"Mountain Woman" would have fitted a bit better on Muswell Hillbillies than "Lavender Lane" due to its sound & melody. The thing that gets me in the lyrics is the use of the phrase "compulsory purchase", which is probably the English version of the American legal term "eminent domain".
Mountain Woman: I am tight on time, so I will just weigh in to say that I like it. After seeing others’ comments, I understand why, thematically, this might not fit on MH, but I still like it enough I’d have stuck it on there anyway, space permitting. I would not remove anything from the existing track list to do so, but it’s nice high quality song.
Mountain Woman I really like this one. It has something that I miss in a lot of songs on the album : a slight depart from the generic formula. The "She's a mountain woman, I'm a mountain man" bit breaks the monotony of the rock track. This is the kind of thing that makes a song special and memorable to me. Much in the way the 5-beat bar in Uncle Son does, but in a good way. I find the interpretation (vocal an instrumental) is really great too. Very natural sounding. I have devised devilish rhetorical tricks to include songs that shouldn't be there on "my" MH album. I'm not sure I believe theses reasons myself but I'm good at fooling myself.
I agree. Sometimes, for his lyrics, Ray takes the easiest phrase possible, not just the low-hanging fruit but the fruit that's fallen on the ground. So we have mountain people drinking mountain dew, and the dirty old shack--presumably not the same one from "Animal Farm"--and the fast talking lawyers. The only thing we're missing is a shotgun. It's all a bit cliched. I'm also not quite sure why they're not the Valley Man and the Valley Woman. Note on "Lavender Lane": the more I listen, the more I hear "Mirror of Love."
I have been thinking about this one, and I'm not sure I would necessarily call uneducated, ignorant... I understand what you mean, but I didn't get that idea from it, and I wouldn't qualify it that way.
As further evidence that The Kinks has skewed my Apple Music profile, Apple offered suggestions of albums “more like Muswell Hillbillies (Deluxe Edition). First the Velvet Underground, Then Dave Davies…and, third up is The Byrds ‘Farther Along.’ Hmm, I can’t recall this title at all. Says 1971. Track listing: I recognize Tiffany Queen, and that’s it. I’m confused because I thought I was a reasonable Byrds fan but I guess not. I’m listening…and feel compelled to state that the second track, ‘Get Down Your Line’ must be the worst song in the history of mankind…or at least The Byrds discography. Now at least I know why I must have missed this 50 years ago. Okay, this discovery can be traced directly to The Kinks and this thread.
"Mountain Woman" It sounds more like a Lola outtake to me, but it wouldn't sound out of place on either Muswell Hillbillies or Everybody's In Showbiz. Nice little groove they got going. I never paid too much attention to the the lyrics, but I see I have accidentally run into a happy coincidence. I just watched the movie Wild River which is pretty much about what these lyrics are saying. Montgomery Clift plays a government employee for the Tennessee Valley Authority and his assignment is to get an older lady and her family to move off their land because a dam is being built. This family is the last to hold out and they are not going easily. It's directed by the excellent Elia Kazan. Wasn't there another song where Montgomery Clift came up in the discussions? Perhaps this film may have been the inspiration for the song?
I'm predisposed to dislike songs titled things like "Mountain Woman," so I went into this one with caution. It starts off sounding just as I would expect. I don't like the word, but it seems "filler" to me, which may be why it didn't make the album. It's a fine riff and I always enjoy hearing Dave on backing vocals. I don't get the impression this meant much to Ray. Sounds like something tossed off for fun.
I've always been a big fan of that film (Clift's character has this heavy tragic aura to him, like all roles he did after his terrible accident in 1956) and I've thought of it as soon as I heard Mountain Woman (except to my best memory, the film doesn't have a mountain in sight, it's about the flooding of the Tennessee valley in the 30's and there's no "mountain man" around, just the old woman and her young niece, played by stunning red-head beauty Lee Remick). I didn't feel prompted to respond to your post because I like that film, but because just before Wild River, Elia Kazan had directed another feature with the same Lee Remick and it was called… A Face in the Crowd. Yes, like the Kinks song (and a superbe one too) on Soap Opera ! Now that's what I call a coincidence…
Typically I had to look him up... I'm not really a film buff, so the name meant little, but I certainly know a lot of his movies. I'm guessing we can throw in On The Waterfront as a cross referenced movie too.
Good call! A Face In The Crowd is a movie I plan on re-watching this week. I'm on a bit of a Kazan kick. The Criterion Channel has 12 of his movies playing at the moment, so I started going through all of them. Ray does seem to be a film buff, and there are probably more film influences in his writing than we have uncovered. We all know on the next album he sings about some "Celluloid Heroes". This Wild River reference is wild because I just watched it two days ago. There may be no large mountains in the film, but the backwoods country feeling still makes it feel as if she is a "Mountain Woman". It's not one of my favorite Kazan films, but Jo Van Fleet as the older woman turns in a fantastic performance. I feel like we mentioned Montgomery Clift before, but I can't recall what the reference was.
A Face In The Crowd was a good movie. I saw it few years ago. "I'll be a free man in the morning!" The only song that I remember about Montgomery Clift was "The Right Profile" from the Clash's London Calling. Finally, Avid Zeki, Farther Along was the last Byrds album on Columbia Records before the 1973 reunion misfire.
I have been dipping in and out of a REM song by song thread. I just realized that I was thinking of the song "Monty Got A Raw Deal". Wrong thread! Carry on.
More country-rock, which I don't generally like, but I admit that this one is catchy. Another decent bonus track.
One nice thing about discussing the bonus songs is it gives us a bit more license to explore tangents. So, I give you the first recording by a great band that emerged from the city I grew up in:
Wiki: Remick was the subject of "Lee Remick", the 1978 debut single by the Australian indie rock band The Go-Betweens. For some reason, songwriter Robert Forsterthought Remick was from Ireland, and references this in the song. In reality, Remick was American-born and raised (as were her parents); after 1970, she divided her time between England and the US. The British indie rock band Hefner recorded a song titled "Lee Remick" in 1998, unrelated to the Go-Betweens' single.
I think this album is pretty good. Much better than the Byrds reunion album. Check out the tracks "Bugler" and their version of the song "Farther Along". Both songs sung by the late great Clarence White. I put this album far above both Dr. Byrds and Mr. Hyde and Byrdsmaniax.
