Review: Expanded Vinyl Reissue of Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers' 'Long After Dark'

Because their videos were staples in the early days of MTV, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers always had a vague new-wave whiff, even though they were really sixties-rock revivalists in the jangly Byrds/Love mode. They actually embraced some specific semblance of new-waveyness when experimenting with synthesizers on their first post-MTV LP, Long After Dark. The video for the synth-laced "You Got Lucky' even had a sort of futuristic Mad Max-on-a-budget feel. However, the foundation of the track was pure Arthur Lee-toughness, and that barely compromised rock and roll attitude flushed through the rest of the album, too. 

Review: 'I Want My MTV: The Uncensored Story of the Music Video Revolution'

With that barrage of commercials instructing 7-year-old me to call my cable company and demand my MTV, I was hooked on the new basic–cable channel showing nothing but music videos even before it finally came to New York in 1982. It was the classic scenario: my sister and I would come home from school ever day, ditch our textbooks in the nearest wastebasket, plop a few inches from the T.V. screen, and vegetate until our parents came home and read us the riot act about consuming so much sexed-up, violent crap starring weird-looking specimens like Boy George, Madonna, and the increasingly cadaverous Mick Jagger. That, of course, just deepened our addiction to MTV. Years away from even becoming a record buyer, I couldn’t consume enough music videos. I wanted my MTV, and when I got it, I OD’ed. By the time that initial golden age passed, my tastes evolved beyond new wavy one-hit-wonders and made no room for shitty hair metal. I’d pretty much had enough of MTV at that mid-‘80s turning point, even as I was still strangely compelled to spend hours and hours watching it. Perhaps Martha Quinn and J.J. Jackson were too deep in my bloodstream to purge them completely.