Mercury Rev: See You on the Other Side c/d

(where does the apostrophe go in Deserters?)

More They Are Coming To Take Me Away Ha Ha-esque

xpost

while I love see you on the other side, I still have problems with young man's stride. The song is boring, the video (directed by moby) is horrible. At one point it features some kid with swimming goggles crowd surfing. There's some other crap in it that my brain isn't letting me remember, thank god.

I like Young Man's Stride.

Mercury Rev has videos...?

yep.
dont know what songs from desters and all is dream were made into videos but from the pre dester era the band made video's for
Car Wash Hair (involves a a black car wash attendant, a car wash, and the band with llamas on a winter day)
Bronx Cheer (the band on a playground in NYC playing with kids)
Something for Joey (which featured Ron Jeremy in space and the band playing in rocket ship with strippers to a crowd in the middle of an orgy)
Chasing a Bee (the band playing around a vacant building, johnathn looking really stoned and david baker having water poured on him while he gets assailed by a couple of scantily clad women, and some other weird stuff I can remember)

There's a video for "Goddess on a Hiway". All I remember aboot it is it mostly takes place on a boat in a swamp or tiny lake.

Something for Joey (which featured Ron Jeremy in space and the band playing in rocket ship with strippers to a crowd in the middle of an orgy)

This used to get decent airplay on Much Music's late night video program, I think almost entirely based on the fact it had nudity in it.

On the topic of videos. There are some short films that feature them jamming to. I couple of libraries/museums in New York State have copies of them. If anyone has access to worldcat/oclc you can find more information.

I'm surprised no big "groove" house producers remixed this track at the time.

Inspired by this thread, I'm listening to it right now (yeah, pretty good, but it's still not bowling me over like them at their absolute best), and there's definitely saw on the chorus to "Everlasting Arm," at least.

It's a different kind of weird from the other albums, a gentler, more introverted kind of weird. It's a perfect stepping stone between the two Revs - it's got the disjointed utter oddness, stripped of the overpowering FUZZ, but it's not quite settled down into Sleepy Hollow Disnified production (not that there's anything wrong with that) of the later work.

Damn, I thought I had it in my bag, but I don't seem to. I really wanted to hear that "PLENTY OF TAPE, MY FRIEND!!!" bit.

I seem to remember a forest in the Goddess On A Hiway video, but I could have imagined that.

Does no-one else think of them as, effectively, two different bands, for whom a career overview is largely pointless?

No, it is charming and wonderful. I had the piss ripped out me only last night for stating this but fuck 'em.

Same songwriters, clearly, but with such a different approach and outlook - to my ears - that I find it difficult to think of them as the same band in anything but name. I guess this is the case with a ton of bands, but MR always seem to epitomise this complete overhaul of sound and ethos.

Plus, I hear there's RUNES!!!

That's a perfect description! :)

I adore this album's gentle loopiness! It's very romantic album too, had you noticed that also? I mean, not in a "champagne and roses" cliche romantic kind of way, but a Krazy Kat, Little Nemo, Jiggs and Maggie kind of romanticism, filled with abstract expressionistic scenery, scruffy urchins, smiling paper moons, deco orchestration, dancing chorus girls, and well-aimed bricks ...

"... Loved ones came in sight
Storming down the street like Puerto-Rican kids in a summer rain
Breaking open the hydrants and going insane ..."

or

"A kiss from an old flame A trip to the moon ... Who knows what black and crazy names swim around inside her brain/adrift across the silver screen ... Our strolling make-believe ballroom glides ... into the starlit nite two fools rush in you and I ..."

Why haven't more bands mined this rich fusion of 30s/70s/90s? It's got such great potential (as show on this album). Mercury Rev were always hoplessly obsessed with the 70s, but for this one album, they finally got smart and decided to take inspiration not from their 70s idols, but from the things that _inspired_ their 70s idols : namely, the sounds and sights of the 20s-30s. So instead of going to, say, Roxy Music for inspiration, they went where Roxy went : to vaudeville and cabaret and Fred Astaire and Film Noir ...

There's a hint of this time-travelling on the album cover : anyone who's old enough to have lived through the 1970s will probably recognize it as a film still from a famous 7-up tv commercial. This is the "O" in the word "UN-COLA". And within the o, as if within a little porthole window, dances a 30s-style Busby Berkley chorus girl. It's the perfect image to show the telescoping nature of this album : a view of the 30s ... through the 70s ... in the 90s.

One last thing : Avalanches fans, check out "Close Encounters of the Third Grade". That's where their cluttered, dubby, giddy sound began, as far as I can tell, and a full 10 years before "Since I Left You"! ... The main feature of "Close ..." (besides the amusing "No, see YOU on the other side!" comments) is the interplay between a 70s style soul diva and a 30s style soprano. I jokingly refer to that as "Rowetta meets Operetta".

They go well together.

-one wonders how it would have turned out if Jack Nitzsche. I would like to think he would have had better arrangements and a more critical ear. I think they need an outside producer (since they basically produce it themselves w/ david friedman). One name that came to mind is Van Dyke Parks. I was listening to song cycles and it reminded me of see you on the other side. Especially Van's singing.

I had no idea! Now that's a bit of trivia that makes me glad for this board, so it can be shared for all. Rah for Stripey! And great post indeed.

I keep forgetting how much I love this band. I was trying to explain growing up in Upstate NY to someone yesterday, and the only way I could really describe it was "like growing up in a Mercury Rev song".

That's all you need to know I think!

The Rev were great back then. Even with the loss of DaveB they
delivered two brilliant discs (Deserters Songs as well) - then
Donahue went too far with his falsetto indulgences (evident in
their live performances).

Furthermore, they seldom acknowledge the old stuff - as if it
never existed. I've seen 'em twice (2000,2002) - any songs from
Boces or SeeYou... Nup. They deserve the bagging they get for
the new stuff. Less pansy, more Rawk please!

listening to this now for the first time in a while. still not sure why it isn't considered one of the best albums of the 90s!