In Appreciation of Pete Droge’s ‘Necktie Second’
Thanks in part to a friendship with Mike McReady of Pearl Jam, Pete Droge secured a contract with American Records in the early 90’s, and released a fantastic album called ‘Necktie Second’ in 1994. The single that really caught my attention back then was “Sunspot Stopwatch”. With clever lyrics, and obviously influenced by Bob Dylan and Tom Petty, the tune sucked me in to Mr. Droge’s world, and led me to the debut album, which is great from start to finish.
The song that made the biggest impact, “If You Don’t Love Me (I’ll Kill Myself)”, was featured on the soundtrack to Dumb and Dumber. It’s pretty much the most electric and uptempo song of the album. But it’s the more relaxed, acoustically oriented tracks that are my favorites: “Faith in You,” “Straylin Street,” “Fourth of July” and “Hardest Thing to Do.”
The album is produced by Pearl Jam buddy and producer extraordinaire Brendan O’Brien, who also produced Springsteen’s ‘The Rising’ (always a Boss connection!), as well as Soundgarden, Neil Young and Stone Temple Pilots.
Droge just released his fifth album, Under the Waves, last Tuesday. You can hear the album streaming on his web site or his Myspace page. I just picked up his fourth album, Skywatching, on eMusic, and am listening to it right now, and digging it immensely.
So take a listen to this great tune from Droge’s debut, and show the fella some love by checking out his links below.
Pete Droge: Sunspot Stopwatch – from Necktie Second.
Pete Droge Links: Official Site | His Substack (2024 update!)
6 Comments
Jim
Resist! I already have my space. It is melchman.net and I like it fine. I have a very few restrictions placed on me by the hosting service and my content is mine unless other wise marked with copyright.
I do not need to contribute my paltry bits of creative content to a large entity that hopes to find a way to profit from the free exchange of ideas we intended by linking sites with the World Wide Web.
I dislike Terms of Service Agreements.
I understand the safety of inclusion in a larger corporate entity with flesh eating lawyers when a subpeona from paranoid, zealous, office of the president holding morons decide your ideas are similar to terrorist plots, but prefer to go down kicking and screaming alone, thanks.
Remember nissan.com!
Wow, where do I get this stuff?
Sorry Petes (Icke and Droge). Enjoy the music, not the MySpace. I am going to seek help now. 😐
Pete
Yeah Jim, but tell us how you really feel. Nissan.com? Explain.
Jim
nissan.com is owned by a computer company in the Carolinas. It was established in the early 80’s while Nissan cars were still called Datsun (at leas tin the United States). So no infringement on the car maker’s trademark would have made sense then.
Nissan Motors Corporation has been suing the domain owner (Uzi Nissan) for years claiming trademark dilution, cyber squatting and trademark infringement. Given the recent push by the Bush Administration for courts to crack down on cyber squatting I fear for Uzi Nissan’s little domain again.
To go along with my socialist net view above, I don’t know why the biggest companies should get their preferred domain. He had it first. He got a domain of his last name, how is that cybersquatting or trademark infringement? Rich automaking Nissan has to relegate their brand to nissandriven.com because they were too slow to realize the future marketing potential of the internet. How is this Uzi’s problem? It is 10,000,000 dollars his problem.
For now long live nissan.com and everyone else can go to nissandriven.com for their car buying needs.
Jim
Come to think of it I should post a tip jar on my site and raise funds for suing Melcher Media for squatting on my site, melcher.com! After all their company name is Melcher Media, shouldn’t they be using melchermedia.com or melcherbooks.com since they primarily publish books?
Wow, this has become more Drudge Report than Pete Droge.
Malchus
Aw, man, thanks for posting “Sunspot Stopwatch”. This was on of my favorite songs in ’94 & ’95 and it brings back so many pleasant memories of just getting married and starting a new life in L.A.
Did you know that Pete Droge appears in ALMOST FAMOUS? He’s on screen for a couple of seconds singing a duet with a woman in a hotel room (inspired by Gram Parsons and Emmylou Harris during that period of Cameron Crowe’s life).
Thanks again.
Malchus
Pete
Malchus! I knew someone out there connected with this song the way I did. Interesting about Almost Famous, I’ll have to watch it again one of these days to see the Droge cameo and admire the newly single Kate Hudson!