Ponytail Picks #50 - Basements
What awaits us downstairs? Unspeakable horrors? Chill hangouts? Hopefully more of the latter, but we make no promises.
LISTEN
A reminder that recordings are history.
Bob Dylan & the Band, The Basement Tapes
The Basement Tapes is a different kind of album. It isn’t what you’d call a studio album, the kind where the goal is to collect a series of “clean takes” that are cut up and edited down to create an illusion of perfection, an exact replica of the artist’s intentions.
No, The Basement Tapes doesn’t hide its place in the past—it leans into it. You can hear the music bounce off the cellar walls of Big Pink. Yes, overdubs were added later just like any other album, but you can still the hear the character of the original performances heard by three mics in the middle of a room.
There’s a lot of Bob Dylan lore associated with The Basement Tapes, but you don’t need to know the whole story to appreciate the album’s sound—the sound of six friends making music together. It has me yearning for a basement of my own.
-AK
WATCH
Basements on the big (and small) screen
Home Alone (1990)
The source of Kevin’s greatest fear but also some of burglar Marv’s greatest pains—an iron falling down a laundry chute and tar and nails on the stairs, to be precise.
Stranger Things (2016-)
Where it all began for our beloved boys: A cozy 1980s suburban basement where you could pretend to fight monsters instead of actually doing so in the dreaded Upside-Down—what is essentially the entire world’s creepy basement.
Zodiac (2007)
“Not many people have basements in California.”
“I do.”
Parasite (2019)
What sort of awful secrets lie below the extravagant home of the pristine Parks?
Jeff, Who Lives at Home (2011)
Big thoughts from the basement. What awaits us in the big world beyond?
-JB
READ
All that the basement insinuates in one story.
“The Basement Room” by Graham Greene
Take a minute and think of all the themes and feelings you associate with basements. Off the top of my head, this is what I come up with:
Childhood
Fear of the unknown
Loss of innocence
Secrets
Darkness
Every one of these finds a place in this classic short story, a real masterpiece of the genre if you ask me. So many layers. Have a read this weekend and let me know what you think.
-AK
That wraps up our 50th (!!) Ponytail Picks. Whether you’re reading this below or above ground level, we thank you for your continued readership. Two weeks from now we’ll emerge from the basement, but it’s cold where we are so we’re still gonna stay
That line from Zodiac, Joel. It still makes me shudder.
The Basement Tapes by Dylan--no ----ing kidding. Gotta love him. And then all those movie recs. Thank you for this.