A deeper look at the grooves pressed into the 2017 vinyl reissue of Full Moon Fever by Tom Petty. There’s no way to say for sure if the reason Tom Petty elected to launch his solo career with Full Moon Fever was because the singer felt like he had a surplus of songs that he didn’t want to bring to the Heartbreakers, or if he was just trying to make a point. If it was because he didn’t want to...

A deeper look at the grooves pressed into the 2017 vinyl reissue of Let Me Up (I’ve Had Enough) by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. Twelve years after they started, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers found themselves in a fairly unique position in pop music: they’ve been working long enough and had been influential enough that radio waves were beginning to get crowded which artists who cited the band as an influence – or at least seemed like it. On...

Welcome welcome welcome, dear readers. It’s that time of year again where we put away those swimming trunks and sandals, slap some lotion on those sunburns, rethink that shitty tattoo you got and look ahead on another scholarly year. This is going to be it! The year you apply yourself and finally take notes and not just cram the night before. You’re going to have to reward yourself for all these unquestionable accomplishments or at least have some stuff to...

A deeper look at the grooves pressed into the 2017 vinyl reissue of the Pack Up The Plantation: Live! 2LP set by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. It’s far a far less common occurrence now (when virtually every band in the universe releases a live album and, thanks to digital technology,is able to “fix” every flaw in the show in post-production) but, at one time, the release of a live album meant that the band in question was confident enough...

A deeper look at the grooves pressed into the 2017 vinyl reissue of Southern Accents by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. Throughout music history, many albums have been made which it is said are conflicted due to tensions apparent within the band Acoming out in the music. Some of those albums turn out to be phenomenal – there was conflict brewing in Nirvana and it came out in In Utero and it was great as were the cases with End...

A deeper look at the grooves pressed into the 2017 vinyl reissue of the Long After Dark LP by Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers. In the first half-decade of their association together, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers had already hit some pretty spectacular highs and lows on a condensed timeline. Virtually from day one, the group established that they had some great potential to write hits (see “American Girl,” “Here Comes My Girl” and “Rufugee” as easy and fantastic examples),...

The New Analog: Listening and Reconnecting in a Digital World by Damon Krukowski I think it’s believed that music nerds often prefer vinyl or analog sound over digital. Like we’re purists somehow who hate change or anything new. And while that’s true to some extent, and those music nerds who swear by vinyl and analog exist by the thousands, I’ve always sides with the format or delivery system that is most accessible to people, the format that goes from the...

Run the Jewels RTJ3 photo: turntablelab.com There was a period in the mid-2000s where I almost completely stopped listening to rap music. I don’t know if it was my ongoing exploration of punk, newly discovered love of folk, or what it was exactly, but I just couldn’t relate with the rap I was hearing on the radio or seeing on TV. Then, a conversation with Dillinger Four shed some light on the situation for me. As their bassist Paddy Costello...

A deeper look at the grooves pressed into the 2017 vinyl reissue of Hard Promises by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. When it comes to making a follow-up for a career-defining release, the catch is that whatever comes can often feel like a diminished return no matter how good it might be because the new music simply does not have the same spark which ignited the breakthrough of the previous album. It’s kind of heartbreaking to concede that possibility, but...

I Contain Multitudes: The Microbes Within Us and a Grander View of Life by Ed Yong Back in college, like any student, there were a plethora of classes I was forced to take that I didn’t really want to. One of those classes was microbiology. I was a bio major, but I thought microbiology meant looking at microscopes at more multicellular things. I was wrong. I also wasn’t a very good student, if that’s still not clear. It was a...