I watched the Porter Wagoner Show most every week when I was a kid, mostly because it was better than the preaching or the fishing shows on the other channels. Watching the reruns on RFD TV this past year, I’ve realized how much Porter taught me about music and how much I learned about lusting after women from the way he stared at Dolly Parton.
Wagonmaster is Porter’s best album since the 1960s and one of my favorites this year. I’m just glad he stuck around long enough to get some credit.
Porter died tonight in Nashville. Goodnight, brother.
There’s no chapter, paragraph or even footnote about Love Monsters in the history of Boston rock. As far as I know, their entire career unfolded behind the gates of Harvard University.
I don’t think the band would have left a trace if they hadn’t won a 1983 campus Battle of the Bands.
After a surprise upset over Speedy & the Castanets, someone thought Love Monsters should release a 7″ to commemorate their victory. I’m not sure this record was ever distributed off-campus and the band broke up when Dan Wilson graduated.
Harvard bands were generally pretty terrible and Love Monsters most definitely the great exception. Matt and Dan Wilson had played Boston clubs in Animal Dance the year before (no Animal Dance 45s or cassettes, as far as I know) and went on to greater things in Trip Shakespeare, but Love Monsters played just for the college kids.
I’m sad to report that Speedy and the Castanets qualified as terrible. There was absolutely no hint that Dean Wareham and Damon Krukowski would later go on to form Galaxie 500 with Naomi Yang.
Trip Shakespeare’s A&R person at A&M would have liked to hear “Kiss Away the Tears,” a genuine love song stripped of all the weird lyrical obsessions that have plagued Matt Wilson’s commercial development (cf. “Rebecca” on this EP).
The Harvard Crimson newspaper archive offers some interesting real-time commentary:
International playboy Jethro Bodine runs his game on Edy Williams, before she became Mrs. Russ Meyer and starred as Ashley St. Ives in Beyond the Valley of the Dolls.
Before I get into this, I want to be clear: Tom Petty is the Man. For most of the 70s & 80s, Tom was the only guy on mainstream radio you could be sure still listened to his copy of Nuggets.
Runnin’ Down a Dream looks amazing, if only because a four-hour DVD cut will allow them to use as much vintage footage of the band as they can find.
But here what Tom says at about 2:50 in to the trailer:
“There’s something special about this group of people. I treasure it now, because one link in the chain gone could make it all go away.”
What the hell?
Is that comment highlighted because the kid who edited the trailer thought it sounded uplifting or is it a cheap shot at ex-drummer Stan Lynch?
Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers managed to alternate between Ron Blair & the late Howie Epstein on bass, but things haven’t been the same since Stan quit in 1994. Steve Ferrone may be a more technically accomplished player, but Stan meshed better with the band.
Maybe it’s out of context and there will be half an hour’s worth of serious Stan love in the completed film.
Or maybe I just have an overdeveloped ear for band politics. I thought the Bruce Springsteen Wings for Wheels documentary was most notable for how everyone went out of his way to make amends and give credit to Mike Appel. And all I can remember about Michael Stipe’s speech at R.E.M.’s Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction is how he pointedly left Jefferson Holt off a thank-you list of what seemed like a hundred people.
Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers = still worth seeing any night you can get a ticket. But it was better when Stan was in the band.
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