Tiny Montgomery

[koganbot]

I like how the rhythm in "Tiny Montgomery" makes itself strong by just digging in and digging further, no moving forward. —The rhythm I'm referring to is mostly Dylan's voice, and the strum strum strum. Bass and the rest are a shuffling swing, I guess. So you can sway back and forth while the song steadily drives you down. A-Plus.

Other than that, I've never "gotten" the Basement Tapes, in either sense of the word. Couldn't stand the Great White Wonder boot when it broke onto FM rock in 1969, and never owned the official album, though I once had it in a stash of a friend's records for a summer, listening to it once, and taping "Tiny Montgomery." In any event, a way into it, if I ever do dig in, might be via Don Allred's Pazz & Jop comments, e.g.,

much enjoy that "Folsom Prison Blues" here sounds like the Band is playing "dum dum dum dum doo wah diddy, talk about the boy from New York City," which totally fits the loose flair of D.'s singing (the convict, still regretful, is also getting cranked up on cellblock cocktails). This performance of "The Bells of Rhymney" starts reminding me of "All Tomorrow's Parties," to the further credit of both songs and their performers, incl. writers.

My description of "Tiny Montgomery" is my attempt to explain to myself why it reminds me of the Velvet Underground without reminding me of frequent Velvets source the Yardbirds.

Was inspired to post by Sabina citing the Velvets and then trying to do different, regarding EMA.

I wouldn't assume Dylan had heard the Velvets yet. Was his own drawl he was using for a hammer.

"" (Watch on YouTube)

Comments

[petronia.livejournal.com]

Further adventures in self-editing: I've realized what was wrong about that sentence wasn't that I cited the Velvets, I think the citation is valid in that her songs really do remind me of the Velvets even after quite a bit of dedicated listening, it's that I didn't unpack why -- I got ahead of myself. I'm not sure EMA would instinctively situate herself in a lineage from the Velvets, but in the track by track she did for Under the Radar she cites grunge a lot: it's Cobain, K Records, riot grrls etc. And there are folk elements in her songwriting, even though I think she doesn't set out to write these folksong-ish compositions. I'm not so sure about the production. It doesn't sound "current," even "Bandcamp-current." I think it also sounds 90s, but in a rather abstract way. Perhaps it's just limited.

[petronia.livejournal.com]

Anyway there's a cute thinkpiece in comparing "Satellite of Love" and "Satellites": Reed's conflicted utopianism filling space up with human banality and emotion, and EMA looking back on the collective efforts of the 60s that filled space up with something - 2,3,4,5 thousand of them that aren't parking cars on Mars because cars would contain humans, or at least brought humans somewhere, and we haven't gone at all, we're still looking up at the satellites that have left us behind.

Also the use of repetition in the lyrics etc. tbh a lot of what I'm responding to is just coincidental stylistic similarity.