Friday Influences 10-22-10

Post your songwriter influences and inspirations. Either from this past week or anytime in your development as a writer.

I love those first couple of years with TP and the Heartbreakers. Classic guitars, amps, keys, musicianship, style, wit, dumb-jamesdeanesque-r&r-prophetic and poetic logic. Standing up for his rights as a young rockin' romantic. Love them.

You never said you had no number two

I need to know about it if you do

If two is one I might as well be three

It's good to see you think so much of me...

Looks like I've been fooled again

Looks like I'm the fool again... I don't like it

I don't liike it!

[YOUTUBE]FO8PFRvXoRY[/YOUTUBE]

This broke down my preconceived notions of what could be music and what music could be.

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and for my next project, I want to find a way to combine the 808 style backing tracks of PE with this:

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Not sure how I am going to pull that one off yet though

Words wouldn't do these justice,

so I'll just leave them here...

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I seem to be fixating on riffs played on 12-string guitars lately (and it's reflected in the songs I am currently working on).

I've always liked the way the guitar and bass riffs work with each other on this song. The band duds & choreography don't hurt either.

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Yeah! That always sort of reminded me of this one too...

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Oh yeah! I play that guitar riff all the time when I'm fooling around with 12-string sounds on my Variax!

Also how about Chandler's tone on that bass? Nothing quite like tapewound strings on a semi-hollow Gibson bass.

I was a bit disturbed by the trophy heads though.

The trophy heads make it! I want a couple!

Yeah, I love that bass tone.

I'm stayin with Snew...

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What a great talent, and what a sad life. :love:/:cry:

Did a Humble Pie song for the Month Of Songs last year - I'm playing 2 of the 3 guitars (L Telecaster/R Les Paul), everything else is looped from the original.

Live With Me

Ditto that.

This vid captures the stripped down, visceral sound that they had when they first burst on the scene.

As Lee probably remembers, Petty was probably more associated with what would have been called the 'pub rock' wing of new wave back in '77.

I fell in radio-love with "Breakdown" (white boy reggae didn't have the stigma then it would quickly gain), bought the album and went to see them that year, with an opening act I'd been hearing vague buzz on for a while -- a buzz I incorrectly associated with the punk/new wave scene -- but it was actually the across the Strip (from the then-punk/new music oriented Whisky A Go Go) hair band scene at Gazzaris (an apparently mobbed up club on the south side of the Strip, across the street from the Whisky that specialized in glam-metal hair bands -- the then-owner was later implicated in the Laurel Canyon porn murders and other crimes) that gave us TP's opening act. When that opening act, Van Halen, came out, I was expecting scruffy street kids -- but there were guys with pounds of Aquanet in their bee hive hair dos and -- the image is still burned into my unbelieving eyes -- striped, skin-tight lyrcra pants. It was truly horrific. I thought it was gawdawful and I thought Van Halen's playing was tweedly, boring, moronic. (Suffice it to say when their debut album came out, I was pretty incredulous, since the music was stripped down, the lyrics not at all bad in a couple of cases, and the guitar playing visceral and not particularly tweedly -- although, of course, he later proved he could still go there.)

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(click through to go to YT if you want to read the lyrics in the more info section)

OK... there's a couple tweedles in there. But, I have to say, this actually sounds better than I remembered.

This is an interesting FIT, since all but one of the songs here are old favorites of one sort or another.

Public Enemy -- everyone else in my neighborhood (who flew their freak flag loud enough for me to hear) was listening to NWA but I was listening to PE and Fela. (I'm pretty sure that, while some of them might have recognized Public Enemy, they had no clue who or what Fela Kuti was.)

Kinks -- saw 'em 3 times in the 70s (once, semi-forgotten, early in the decade, touring colleges for the Arthur album and twice late in the decade after their comeback, for Schoolboys in Disgrace and Misfits, as I recall it). The second two were from the muy rico seats at the old (topless) Universal Amphitheater, from the third row -- a friend's sister was an exec for Uni and turned us on to all the stuff she wasn't interested in, like the Kinks, Randy Newman and Ry Cooder, you know, boring stuff like that. So there would be this set of scruffy street-punk looking types mixed in with all the show biz suits, rock crits, and celebs. It was pretty hilarious. They always looke bored no matter how good the music was. Why did they even go?

Small Faces and Humble Pie -- yeah... some great moments from both outfits. I always thought it interesting going from the ripe psychedelia of the Small Faces to the stripped down blues rock of Humble Pie. More power to Marriott, who had one of those archetypal rock voices.

Not a big fan of PR & the Raiders in general but "Kicks" is just a great, great song. I really love it.

The Animals -- the voice of the working class. Damn, what a song, what a band. And what a studio set on the then-apparently-new Hullabaloo, huh? The 'living trophies' on the wall are just amazingly creepy-cool. Accent on creepy.

Another great Animals hit was their cover of "I Don't Want to be Misunderstood" -- I love to listen to theirs back to back with Nina Simone's utterly compelling version. Neither one argues against the other. Both great, great versions.

Snew -- uh... yow. Seeing faked out bimbos massaging their saline sac implants just does not do it for me. With regard to this song, "Head Trauma" -- do they have to send royalty checks (or blackmail pay offs) to the Starz? The song sounds suspiciously like "Pull the Plug." (Yes, it really is a song about euthanasia.) More guitar fireworks with the Starz, though.

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I listened to that. Nice stuff. I particularly liked the work on the tele. Somewhat ambiguous chords, some missing thirds and 2s, 4s, and or 6s here and there. Sweet.

Nice backing track to work with. The drums have character and the phat tones of the organ must have been a pleasure to hear as you were laying down the guitar work.

A sad story, indeed. Steve had both soul and raw power in his voice. Drugs may have been a big part of removing inhibitions to allow him to be "that guy" on stage, but they surely took a toll on the rest of his life.

Why are so many people opposed to Asian children? People are always trying to discourage youth in Asia? I just don't get it?

Say goodnight, Gracie. Er, Robby.

Tom Petty has been consistently good for a very long time. I liked Mojo, and just after Mojo I dusted off Damn the Torpedos for a few spins, and that still sounded good too.

TP is one of those acts that I should like more than I actually do. He's got all the qualities that I respect and enjoy, I just never fell in love with him despite (or perhaps because of) constant exposure. Maybe it's because he is a half generation younger than his peer group and thus feels a little derivative, maybe because he makes it look so easy sometimes it seems like he doesn't need to care.