Let's go have potato salad

The post title is the last line of one of my favorite Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers' songs, "Heartbreaker Beach Party." I don't know which album it's on, or maybe it's a rarity, but Jim has had the song forever, and I love silly songs like that. I also love potato salad.

Of course one must reminisce about Thomas Earl Petty's music this week on the sad event of his untimely death. Jim and I have seen him in concert a handful of times and Petty and his band have always been good value as a musical act.

So when I saw that a local group of musicians were getting together to celebrate the music and life of Thomas Earl (for a pretty decent ticket price of $10) I jumped on the chance to purchase. Lucky too, because the show sold out in only a day. This was a relatively unplanned concert, since the loose association of musicians known as All Tomorrow's Petty, doesn't play very often, and weren't planning on performing as the group until Tom died suddenly on Monday evening. So the show was put together in 18 hours or so. One of the performers expressed a happy surprise that the show was sold out; he thought it was just going to be the group and a couple dozen of their friends. Hundreds showed up, and some were turned away at the door (like the guy ahead of us in line for instance).

I had heard of this group before, and wanted to go to one of their shows, but it was the same night as the McCartney concert, which we had tickets for already.

This group delivered an extremely energetic 3+ hours of all Tom Petty music. They even included two Traveling Wilburys songs, which pleased me immensely (I heart the Traveling Wilburys).

The musicians didn't always remember the words, and sometimes they played wrong notes, but isn't that the beauty of a live performance? Spontaneity and realness. They were loud, happy, and fans of Tom. And Jim and I grooved.