For information about how to use this forum please check out forum help and policies.
Quote
CaledonianGonzo
I, for one, have been pleasantly surprised by both the tune and vid for Following The River. If it smacks a little of an X Factor/American idol winner's song, then it also is operating in the same sort of sonic space as tracks like Winter and Shine A Light. It's nowhere near that standard, of course, but if it is about ~80% a new song, it's good enough for me at this late stage in the game.
As an aside, the 'comb in your hair' detail also reminds me, very specifically, of Brass Buttons by Gram Parsons.
Quote
Turd On The Run
...this is quite possibly the most beautiful music video I have ever seen. It is Steinbeck's 'The Grapes Of Wrath' set to music...the images are so evocative and so deeply touching...
Quote
JumpingKentFlash
Love it too. There's something very Exile about it.
Quote
Erik_Snow
The "video" itself is a good production
"Following The River" (the song) seems to me like the brother (or sister) of "Don't Call Me Up" from Goddess In The Doorway. Just replace the lyrics of Don't Call Me Up into FollowingTheRiver - and there you have it.....same feel and same....eh..."climax"
Quote
kleermaker
It has to stand on its own two feet so to speak, but it goes on all fours. I've already said why, so I won't repeat that. It's always nice if some people love something harmless.
Quote
Erik_SnowQuote
kleermaker
It has to stand on its own two feet so to speak, but it goes on all fours. I've already said why, so I won't repeat that. It's always nice if some people love something harmless.
I tried my very best, in my post above, to give my opinion on "Following The River", without saying directly that "I can't stand the song". But I can't stand it. There you have it
I can't stand Don't Call Me Up, either - but at least Don't Call Me Up has the "Jagger-solo-stamp" on it...so I can look more easily on that one
Quote
Beelyboy
that vid would be striking with all that iconic imagery if kermit was singing it's not easy being green.
after sleep-inducing garbage like nearness of you & thru and thru, keith is in no position to smack anyone. now if stu was still alive, he wouldve kicked both their asses in back in 1989, and it never wouldve come to this.Quote
Beelyboy
i think Turd On The Run so talented as a writer i'd love to see his own video and other work. a brilliant cat. and i appreciate the interpretation really do. i honesty feel the song performance vocally is such a shame. i am beginning to resent, and i admit it, proudly, as a fan man, that's right kids as a fan, that the add ons and resultant hype around them is putting candy on the mona lisa.
and i don't appreciate it personally. if they want to make mick jagger solo albums fine with me i don't buy them. at least make this a seperate effort to stand on it's own and not diminish and tarnish THE masterpiece. i don't go for it.
pretty video yes.
more thoughtful than the material it supports. yes.
the key thing on popular music recording is the narrative and vocalist storyteller; mick has forgotten or dropped thinking about the stones as something reflective of anything other than this narcissistic embarassing drivel.
keith should have flown to London just to smack him a good one. where the hell are you keith? Keith???? come back soon baby. love you
tom waits is great, but i do loathe the decision to add him + others to sleep tonight, totally ruining what otherwise could have been a killer track. but thats neither here nor there, micks god-awful, embarrassing vocals are my problem with following the river, they are excruciatingly bad.Quote
Rockman
So it’s probably safe to surmise that the ones who dislike
Following The River must simply loath Tom Waits and the strings
on top of the tramp and Bryar’s - Jesus Blood Never Failed Me Yet....
AND like twenty years later ... Heck that bit alone would just pain 'em deeply……
Quote
Beelyboy
i think Turd On The Run so talented as a writer i'd love to see his own video and other work. a brilliant cat. and i appreciate the interpretation really do. i honesty feel the song performance vocally is such a shame. i am beginning to resent, and i admit it, proudly, as a fan man, that's right kids as a fan, that the add ons and resultant hype around them is putting candy on the mona lisa.
and i don't appreciate it personally. if they want to make mick jagger solo albums fine with me i don't buy them. at least make this a seperate effort to stand on it's own and not diminish and tarnish THE masterpiece. i don't go for it.
pretty video yes.
more thoughtful than the material it supports. yes.
the key thing on popular music recording is the narrative and vocalist storyteller; mick has forgotten or dropped thinking about the stones as something reflective of anything other than this narcissistic embarassing drivel.
keith should have flown to London just to smack him a good one. where the hell are you keith? Keith???? come back soon baby. love you
Quote
Turd On The Run
On the surface the story is one of lost love and longing, using the Mississippi River - and its majestic run up and down the backbone of Middle America - as an allegorical construct. One sees (at 0:48) the run of cities leading from Chicago down to New Orleans...the Crescent City.
Quote
Rockman
So it’s probably safe to surmise that the ones who dislike
Following The River must simply loath Tom Waits and the strings
on top of the tramp and Bryar’s - Jesus Blood Never Failed Me Yet....
AND like twenty years later ... Heck that bit alone would just pain 'em deeply……
Quote
Turd On The Run
The Following The River video - directed by Julian Gibbs - is in my opinion so magnificent because its imagery is so layered and enigmatic...and the more one is familiar with the Stones' musical journey, the richer the video's imagery becomes. I am at a loss to explain where the director got the (older) clips from...they are marvelous and his mixing of old and new is seamless...amazing, really.
Though one might think, at first view, that it is a Depression-era pastiche of images, in fact the arc of the story begins in Chicago in late 1961, (the cars and pedestrians give it away, and at 0:36 a parade float goes by with a date and a "View for '62" claim protruding from what seems to be an intercontinental ballistic missile hovering over a cardboard rendering of the skyline of Chicago - evoking Kennedy-era America in the days of bomb shelter exercises and a deep-freeze Cold War).
On the surface the story is one of lost love and longing, using the Mississippi River - and its majestic run up and down the backbone of Middle America - as an allegorical construct. One sees (at 0:48) the run of cities leading from Chicago down to New Orleans...the Crescent City.
This is the beginning of a journey for disillusioned lovers - one man (from the wrong side of the tracks...the working-class part of town) hoping to forget the woman he has left behind; a woman he knows will haunt him forever ('Cause you always saw the best in me'). He's heading back South by train, leaving the big city and all its temptations and disappointments. She, elegant and pretty, is seen boarding a bus...to where? Is she staying behind? Is she coming after him? Or going back home herself? Not coincidentally Chicago is the spiritual home of the Stones' greatest musical inspirations - all men who made that journey from the deep South to the mean streets of Chi-town and brought their art, the Blues, with them...the Stone's very name coming from a Chicago Blues classic. Also the birth of the Stones was in 1962...so the symbolism seems to grow more layered the more one knows Stones lore.
There are so many stunning images in the video - the one at 1:25 when a young woman, lit beautifully by the neon lights blazing the night, leans her head back in a darkened bus, is an amazing moment - but perhaps none are more enigmatic than the burning tree, a symbol for the power of faith (Exodus 3:2 'There the angel of the Lord appeared to him in flames of fire from within a bush. Moses saw that though the bush was on fire it did not burn up.')...that the burning tree appears at the moment the song transforms from a ballad-like lament to a glorious Gospel Blues is not lost on this listener.
Here I must disagree with those that criticize the lyrics as middling. I think the conversational tone of the lyrics is wonderful and winning...these are sentiments expressed in simple heartland prose. That Jagger chooses to over-emote is a function of his late-career vocal mannerism - one wonders what a peak-era Jagger could do with this (the Jagger singing 'Let It Loose' comes to mind) - but who can complain when a man toward the end of his seventh decade on this earth can still put forth an effort like this? At what point does one just accept the fact that what we are getting is a minor miracle...most of the man's contemporaries are dust in the wind and he's still creating and producing...and occasionally thrilling...
...by the time the South has been reached and the glorious background vocals of the Gospel chorus (seemingly lifted directly from the very end of Exile's 'Just Wanna See His Face') fully kick in (at 3:14 and nearly orgasmically to an ever higher plane at 3:37) and ascend in unison, the song builds to a spine-tingling crescendo and the images of the Mississippi flooding and New Orleans at carnival signal the end of the line...and at this point the poignancy of the line "I'll be dreaming all about ya, 'Cause you always saw the best in me." has devastating emotional impact.
Following The River, in my opinion, will in time be recognized as one of the Stones' late-career highlights.
The video - more a resonant, deeply evocative short film with Following The River as its soundtrack than a music video - is an undisputed masterpiece.
Quote
drewmaster
Turd, that is an incredible post. You should be a music or film critic. Seriously!
Drew
Quote
Beelyboy
this vid i not a stones vid in any way as far as i'm concerned.
I didn't like it at first listening but yes, the more I listen to the song & the more I like it .Jagger's voice here has nothing to do with PMS....Quote
Stones Blah
This is another song that just gets better with every listen.
Quote
Beelyboy
i thought this was gonna be the summer of exile. having the best ever Stones songs all over the radio from the best ever Stones albums (arguably),,,,
and the press hook and fan hook and completist hook and marketing hook and radio promotion hooks are two mick jagger new vokes that suck; on largely if not entirely forgettable songs, tho wudda, in some context, been nice album cuts somewhere mobbed along the way....
color me disappointed.