Rest in Peace, Tom Petty

In the shadow of one of the worst shootings in American history, in between the news network full coverage, and the madness that follows such things, we have lost one of our great musical lights. Tom Petty was found unconscious yesterday morning, and finally, after much heartache and misinformation, pronounced dead of cardiac arrest at the age of 66, early last night.

The first time I saw or heard Tom Petty, or Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, was in the movie FM, friends had referred to him as the new Mick Jagger. I don't know how accurate that is or was, but it was memorable. His music was the sound of my teens, my twenties, and so on, it truly mapped the 1970s, the 1980s, and 1990s for me. Hard Promises was one of three albums I bought with my very first paycheck. The great thing about Petty albums consistently is that you not only got the hits like "A Woman in Love (It's Not Me)" and "The Waiting," you also got AOR tunes and hidden gems like "A Thing About You," "Kings Road," and "The Criminal Kind." Yeah, I wore those grooves out.

I can remember having two, not just one, cassettes of Tom Petty's songs recorded from the radio when I first got a cassette recorder. He was an FM rock favorite and almost all of his music got airplay. Even before I graduated high school in 1982 (and Petty was white suburban FM rock and roll then) he had a catalog that included some of the best of the time, from "American Girl" and "Breakdown" to "Listen to Her Heart" and "I Need to Know." He was not a favorite, like Bowie or Prince, but man, he was always there, and always rocking. Yeah, he was a favorite, I just didn't know it.

Later favorite albums would include Long After Dark, which holds a special place in my heart for getting me my first date with a college girlfriend. She was a Petty fan, and my inside knowledge of when the album was coming out (easily found in Billboard magazine which I read obsessively when I worked at the college radio station) dazzled her enough to date me. This album also included Petty's move into the MTV era from that of FM AOR. I remember loving the post-apocalyptic music video for "You Got Lucky," the red vinyl single for "Change of Heart," and my favorite tune off the album, the B-side "Between Two Worlds."

My favorite Petty song comes from the next album Southern Accents, an album full of oddities mixed into the usual southern rock and roll highlights. This one had the hilarious country ditty "Spike" about a punk rocker, as well as the hit single with acid trip video, "Don't Come Around Here No More," coolly co-written by genius co-producer Dave Stewart from Eurythmics. But it was the weird dance vibe of "It Ain't Nothin' to Me," also with Stewart, that still blows me away. I don't know why, but I love this song even today and turn it up whenever I hear it.

Later Tom Petty, already a superstar in his own right, would officially go solo from the Heartbreakers, and also join with Bob Dylan, Jeff Lynne, Roy Obrbison, and George Harrison to form the supergroup the Traveling Wilburys. Petty, with and without the Heartbreakers, would continue to release albums and singles through to 2014. He was always producing and always innovating. We have lost another legend, a man who filled my life with music, creating a soundtrack of memories. We will all miss Tom Petty. Rest in peace, man.

Lost Hits of the New Wave #38

"Everywhere That I'm Not" by Translator

I came very late to this one. I know I had heard it on the radio and on the dance floor, but really I paid it no mind until hearing it multiple times on First Wave satellite radio. I even remember seeing the 45 RPM single at my old college radio station, but never put it on a turntable. My loss.

Active since 1979, this San Francisco synth band has made a career of sounding British, or at least mining the British sound of not just the new wave, but also punk, psychedelia, and even classic rock vibes. Still active today their influence can be heard in many of the acts of the 1980s, and this was their biggest hit.

Whoopi Goldberg Presents Moms Mabley

Whoopi Goldberg Presents Moms Mabley ~ I know I must have seen her or heard her at some point, growing up in the late 1960s and 1970s, but the truth is I didn't really become aware of Moms Mabley until I was in college.

At the Community Center where the radio station was at Camden County College there was a very large but friendly security guard named Don. He was a good guy, but understand me, he did not need his uniform to intimidate someone. Don could have made an excellent living as a bodyguard or a professional wrestler. As far as the Center went, and the radio station, being a security guard, he came and went as he pleased.

I came in for a radio shift one night and found Don in the production studio laughing heartily at a record he was playing in there. He'd found it in the record library and had to hear it, rushing right in there to put it on the turntable. It was Moms Mabley, specifically Moms Mabley Live at Sing Sing, and Don told me as we listened for a bit that she was the funniest woman in the world.

I believed him. She was damned funny, and more than that, she was real - she was telling it like it is. As for Don, I had never heard a man laugh so hard and happily before, and rarely since. That was my introduction to Moms Mabley.

Now, some thirty years later I find this documentary on HBO Go called Whoopi Goldberg Presents Moms Mabley. Whoopi, who for a time impersonated Moms in her act, puts together a nice biography of the lady. Meshing her life story with actual footage and interviews with contemporaries and those influenced by her, we're given a fair depiction of Jackie 'Moms' Mabley.

Despite (or some might say because of) her race, her age, and her sexuality, Moms Mabley made her way in a world against her, breaking down barriers that barred many in her time. She did it with humor and truth, a role model and inspiration for us all.

If I had any complaint about this doc, it's that it needed more footage and/or recordings of Moms. I'm going to go find some now, you should to, whether you see this terrific documentary or not. Recommended.

RIP MCA

We are losing far too many folks from the music world of late. News came earlier today of the passing of Adam Yauch A.K.A. MCA of the Beastie Boys. The hip hop pioneer had been fighting cancer for several years. He was 47.

In the early 1980s Yauch formed the Beastie Boys with Adam Horovitz (Ad-Rock), Mike Diamond (Mike D) and Michael Schwartz (Mixmaster Mike) - and changed the face and style of music for decades afterward. I first encountered them in college with the novelty tune "Cooky Puss," and a year or so later when I saw the music video for "She's On It," I was hooked, a Beastie fan for life.

We've lost one of the fun, funky and forceful voices of my generation, MCA will be missed.

Lost Hits of the New Wave #12

"Living on the Borderline" by Smash Palace



In our last two entries in this series, I talked about Quincy and Lulu Temple. Let's consider this part three.

Smash Palace was the final edition of this band, and rumor has it they are still around from time to time.

"Living on the Borderline" was released in 1985 and I heard it out in clubs, and on other college radio stations in the area.

Lost Hits of the New Wave #11

"Don't Say No to Me" by Lulu Temple



We've talked about Quincy before, and how I discovered college radio, it's all here. One of the most important things in college radio is support. Now I was involved with my college radio station, and it needed a lot of support.

I didn't go to the University of Pennsylvania with WXPN, Drexel with WKDU, Trenton State College with WTSR, or Princeton with WPRB. I went to Camden County College, yeah, thirteenth grade, and their radio station, FM mono WDBK, was, if anything, a weak second cousin to those big four of area college radio.

We needed a lot of support. So we featured a lot of local artists, among them, the former Quincy, who had formed very locally at Haddon Heights High School. Quincy had to change their name to Lulu Temple because of pressure from Quincy Jones, so their second release, Don't Say No, came out under that name. The album had a difference in sound as well with added horns. I dug the title song a lot and gave it much airplay.

Lost Hits of the New Wave #10

"Turn the Other Way Around" by Quincy

You know all that 1970s movies and television about teenagers in high school just hanging out? You know how every kid represented a stereotype or a character type? There was always the one geeky kid who was carrying a radio or sometimes even an early boombox whose entire life revolved around that radio? Yeah, that was me circa 1979-1980 and later unfortunately. It's true, I was almost "Angie Baby."

I used to play this game with my friends, where they would turn the dial from one end of the FM band to the other, stopping at each broadcasting station, and if it was music, I would have to, and usually could name the song title, the artist, and sometimes the album. So yeah, there was a time when I was a vast storehouse of useless knowledge for not just comics, but also pop music.

That running from band end to band end made me discover a whole new world before 92.5 FM (at the time WIFI, a top 40 outlet), - college radio. One of the first new bands I heard on these buried treasure radio stations playing music I had never heard before was local band Quincy.

Lost Hits of the New Wave #5

"Save a Prayer" by Duran Duran.

When it comes to the New Wave, Duran Duran is one of the major names that comes up. Pretty Boy Five were superstars in the early 1980s, and "Rio" is debatably one of their greatest albums. For many of us in that time and place, "Save a Prayer," officially the third single from that LP, could be considered our "Stairway to Heaven."

Like many songs from UK acts in those days, the US didn't get stuff until much later. By the time "Save a Prayer" was released here, we'd all heard it a million times on college radio. It didn't matter, we still loved it, and amazingly the tune holds up wonderfully today. The video was beautifully shot by film director Russell Mulcahy in Sri Lanka.