Respectable

Some of my favourite music is by people who are doing The Stones - and maybe making a better job of it.  There’s been a lot of it about over the years, so I know it’s not just me who thinks they’re a pretty good band.

I mean, if being copied by dozens of successful bands over 5 decades isn’t influential, then what is?

Hello Old Friend, Goodbye Old Friend

More than anyone else, Tom Petty had the ability to repackage all the music I love and play it back as something brand new.

While unique and original, each song arrived like an old friend you had somehow forgotten about.  Simple yet profound, each song delivered a straight up truth:  this is me; this is us; this is rock and roll.

Tom Petty gave us 40 years of honesty, hope, joy and comfort.

Goodbye old friend.  And thank you.

I Have My Freedom But I Don’t Have Much Time

Note to all you girls who drove me crazy in my final year of high school by playing Wild Horses on the cafeteria juke box every single day:  OK, you were right.  It’s a darn good song.

Big Pink Music

Not many bands or artists deserve their own list, but Rolling Stone was smart enough to do a readers’ poll on The Band’s Ten Greatest Songs, because they do (deserve their own list).

The songs included, like The Weight, It Makes No Difference, The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down, Up On Crippled Creek and Chest Fever, demonstrate the enormous range, power and influence these cats had.  Not to mention appeal.

I remember the tremendous buzz when Music From Big Pink came out.  I didn’t get it, because I was pre-occupied with the likes of Hendrix and Zeppelin and Deep Purple, but I remember many people treating it like one of those “everything is changed” moments. 

As the years go by, though, my appreciation deepens, and I understand why some of my other heroes like Eric Clapton and George Harrison dug them.  They were a drunkard’s dream if ever I did see one.

Good Ol' (English) Boys

I listened to Sticky Fingers in its entirety for the first time in decades the other day (as I transferred my vinyl to cassette, then again later to CD, then again later to MP3, the "playlists" shrunk each time, justifying the narrow-mindedness of classic rock radio, but that's a different story).

Anyway, sure they were the self-proclaimed "world's greatest rock and roll band," but the Stones were so country.  The music oozes south.  It's not classic rock, hard rock, British rock, psychedelic era hard rock, or blues rock (OK, maybe it's actually all of those things).  But more than anything, it's southern rock.

And how southern rock is it?  It's so southern, I've decided the Stones weren't doing southern, they were southern (are, I guess).  They are so southern the southern bands are trying to sound like them versus vice versa.  They own the sound, and bands from The Allman Brothers to the Black Crowes to Collective Soul have been trying to copy them ever since. 

Sorry, bro' but that's what it sounds like from up here in the Great White North.