{"id":4897,"date":"2009-10-31T09:00:26","date_gmt":"2009-10-31T14:00:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=4897"},"modified":"2017-12-30T19:21:21","modified_gmt":"2017-12-31T01:21:21","slug":"even-the-losers-get-lucky-sometime","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=4897","title":{"rendered":"Even The Losers Get Lucky Sometimes"},"content":{"rendered":"

A program director at a radio station I used to work at let me in on the great secret of music radio – which let me in\u00a0on an even greater secret of psychology.<\/p>\n

People tend to be most attached to whatever music they were listening to when they were going through or immediately after puberty.\u00a0 Chalk it up to hormones; the same motivation that makes every little slight or setback\u00a0into a dramatic battle royale<\/em> also gives music – the most emotionally-direct of the arts – a special place in most peoples’ perceptions.\u00a0 It’s why for any given generation, “Oldies” music tends to focus on the music that was current when the listener was between 12 and 21 years old; the part of their life when lifelong emotional buttons get put in place, ready for the pushing.<\/p>\n

And if you do the math, it was about thirty years ago that a slew of music came out that, thirty years later, fits that bill for yours truly.\u00a0 I think there’s a fair case to be made that each of them is an extraordinary record.\u00a0 A few of the records are on the list because they are <\/em>extraordinary, whether I cared for them much at the time or not.\u00a0 But most of them are there because they stuck a flag in my psyche thirty years ago, and I can still see why today.<\/p>\n

It was thirty years ago today that Tom Petty’s Damn The Torpedoes<\/em> was released.<\/p>\n

We’ll come back to that.<\/p>\n

———-<\/p>\n

It’s hard to explain to people who weren’t there exactly what music was like in the late seventies.\u00a0 There was <\/em>great music, to be sure; and a lot of the music I turned my nose up at at the time, I’ve softened on over the years; Fleetwood Mac doesn’t bore me as stiff as it used to; bits and pieces of the treacly corporate pop of the era have grown on me since I was a pissed-off teenager.\u00a0 And the bits and pieces of pop genius that leaked back out to me after years of sleeping on ’em have occasionally made me shake my head and wonder what I was thinking.<\/p>\n

But still, with all that, the mainstream in 1979 was\u00a0a dismal place.\u00a0 Linda Ronstadt was the mainstream.\u00a0 Billy Joel was edgy stuff.\u00a0 A generation of nebbishy California singer-songwriters – Robert John, Sammy John, Roger Voudouris, Alan O’Day, Rupert Holmes and a slew of other pre-MTV fodder – sold millions upon millions.<\/p>\n

But most of it was <\/em>dreary stuff; formulaic, mechanical pop treacle.\u00a0 “Rock is dead”, sang The Who, and it kinda showed; and while rock may have lived on via the dinosaurian touring machines that dominated the industry of the day, rock and roll – the danceable, three-minute song you could dance to or sing along with or pump your fist to\u00a0– was on the ropes.<\/p>\n

Oh, sure – there was Springsteen – who had roared back from three years’ legal limbo the previous year with Darkness on the Edge of Town<\/em>, the second installment in “The Holy Trinity” that started with Born to Run <\/em>and would end with The River <\/em>in 1980 – but he didn’t exactly light up the Top 40 singles charts.\u00a0 Bob Seger was hitting on all cylinders – Night <\/em>Moves was a huge smash as an album and as a single, but Seger was a palpable outlier.<\/p>\n

And then,\u00a0thirty years ago\u00a0today, came Damn the\u00a0Torpedoes<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/em><\/p>\n

I hadn’t personally had much of an opinion of Tom Petty; I only knew of him through a lukewarm review of his second album, You’re Gonna Get It<\/em>, a sophomore slump that shamed many artists’ debuts.<\/p>\n

So, truth be told, the Halloween release date passed without my noticing.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

But\u00a0a little less than two weeks\u00a0after the album’s release, on November 10, 1979,\u00a0the band appeared on Saturday Night Live<\/a><\/em>.\u00a0 Buck Henry hosted that night, and he introduced “Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers!”, and I watched as a scruffy, Strat-slinging Petty counted Stan Lynch into the opening drum kick to “Refugee”. by four counts into the song, as Ben Tench’s howling Hammond B3 led the band through a dark, edgy reading of the soon-to-be classic, I muttered to myself “Damn.\u00a0 I love this”.\u00a0 In as many words.\u00a0 Mike Campbell played the interlacing lead guitar parts like God and Chuck Berry and Keith Richard had created them to be played; sparely, economically, not a wasted note or a dropped impact.\u00a0 And Petty bit off every word, every teeth-clenched yelp, like it was now or never.<\/p>\n

Or that’s how I remembered it.<\/p>\n

Via the miracle of YouTube, I actually found that performance; it’s the first time I’ve seen it since that chilly night\u00a0 thirty years ago<\/del>:<\/p>\n

(NBC Universal, curses opon them, blocked the video)<\/p>\n

(Update 2 – someone else posted it)<\/p>\n