly intact) is top notch. My favorite record is Darkness at the Edge of Town and I really love the Rising as well. Heck I love Tunnel of Love now as well. Born to Run is a classic of course with some epic songs including my favorite song by him "Thunder Road".

 
I think every kid I went to school with had the cassette and/or CD of Tom Petty's Greatest Hits and then the Wildflowers album. "Let's get to the point, let's roll another joint" 

 
I heard an interview with (former Jet RB) Emerson Boozer on ESPN radio a while back right after Clarence Clemmons died. They played college football together in the 1960s and apparently Clemmons was a very good player who was drafted by the Dallas Cowboys but was in a bad car accident and suffered major  injuries. Boozer was saying while in college as much as the Big Man loved football he loved his saxophone more - he often played gigs in bars around campus and some teammates would go see him.

He lost touch with him for a long time but ran into him on the streets of NYC in the early 70s.

Boozer asked him if he was still playing sax. Clarence said to him "yes, and I found myself a blue eyed white boy that's gonna make me a rich man".

 
Last edited by a moderator:
zamboni said:
Byrds are also very much classic rock IMO, but we've beaten that dead horse enough. In terms of albums, could always go with Sweetheart of the Rodeo, but that might be too obscure.
Click to expand...
That is really more country rock than anything else. But yeah The Byrds were amazing. The distinct jingle-jangle that really was a distinctive sound of American rock.  They were pioneers of folk rock and pretty much created country rock/alt-country. One of the few American rock bands that was on par with the best of the Brits in the 60s. 

rustycolts said:
My favorite Petty tunes are Southern Accents,and Mary Janes last dance.  I love those tunes.  Southern Accents should be the southern mantelpiece instead of Sweet Home Alabama. JMO.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ehPUJKk2_dg
Click to expand...
I always thought Rebels was the best "Southern Anthem"

Eephus said:
Thunder Road was one of a small set of rock and pop songs I mixed in with lullabies when singing our babies to sleep.  They were too young to care and I got burned out on the rock a bye babies and itsey bitsy spiders.  Thunder Road, Cheap Trick's Surrender and the theme from Gilligan's Island helped me keep my sanity while dead on my feet with newborns.
Click to expand...
Probably my favorite opening lines to a song and album

The screen door slams, Mary's dress waves
Like a vision she dances across the porch as the radio plays
Roy Orbison singing for the lonely
Hey, that's me and I want you only
 

So much of the album is obviously about running and the idea that somewhere out there is hope. That if one runs away far enough, they might find something better. The album ends on the opposite note. Instead of running, the poet takes a stand only to find a fate worse than death.

And try to make an honest stand
But they wind up wounded, not even dead
Tonight in Jungleland

 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

timschochet
The 100 Greatest Classic Rock Albums of All Time: #1. Sticky Fingers
40 41 42
Replies
2K
Views
176K
Pip's Invitation
Pip's Invitation
timschochet
The 100 Greatest Songs of 1976 #1. Foreplay/Long Time
10 11 12
Replies
580
Views
91K
DocHolliday
DocHolliday
timschochet
The 100 Greatest Songs of 1974 #1. Lady Marmalade
11 12 13
Replies
613
Views
101K
Lehigh98
Lehigh98

Users who are viewing this thread

Total: 2 (members: 0, guests: 2)
Back
Top