Dissect DJs - Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers - American Girl

Episode Date: July 2, 2024

Happy Independence Day Week y'all! Episode 124 celebrates the good ole' USA by breaking down an American classic with Tom Petty's 1976 hit "American Girl". Lyric by lyric we dissect one of the all-time cover band anthems, and try to see if there's an actual story here or if it's just a simple celebration of one our nation's finest commodities.  Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Hey Of July, everyone And welcome To the Dicex Fireworks Adding fireworks DJs Or will they

Who knows I think we made a good fireworks Maybe there's just fireworks in the room You know why that is? Because we are the DJs They like to spin it

Mix it Throw it back And DJ Castle DJ Jack Back with you once again Oh yeah, it's Fourth of July. Castle and I have, this is one of our favorite holidays.

To be honest, I feel like every holiday, because we got Halloween. We might miss Thanksgiving, but we love Christmas. I would put it up there with Halloween as our top Halloween new holiday for us. It has to be one or two. Halloween's number one forever. But it has to come into it because we always get dressed up. This outfit, Castle was speaking, has made many of appearances. He brought it out again?

I don't know how many times I've seen it because it's not just a Fourth of July outfit. It makes appearances also at Memorial. Day. World Day. Whatever. Any Patriotic holiday. Justin has one shirt and it always slays. And you could tell, it's kind of a, not even a blue anymore.

It's like they're red, white, and gray. But in case you haven't noticed, I don't know if you demonstrated, that goes all the way down. There you go. Don't do that. No, there's no good way to do it. Okay, sit out, sit out, sit down. That idea, that idea. Yeah, tights down to the floor.

Full body suit. Just on his full body suit, patriotic guy, every 4th of July. Yes. And any patriotic holiday, there's reason to get out. And I've come to find that, you know, people love it and people don't like it. Apparently this is like, apparently you're not supposed to wear the flag. I didn't, I didn't, I don't realize this. I'm a costume wearer.

So like, you're not supposed to wear a flag. You tell me to be a flag, I'm going to be an Indian. I'm going out. I'm wearing, I'm going in now. I just wear costumes. I don't look at them any different, but people, who, you should think. Justin's unbothered by costumes and such. Everybody else.

There's certain ones I won't do, but I won't tell you. But for the most part, I'm pretty costume. Cousinato. Especially when it comes to being patriotic. It's just an excuse for Justin throwing his tights and, like, get out there and party. You know, he's got the shirt ready to go. What is he going to wear black? What is he going to wear green?

You're going to wear seafone blue? You know what I'm going to do? Don't do. What do you? Oh, God. That's right. It's hot here. That's a move that he usually holds off until about noon.

But it's hot. And we only have so much time in this episode. Okay. That was exciting. Puerto Rican, actually, which is part of America. And, well, never mind. This is a great time to remind everybody of our video podcast on YouTube because if you're listening to this, you don't know what the hell is going on.

I'm just hearing a lot of patriotic chaos. Just know that Justin is putting on a show. Yeah, you got to watch. I did this on purpose. You want fireworks? Follow us and watch us. This is a watching video. If you're listening,

say it for later and go watch. What am I doing to the camera right now? Pointing. Okay, well, fucking, all right. I was going to do a thing where I'd be like. No, no, I was going to say, you won't know what I'm doing to the camera unless you watch the video and you killed it.

I did it by my cousin video on you right there. What am I holding right now? What am I holding? It might be anything. Let the jury. know that Castle is holding a bottle. Stop it. But you fucking,

okay. It's a bottle of gatory. Great movie. Anyways, we should dissect that movie. What? Which one? My cousin Vinnie.

Oh yeah. No, I love that. I'll be down. But that's not today. We're 4th of July and we are doing Tom Petty's American girl. And it comes out hot, man. He comes in with the guitar, comes in with the beat and just,

thing, builds up at the beginning. And then just gets into a story. What's he talking about? Let's go into the lyrics. Let's figure it out because all I've ever known is that main part of the song. I would venture to guess that that's all I really need to know. But let's see how Tom Petty, which by the way made this in 1976, the bicentennial, I believe is known as our nation when it became 200 years old. Yeah, so this was a big time.

There were probably a lot of patriotic celebration going on at this time in America. and Tom Petty then dropped this banger and everybody was like, let's celebrate one of our finest exports, commodities, I don't know. Our females, the female genre of America, one of the best things America has.

It's like that, fireworks, I don't know, watermelons, tires, got good tires, yeah, baseball stadiums, some great baseball stadiums. And girls, those are the firemen. things that's the top five things that america brings to the table and tom petty had to like he he

wanted to pay tribute and he wanted to sing about an american girl so let's hear how he does it well give it to me she was an american girl raised on promises she couldn't help thinking that there was a little more to life somewhere else uh i get that i get that i get that you think about a large portion in this country. Not just the country, man. You think about the world. There's so much world out there. And then you get stuck in this bubble.

That's true. But today we're thinking about America and we're just like condensing it to just America type of thing. So South America too or is this? No. Fuck South America, bro. Did they celebrate their independence on the 4th of July? You just pushed off so many of our listeners right now.

You realize we're very high. We love South America. Let us celebrate our country on this day. And you know what? Take my hand. There it is. Again, you need to see it. If you're watching the video, I'm holding it out there.

And let me bring with you on the celebration of our great country, America. In other countries that you just, like, you just did pull to me. First of all. On the entire. It is known that DICEK DJs loves all of our listeners worldwide. It's true. And we have a surprisingly large listenership from all over the world, and we love y'all. There's an island in the Caribbean where we are very high.

rated in the what was that one country we were in the we were number nine in a country in comedy podcast which is insane it was a small company was like uh it was it was a pretty sure that's the one it was a r sibo or not irisiebo it was it was an island in the caribbean we are one of the highest thing top ten podcasts because there's ten people and maybe it's a small population yeah but either way we're doing well in guam or whatever country it was um so anyways But yeah, there's a lot of places in the country. If you've ever done a drive across the country, there's so many states. Real quick, I know this is live, but we need to, each one of these episodes, we can actually translate to any language and then start pushing them in those areas.

I think that might push us very well. Like, we can change our language to Egyptian. If you could figure out how to do that since I do every goddamn other thing. For like it's tremendous. You'll do everything. Oh, you come up. You come show up, get your patriotic gear on, you party around, you parade in front of the camp. I appreciate it, and I appreciate that you do that.

Okay, so a whole bunch of the country, we drive across it. A lot of, like, small towns, a lot of just kind of like rural area, a lot of, like, farm lamb, a lot of rows of, like, just stock of stuff. So there's got to be a lot of people out there who kind of live and grow up in a town such as that. And they think they look out beyond the corn rows and they're like, bet you there's something else. And I think that's what Tom is referring to right here. After all, it was a great big world with lots of places to run to.

And if she had to die trying, she had one little promise she was going to keep. Oh, yeah. All right. Take it easy, baby. We'll dance all night. Make it last all night. Oh, shit, what was it? Make it last all night.

last all night. I think they both worked, to be honest. Yeah, dancing all night, rest on that. Either way, the point is she's, like, gonna party all night. I think that's what I got from it. And that's... She was an American girl.

This kind of cold that night. She started on you. She put in the... This song makes me feel so American. And that's why Justin has now put his pants on his head. That's just something that happens, apparently. The 4th of July, by 5 o'clock, there's a good chance that Justin will have his starstripe pants like over his head.

It just going to happen. It's going to happen. Seen it 100 times. Justin, where's the best place to celebrate 4th July to you? You know what? I'd be honest with you. This is going to sound very corny and annoying. It's anywhere you are, sir.

Fuck. But then why have we... It's not good. You're not going to give me no like. I made your heart belt with you a little bit. It warmed my heart. But it also made me think of all the times that I've like tried to get you out here in the fourth and you're just like, oh, no, I can't do it. I got blah, blah, blah, blah.

I've been out here, though. I've been out here like twice. I've got to go see my family. I've got out of the barbecue. Yeah, we've done that. But I've been out here twice with you. Yeah. We've done fourth twice.

We had that one that was during the pandemic. They were laying down all these restrictions like, oh, we're going to like close off the beach and the strand and nobody's going to be around. So I was like me living on, like right on the beach. I'm like, they're just. scaring away the tourists, but the real ones, the people that live here, they're still going to represent and we like skated around and once it got to like one, two o'clock, we're like, no, I think damn near everybody left this town. I've literally never seen the town more empty. It was that. We thought, we fully thought it was going to be a part. Yeah.

We had you, you and Greg there, we had an amazing team. We were ready to like just have a great day and like we were standing on my roof and it was like two o'clock and I remember looking out of the street a street which by the way it was like right on the beach and always had cars parked there's always no but not even just party there's just at any time any day there's always cars parked all along the street it's like right on the beach literally no cars parked the whole there and I was just like I don't think anything's going on here and they were both just like I'm probably just gonna go home then it was just it was like literally the sad as 4th of July I've ever had yeah that shit was crazy that whole year

Yeah, so I'm glad we made it out of that. Hey, give me some. You know, elbow bumped, elbow bump that. You guys remember that? I just, I brought that. I was watching a bar rescue episode yesterday for the pandemic. And they were doing elbow bumps and I just texted them. I was like, hey, remember fucking elbow bumps?

Did anybody ever do that? I feel like that was a thing that they tried to be like, hey, let's start doing elbow. Yeah, exactly. Leave me alone. If you're going to do the, we don't need any contact upon saying hello. if this is your what's up?

Yeah, dude, if anybody walked up to me with that, with an elbow, I'd just be like, nah, I'm, I'm good,

I'm good back here. Yeah, you could just, yeah, we don't need to, we don't, come on, hit that.

Hit that. Come on, bro. That, I don't know. It's just, oh, man, what a fucking crazy time.

We look back at some of it. Let's just, I'll celebrate the fact that we have made it through, That whole shenanes, and now we can celebrate our country the way we were intended to by throwing our patriotic pants on our head, running to the beach, not get arrested for doing so, and, you know, maybe just take a shot or two. Eat a hot dog. Take a shot of Jack, because they've made me think that that's America, even though I would never do that because I haven't had a shot of Jack since I was 21 because it is gross.

It's a great time to bring up our new sponsor, Jack Daniels. We finally got to sponsor this week. We told you guys. Hey, we're going to have one. We're just kidding. We'll take a shot of whiskey. We got to be careful. You might get sued.

Feel extremely patriotic as you do. I'm like you going to get sued if you say that. I'm promoting them. I'm telling you take a shot of. But then if they don't like this, we'll be like you guys. They don't listen to us. They're not from Guam. They're not American if they don't.

They do that. Okay. Should we get back to the lyrics? I think this is a great time I get back to the lyrics So we already went over verse one You want to go over verse two or are you not Yeah, hit it up

Do you want to? Sure Or no, I'll get them Not if you're going to look over I don't want you to do that Sure Well, it was kind of cold that night She stood alone on her balcony

Yeah, she could hear the cars Roll by Out on 4-4-1 Like waves crashing on the beach I assume the 4-4-1 is a highway I don't know Probably and for one desperate moment there

he crept back in her memory and we're getting some backstory of which I don't know exactly what we're referencing to but I'll roll with it okay there's a man just kind of like hovering around the memory like a fucking rain cloud like a genie that just popped out of a bottle just doing these God it's so painful when something that is so close

is still so far out of reach so home dude lives in a different part of the nation. Maybe that's why she feels like she needs to escape. Or maybe he is just a metaphor. I don't know. I don't know what the fuck Tom is talking about yet. But you know what I do know.

Oh yeah. All right. Take it easy, baby. Make a loud star mouse all night. She was an American girl. We never discussed that extra smooth breakdown they do, right here. You talk about a little bass?

Like, put it to do. That is how you slap at the bass. Slap the bass, calm down the guitar a little bit, because the guitar is kind of erratic in the song, but it's good, it works. It's good that they turned it off. Like, let's see what the bass for a little bit.

And he just gets it like... You know what? Let's just live here for a second. I'm going to let the bass take a walk for a second, and we're all just going to take a stroll. And it's funny, because the song starts to pick up. And as you that know the song, no, we will get there.

And you think it's getting there, but it's just like, no, hold up. Hold up, baby. slow your slow your roll let's just take a little let's take a little stroll real quick with a but a damn boom boom boom do you turning it down oh it's his natural fade yeah song fades out like that every time I hear that that guitar part right there at the end which I thought it in my mind it went longer it didn't just fade out maybe it's the version it's the version that we're playing it always reminds me of

the car that riding dangerfield drives in caddyshack did you ever watch that no i didn't know that that was a movie i grew up on because it was like literally my dad's favorite movie can i if i play uh something will it will it play uh yeah does that not remind you of the little guitar riff right there so that was right in if those that know caddy shack uh ran in dangerfield he's hilarious but he's also like super obnoxious and like his car makes all these sounds and like that's the car sound every time he like pulls out and he gets out and he's like He's all fucking obnoxious and like fucking toxic. Anyways, that's America.

Brady Dangerfield is America. Loud cars with fucking sounds coming from them that play as you're trying to do work in your room, beachside. And then there's a parade of Volkswagen that go by and like honk their horns and rev their engines. And every motorcycle that rolls by, they want to rev their engine. That's America. You know why? Because that's the America that I've lived in. That's what I've dealt with.

As much as I want to get frustrated as it's happening. I'm like, you know what? This is America. Home with a free. They can do that if they want. You know what? I'm going to bless them for it. Live your truth, but also shut the fuck up when I'm trying to record.

What? Something about eating hot dogs. There's America. Eat your hot dog. Yeah, why did we get saddled with hot dogs as like our American delicatessen? It's kind of, I'll be honest. There are times where a hot dog hits the spot. a good Costco hot dog will hit it

Oh no what about like outside the staple center Or whatever they call it now You're like $15? No they charge it like $5 there They just inflation has not hit the Hot dog standout there I went there and they were 50 She said $15 dollars

You're going to the wrong guy There's always going to be one And they put a little bacon on it And they're like Oh fucking yeah I love it Those are the best hot dogs in the world Hot dogs are an easy

I think that's what I appreciate But that's America That's America True So do we land on anything with the story does it not matter it's very generic American girl it's just a American girl

grew up in her town that thinks she could be more right who has dreams and there's somebody on her mind and we don't know who she's thinking about but it doesn't matter you know why because that's her freedom because that's America she could have memories of whoever she wants there's no crime against that

live your truth girl all right are ready to slap and snap this one out yeah man 4th of July I'm gonna go ahead and give this a I took one back You took one back or did you just give it Does the last one you did count? I was trying to do Fourth of July Like is that good of a song?

No, four was good for that. I'll do three. I'll do three. I'll do a solid three. That's it. All right. What you got? Four Tom Petty's

Very patriotic. 1976 jam. American Girl, I'm going to give it. I'm with it. It's three, right? Yeah, you know what? I love the song. it definitely hits.

First of all, it's also a classic cover band song. Yeah, it's a guy played at a cover band. It's somebody that is a work at a bar with a cover band. And you know what? It always hits.

Like, this song plays. People get hyped for it. I do feel like there's a little something that could be done to just like go next level with it. Like, we could turn this into a five slapper.

It's a little too rocky. I feel like we can add some different beats to it. We could maybe take it with some other American music and then mix that up, bring it all the way up to a five slapper.

I like it. I like it. this out. DJ Jag happened to bring his whole setup today. I see it on the video screen. Oh guess what? You need a video to see this but I guess what? He's got his whole DJ setup and I say we put on a little DJ demonstration. This is like 120 what fourth episode or something. I think it's time that we finally flex some of our DJ skills here on the dissect DJs. What do you think? I agree. I And I will say I'm a little nervous simply because what we're doing here? Because you have pants on your head still? Yeah, well, that's part of it.

But it's really just the fact that I'm going to be trying to mix live. Yeah, we're going to do some live mixing. In front of our million of listeners. A Dysack DJ first. I say DJ first. Live mixing in the studio. What songs do you think I should like? What I do?

So the last episode that we just put out, I labeled the Song of the Summer as I see it. So by my math, by Fourth of July, it's really going to be up taking over. So I think we should mix espresso by Sabrina Carpenter. Now, there's a little bit speed difference, but I feel like how speed up espresso. I think you do it. I think you do it. I think you do it. I think you do it.

And then, okay. All right, that sounds good. You ready? I like that one. What if I was here and I'm like giving play by play? And I'm like, and I'm yelling at you from the passenger seat. All right. Sounds good?

All right, let's get it. All right, let's get it. All right, let's hear something with more of like an 80s bees since that's like our jam. Like an 80s dance song. You're your 80s, man. All right. Let's see. Let's start the song.

Me and my 80s. Us and our 80s. Right. Let's start the song the same way. 30-0-180s dance jam. Where are you going with that? Where are you going with that? Let's just keep it going.

All right. That would have gotten me on the dance for it in like three seconds. Maybe even two and a half. All right. Let's now bring it up to something that's more semi-modern. Maybe something, let's do a hip-hop song. Let me hear you turn Tom Petty into a hip-pop jam. Like a hip-hop house, though.

Hip-hop house? Yeah. Okay, sounds like something that would make me move. Let's hear it.