I went and saw The Black Crowes and Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers play live this past weekend with my friend Sam Velde, who is hands down the biggest Black Crowes fan I know. It was a great show. There’s just something about big concerts, maybe it’s the whole act of having to stand in the middle of a few thousand stoned and drunk southern Californian rock n’ roll fans. Even if the bands suck, the people-watching is usually entertaining enough. The guy standing behind us kept shouting out "PETTYMEISTER!" at the top of his lungs. Plus we kept getting passed these funny smelling cigarettes. The bands were good too… I’m a pretty big Tom Petty fan, I even own his weird 80’s records, but after seeing The Black Crowes it kinda seemed like old Tom was going through the motions a bit. Don’t get me wrong, he was still good but after seeing Chris Robinson and company shake n’ boogie for about an hour, Tom just seemed a little slow and robotic. He even repeated some stage banter he used on their last live dvd, which is always a bummer. But the bottom line is, no matter how loafy Tom gets, his tunes are always undeniably great. Sure he’s a fake Dylan… but then again he was in a band with Zimmerman (The Traveling Wilburys) and no matter what he’s still an amazing songwriter. In honor of last weekends concert and the good time had by us, here is "Something in The Air" for your downloading pleasure.  This was one of my favorite late-era Tom Petty songs.  That is until I realized that it’s actually cover of a Thunderclap Newmanoff song off of their lone album called "Hollywood Dream" (which Pete Townshend of The Who produced). Here’s both versions of this song. Tom Petty’s version can only be found on his "Greatest Hits" cd (same with "Mary Jane’s Last Dance"), which is a great place to start is you don’t own any albums by this old man. If you’ve already got that bad boy I recommend these three records: "Damn the Torpedoes", "Hard Promises" & "Into The Great Wide Open". I think I’m gonna check out The Crowes again in two weeks at the Long Beach Blues Festival with Sam and Mr. Joe "Popcorn" Burns.

(Thunderclap Newman - "Something In The Air")

(Tom Petty - "Something In The Air")