Remember the days when radio DJs actually had personalities and played the songs they wanted to? Remember? Before the corporate giants forced them out and used their own research to program the entire song selection? Tom Petty does. The Last DJ thrusts him and his Heartbreakers into the land of lyrical relevance. Enough songs on this album bash the fat-cat executives of the music industry that this could qualify as a concept album--the "loose concept" according to Petty.
The title track leads off Petty's lament:
There goes the last DJ
Who plays what he wants to play
Who says what he wants to say
Hey, hey, hey
Petty's hero, the last DJ who is a real "human voice," ends up losing his job and moving down to a small radio station in Mexico that you can still find every now and then through the static.
Next is "Money Becomes King," a story-song, reminiscent of "Into the Great Wide Open." Petty uses this track to tell the tale of Johnny, an artist who played for the love of the music, then eventually sold out to the industry. But the effects of the sell-out go beyond the artist and even dull the souls of his fans:
There was no use in pretending
No magic left to hear
All the music gave me
Was a craving for light beer
A couple of tracks later, Petty lets out all his angst. He explains in the DVD interview that the industry is no longer interested in ongoing acts. They use a band for an album, then immediately drop them for the newest thing without waiting to see if the band can make a second successful album. The song that best illustrates this view is "Joe":
Or bring me a girl
They're always the best
You put 'em on stage
And you have 'em undress
Some angel whore
Who can learn a guitar lick
Hey, that's what I call music
"Joe" is also one of the strongest musical tracks on this disc. It's slow, heavy, and angry. The Last DJ is a departure from the fast-rockin' Echo and probably any of Petty's work since Southern Accents. She's the One was about this slow, but not as heavy.
The title-track is the only one that really screams fast-rockin' Petty. "Lost Children" is the most ironic track on the album. It's a prayer for all the children who have been kidnapped or otherwise gone missing. But it's set to a riff-based blues that sounds like a giddy Jethro Tull. Great music, but it doesn't really set the mood for its lyrics.
The last half of the album has the typical love and rock 'n' roll lyrical themes albeit set to a slower pace than Petty has given us in most of his recent work. But there's not much memorable on this side. That is made up, however, by The Last DJ Sessions bonus DVD (included in specially marked packages). This DVD includes interviews with the band, explanations of the songs, and video clips from most of the studio recordings from The Last DJ.
While The Last DJ doesn't rock nearly as hard as Echo, its explosion of provocative lyrical content deserves to leave a mark on the music scene. But will the DJs play it?
3.5 tocks
Other coverage for this album
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