The Strings on His Axe Go Jangle, Jangle, Jangle

Album: Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, Pack Up the Plantation LIVE, 1985

Best Track: "Rebels"

Lasting Memory: Every single gol'durn one

I have so much to say about the music Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers recorded between 1976 ("American Girl") and 1985 ("Southern Accents"), I don't know where to start.

Famous movie director Peter Bogdanovich had so much to say, he didn't know where to stop, stringing together a 4-hour documentary that somehow still doesn't do the subject justice.

Learning from Bogdanovich's noble failure, then, I will just assert that -- rather than try to explain why -- while 'The Waiting" is one of my top-5 all-time favorite songs it doesn't measure up to the live version of "Rebels" on Pack Up the Plantation LIVE.

I'll also pass along the "Rebels" lyrics because I find them funny and sad in equal measure:

Honey don't walk out, I'm too drunk to follow
You know you won't feel this way tomorrow
Well, maybe a little rough around the edges
Or inside a little hollow,
I get faced with some things, sometimes
That are so hard to swallow, hey!

Chorus

I was born a rebel, down in Dixie
On a Sunday mornin'
Yeah with one foot in the grave
And one foot on the pedal, I was born a rebel

She picked me up in the mornin', and she paid all my tickets
Then she screamed in the car
Left me out in the thicket
Well I never woulda dreamed
That her heart was so wicked
Yeah but I keep comin' back
'Cause it's so hard to kick it, hey, hey, hey

(Repeat Chorus)

Even before my father's father
They called us all rebels
While they burned our cornfields
And left our cities leveled
I can still feel the eyes of those blue-bellied devils
Yeah, when I'm walking round at night
Through the concrete and metal, hey, hey, hey

Oh, the stories that man can tell.

Up Next: Sam Phillips, Martinis & Bikinis, 1994