BEFORE: All right, it's time for a break, a couple of concerts to mark the halfway point in this year's Doc Block. A concert film is still a documentary, of sorts, at least the way I count it - I've been dropping one or two in each year, if they're significant, like Billy Joel's 100th concert at MSG or Elton John's final concert anywhere. Tonight I'm dropping in two specific ones because they're going to keep the linking alive, I really only need ONE of them but I'm going to do two because it works out, also no other doc or concert film works to represent tomorrow's state.
Now, I recorded this particular Tom Petty concert a while ago, it ran on the AXS channel - I didn't think I'd be able to work it in, I just kind of kept it on my upstairs DVR so I could watch it a bit at a time, like when there was nothing else to watch, which is really never. But it turned out to be just the thing I needed to not break the chain, and as Fleetwood Mac sang, "Never break the chain."
I was going through some old DVDs in preparation for something else, and I went through a bunch of concerts I burned to DVD years ago, and then I realized I already HAD this concert on disc, so once I confirm that it is, in fact the same concert (which it is, the Heartbreakers 30th anniversary spectacular) now I can delete it from the DVR and free up some space. And it's great that I had it on disc, too, because the damn cable was out last night when I got home late and I would not have been able to stay up too long watching it if I had to rely on the cable or internet. OK, pop in that DVD, let's get started, it's already 1 am but sleep is for lesser men...
Tom Petty carries over from being seen in the Traveling Wilburys in "Roy Orbison Forever" and I think you can guess who's carrying over to tomorrow, as in Don't Stop Thinking About Tomorrow, because it'll soon be here. But in the meantime, what state can I possibly profile tonight, because Tom Petty and his band are from Florida, and I already had the Chris Evert and Martina Navratilova doc represent Florida. Well, I have to go back to music trivia, Tom Petty's first band was called Mudcrutch, and they drove up to Tulsa to record their first album. Also, the Heartbreakers kicked off their 40th Anniversary U.S. tour in Oklahoma City, so there you go, it's OKLAHOMA tonight:
Date admitted to the U.S.: November 16, 1907 (46th state)
Claim to fame: One very famous Rodgers & Hammerstein musical, and one domestic terror attack.
Nickname: Sooner State, it's got something to do with settlers entering early to claim land, I think
State Motto: "Labor omnia vincit" or "work conquers all". Thanks, but I'm out.
State Flower: Oklahoma rose
State Fish: Sand bass. Sounds delicious.
State Bird: Scissor-tailed flycatcher
State Tree: Redbud. Not familiar with that one.
State mammal: American bison
State amphibian: Bullfrog
State beverage: Milk - jesus, if every state is going to pick milk, what's the point? It should only be one state per beverage, otherwise everybody's just going to be lazy.
Notable Sports Teams: Just one major-league team, the Oklahoma Thunder in the NBA. Seems about right, the rest is all college level stuff.
Fun Facts: It was originally planned as an all-Native American state, I guess to try and make up for the infamous "Trail of Tears" relocation, which of course was a forced displacement and ethnic cleansing. For a while the oil industry was focused there, Tulsa was called the "Oil Capital of the World" at one point. Also the original stretch of Route 66 was from Amarillo, TX to Tulsa, and it just kind of expanded out from there, until it hit Chicago on one end and the Pacific Ocean on the other. The state is now also known as "Prison Capital of the World", with over one out of every 1,000 residents in lock-up, as of 2018.
No, I've never been to Oklahoma, so I'm holding at 20 states visited out of 26.
THE PLOT: In 2006, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers returned to Gainesville, Florida, where it all started, to play their first hometown show in 13 years.
AFTER: It's the 20 year anniversary of this concert (and the album "Highway Companion") and this was the 30th anniversary of the band, so that means that 2026 is the FIFTIETH anniversary of the band, which never officially broke up, but come on, they're not doing anything without their captain. This concert exists in a number of different versions, it's been released and re-released, I think, but essentially it's the same material in all formats. The longer version that aired on AXS had ONE extra song, "Southern Accents". You know what, I'm good with what I have on DVD.
It certainly helped my linking to know that Stevie Nicks recorded a duet with Tom Petty back in the day, and that she went out on tour with the Heartbreakers in 2006, so Fleetwood Mac must have been dormant that year or its members were fighting, it's tough to say. But she wasn't just one-and-done here, she sang lead or back-up on at least four songs here, an extra harmony is always welcome, but she couldn't help but dance around with a bunch of silks and really "Stevie Nicks" up those songs. It's what she does.
I've caught up with a lot of older bands over the years, sometimes past their prime, sometimes without all of the original members, and sometimes catching them JUST at the right time - like we saw the band Boston perform, and it was the ONE tour where every person who'd ever been in the band was on stage together. That's an accomplishment, because their last two or three albums were just Tom Scholz composing, singing and playing all the parts electronically. We saw Chicago without Peter Cetera, Journey without Steve Perry, and REO Speedwagon without Gary Richrath, but at least we SAW those bands - I never got to see Tom Petty play live, and he kind of became my favorite over the years, and not just because we shared the same birthday. (Not the same year, he was like 18 years older than me.)
If you live long enough, you maybe get to see a lot of bands, and also a lot of bands you like lose a member through attrition or in-fighting or death. So yeah, musically for me it's been all downhill since Tom Petty passed in 2017. Like if I could have just seen him perform the whole "Wildflowers" album in concert, that would have been enough for me, I wouldn't need all the other hits, but there were plenty of those. Here's the set list for this 30th Anniversary concert film:
Part 1:
"Listen to Her Heart"
"Mary Jane's Last Dance"
"I Won't Back Down"
"Free Fallin'"
"Saving Grace"
"I'm a Man" (Bo Diddley song)
"Oh Well" (Fleetwood Mac song)
"Handle with Care" (Traveling Wilburys song)
"Stop Draggin' My Heart Around" (w/Stevie Nicks)
"I Need to Know" (w/Stevie Nicks)
"Runnin' Down a Dream"
Part 2:
"You Wreck Me"
"It's Good to Be King"
"Insider" (w/Stevie Nicks)
"Learning to Fly"
"Don't Come Around Here No More"
"Mystic Eyes"
"American Girl"
I mean, that's a damn CONCERT. I could have used another hour, sure, like why leave out "Don't Do Me Like That", "Refugee", "Here Comes My Girl", "Even the Losers" and "Breakdown", those are all conspicuous in their absence. But I get it, you can only do so many hits on each tour when you have that many. And "The Waiting", what about "The Waiting"? I hear it's the hardest part. And what about "You Got Lucky", for Chrissakes?
For the newer songs, what about "Into the Great Wide Open"? That's another great song. And my personal favorites, "Built to Last" and "Walls (Circus)" (that last one came from the soundtrack to a movie, "She's the One", but damn, I love that song.). And what about "Love Is a Long Road", do these songs just not play well in concert or something? I get that there were already three songs from "Wildflowers" on the set list, but how do you not perform "You Don't Know How It Feels"? Damn, I'm trying very hard to not get angry over what they left out.
I guess what I'm saying is that if I had been to a Tom Petty concert, and he wanted to take that opportunity to play his entire catalog, I might not have minded. When your band has a 30th, 40th anniversary and SO many albums to choose from (and some count as "band" albums and some count as Tom Petty solo albums, I know, it's a bit confusing) then inevitably something's got to be left out. Even Weird Al Yankovic is at the point where he can't play everything on every tour, he's got to pick and choose what themes he wants to put out there this time around - does he want to just do the parodies, or do everything BUT the parodies, or do all the originals, or the polka medleys, etc. I guess since Ms. Nicks was available for this tour, that naturally led them to the two songs she recorded with Petty, plus a few others where she could sing back-up or otherwise lend a harmony here and there.
Another issue with turning a rock concert into a concert film is the pacing, like I know the film doesn't have to show the songs in the SAME order they were performed, they can play a little fast and loose with that. If they do, I can usually tell by the fact that a lead singer might go through a few costume changes during the show, because sweat and all that, so if Petty's green shirt is suddenly white and then goes back to green, well they probably moved a song from late in the evening up to the first half for some reason. I think it has a lot to do with the energy level of each song, most bands save their most powerful numbers for the encores, so they can take a long rest right after that. So I suspect here that "Runnin' Down a Dream" and maybe also "You Wreck Me" were encore songs that got moved up in the film's line-up because they wanted a high-energy song to close Part 1 with, but I don't have a formal set-list so there's no way to be sure.
Anyway, great concert tonight, it's the kind I wish I'd gone to when I had the chance - but we really favored bands on the nostalgia circuit, there's a venue on Long Island called Jones Beach and we usually picked ONE band to see each summer, ideally somebody we wished we'd seen during the 1980's or 90's and just missed out on because we were young and stupid then, also we thought those bands would be around FOREVER and sadly that just wasn't the case. Now I'm going to go listen to discs 2 and 4 (and who knows, maybe even 3) of "Playback", the Tom Petty box set.
Directed by Joe Thomas
Also starring Ron Blair (last seen in "Concert for George"), Steve Ferrone (ditto), Scott Thurston (ditto), Mike Campbell (last seen in "Sound City"), Benmont Tench (ditto), Stevie Nicks (last seen in "Yacht Rock: A Dockumentary")
RATING: 7 out of 10 bonus tracks
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