Not just a sad "Echo" after all

Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers had a pretty good decade in the 1990s. In 1991, the group released "Into the Great Wide Open." If you've never heard the album, it's like "Full Moon Fever, Vol. 2." Just about every song on the album sounds like it could have / should have been a radio hit (and a couple of them surely were).

Then you had the first "Greatest Hits," which featured "Mary Jane's Last Dance." Anyone who was conscious in the mid 1990s knows this song (and probably loves it). And for the Kim Basinger haters, well, the video featured her as a corpse. Win-win, right?

Then came Tom Petty's second "solo" album "Wildflowers" (the first being "Full Moon Fever," and the "solo" distinction reflecting that ... one again ... many of the Heartbreakers were actually involved). "Wildflowers" is my favorite of all the Petty-related albums released through 2011, so I don't need to speak further on my opinions of its qualities.

And THEN you have the great soundtrack to the movie "She's the One." I'm not a big fan of the film itself, but the album is an enormous success. Everything about the variety of the music screams to the immense strengths of the band. And it had one of their last great frilly psychedelic hits: "Walls (Circus)."

And finally ... you hit "Echo." Released in 1999, it's something of a curiosity.