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DandelionPowderman
I vote for "Live In England 65", cheers
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DandelionPowderman
You still don't get what I was saying, Witness. It's getting a bit boring.
<It is Mick and the lyrics that gives the feel>
Do you disagree with this? Is that a controversial statement? Do the vocals bring "MANY gothic elements in the song musically"? No!
My point: This song is a combination of elements tied together. Mick's vocals, Keith's back up vocals, Keith's and Taylor's guitars, Billy's organ, Charlie's drumming and the bass playing, Nicky's piano and the percussion/congas.
When the instrumentation comes across as a bluesy, swampy, mid-tempo rock song, it doesn't necessarily help what Mick does - because he can't re-define that song by himself, genre-wise. He could even have cited his own pure gothic literature, and the song would still not have more than a few gothic elements.
It was compared to Mr D and especially CYHTM I said MM was super sweet, and I stand by it. The two former songs are way more dirty and less melodic (except for the bridges in CYHTM).
Mick Taylor's guitar playing on MM is excellent AND super sweet, and for me it does a lot of the song, together with Mick's vocals (which alternate from sweet and longing to airy and dreamy).
Where have I said that I ignored the melody? I haven't.
However, there are very few notes in this melody - and they're all bluesy. Strip the band away and hum it. What do you got?
Blues.
Thing is, it just isn't a very melodic song. It is about death, I give you that.
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WitnessQuote
DandelionPowderman
<...and when you disparagingly say Mick Jagger's voice>
No disagreement about the importance of Mick's voice - but it hardly makes the song alone...
A little delayed answer: I was slow in adding "only" in front of "Mick Jagger's voice".
More important now: To me I think it is most of all how the melody goes, that, coworking with how it is sung, that gives me an impression of a gothic (or proto-gothic) song.
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Witness
did not present correctly in his condescension to let me have it as a private truth, despite the intersubjective truth.
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stonehearted
If I could weigh on the gothic rock discussion, which appears to have stemmed from the song Dancing With Mr D.
In my opinion, there are more gothic elements in some of their mid-60s recordings, like Little Red Rooster and Heart of Stone.
From the clip below, it seems that the producers of the TV show Shindig in 1965 had the same idea. See how the performance of Little Red Rooster is prefaced--with a graveyard scene complete with thunder and lightning effects, a tree branch artfully hanging down before the camera, which pans ahead to the door of a crypt as it creaks open to reveal bars of shadow among which stands a ghostly, zombified Jagger. Both the song and the television presentation combine for a piece of video rock noir.
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Dancing With Mr D, on the other hand, strikes me as just an average mid-tempo druggie rock song with none of the spectral mystique of LRR. Heart of Stone, with its graveyard tremolo, also has that gothic vibe, sounding like a chilling sunset replete with autumn leaves, the heart in question a plaque hanging within the walls of an autumnal crypt.
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But overall, the Stones with their R&B are steeped more in a shade of blue--deep blue at times for sure--but blue nonetheless. Despite getting the blues now and again, there is too much a will to party and enjoy themselves to convey the shadowy darkness that is a hallmark of the gothic prototype.
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Witness
Now it is you, who at first make an extension to songs, where I for one don't find the gothic epithet suited, whereupon you go on to deny its relevance.
I have made a suggestion for one song only, where I found that it is not without an inbuilt more or less ironic distance at the same time, and tried to stress that point as well.
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stonehearted
I see that my posts are not worthy of any new comments. I dislike people who repeat themselves and who attempt to direct a discussion merely in circles. I'll take my substantial ideas elsewhere.