All you need is Mojo

I looked up the word Mojo in wickipedia. Maybe i wanted to see what the word meant or maybe i just wanted to see if it was a trait that i possessed. Anyway i found alot more definitions then i bargained for, but out of those i did find one definition that struck a common chord. It read a magical charmbag used in hoodoo! Now i don't know for sure what went thru Tom Petty's mind when he decided to title his latest release Mojo and i'm not for certain that he knows anymore about hoodoo then i do, (i hope all you songwriters caught the inner rhyme sceme with hoodo and i do) but his music definately for me has had a magical charm and has hynotized me into being a fan since 1976. That's a span of 34 years in an industry that most artists last 2- 5 years if they are lucky!

Now i don't want this ariticle to become a discography of Tom's hits or another preview of his new album. There will be plenty of those that you can read. Just go to his website or click on the numerous list of articles on Google. Personally i don't need a review to tell me Tom Petty is a true artist and i don't need a review to encourage me to buy the new album Mojo and every fan knows what i mean. I would like to talk more about the sound of his music. In 1961 when Tom was just 10 years old his uncle, (who was working on the set of the Elvis Presley film "follow that dream"), invited him down to the shoot where he introduced the youth to Elvis. He became an immediate fan and began listening to Elvis Pressley 45s. Later when seeing the Beatles on the Ed Sullivan show, he knew he wanted to be in a band.His first guitar teacher was Don Felder who later became the guitarist for the Eagles. When i listen to a Tom Petty record i can hear all these influences and much much more. His band experience includes Mudcrutch, Tom Petty and the heartbreakers, The traveling Wilbury's, a supergroup composed of Jeff Lynne, Bob Dylan,George Harrison and Roy Orbison, his solo stuff and his return to Tom Petty and the Heartbrakers. His loyalty over the years to for the most part the same band members shows alot about his character as a person. He has done some acting as well with a cameo in FM in 1978, Made in Heaven-1979,Several episodes of It's Gary Shandlings show-1987-1990, The Postman-1997, The simpsons-2002, and he is also the voice of Elroy "Lucky Keinschmidt in King of the Hill!

Tom Petty petty has a universal sound that satisfies the Rock n Roll crowd, the pop crowd, the blues crowd, the folk crowd, the indifferent crowd (there's alot of those these days lol) ect... i can take two groups of people from musical genres that oppose each other but for some reason they both like Tom Petty even though they would argue about everything else. Maybe that's why I like Tom Petty. One of the highlights in my long list of cover band experiences was to sing "Last Dance with Mary Jane" and come off the stage later to be told that i sounded just like Tom Petty. What an honor that was even if the listener only imagined it. So maybe for a moment i was really a rock star and i had Mojo, but i wouldn't have if it hadn't been for the help of Tom Petty!

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