Recording Session

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Fifty years ago to-day (31 August 1964), the Zombies recorded the backing tracks to "Leave Me Be," "Kind of Girl," "Sometimes," and "Woman."

"I Know She Will"

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I think I've figured out the guitar part for "I Know She Will."  I'm a bit suspicious about the part during "no matter where you go / no matter what you do…" though.  And I might have the solo an octave too low.

Funny story about this:  I figured out most of this yester-day, and I recorded it to-night.  After doing about five takes (it's simple but difficult to play well), I exported it and figured that I would have to start a new folder for the song.  But I found that I already had one, and in it there's a .wav file titled "2013.06.10 - I Know She Will."

I figured out the bass part for this over a year ago and completely forgot about it!  That June 2013 recording is based on the demo version though (it's a bonus track on a CD re-release of Begin Here), and this one is based on the Decca Stereo Anthology version.  There's enough in common between the two to boost my confidence on what I have here, but they're too different in tempo to be able to put together coherently in one audio file.

So now I'll have to re-learn that bass part and put together a more complete version.

Argent Album Release Dates

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I was searching on the internet for the release dates of the Argent albums, and I could find only the years.  But then I looked in Greg Russo's Time of the Season: Collector's Guide, which lists (I think) every release by the Zombies, Argent, and Colin Blunstone.

So, the UK release dates of the Argent LPs:

• Argent - 16 January 1970
• Ring of Hands - 5 February 1971
• All Together Now - 21 April 1972
• In Deep - 23 March 1973
• Nexus - 22 February 1974
• Encore - 22 November 1974
• Circus - 4 April 1975
• Counterpoints - 31 October 1975

"She Does Everything for Me"

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I think I learned the bass part for "She Does Everything for Me."  It's actually pretty easy, provided I learned it correctly.

The guitar tone on this might have too much treble, but I did about five takes with different settings.  This was close enough.

"Losing You"

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A few days ago, I was thinking about "Losing You" from the New World album.  So far I've figured out only the guitar chords (and since I didn't write them down, I've forgotten some parts).  But the first few chords (unaccompanied by anything save some percussion) are Dsus4, D major, Gsus4, G major.  In thinking about the song, I realized that those four chords contain two sequential half-steps.  G to F# in Dsus4 (D, G, A) to D major (D, F#, A), and C to B in Gsus4 (G, C, D) to G major (G, B, D).

This is more like the Bb, A, C, B of the B-A-C-H motif than Rod Argent's half-steps, which are sequential in a linear way in addition to a chronological/musical way (by which I mean that his sequential half-steps usually overlap so that the last note in the first pair is the first note in the second pair, as in A, G#, G in "Whenever You're Ready").

So "Losing You" is interesting in that it's a Colin Blunstone song that demonstrates a Bach influence (even if it's conjectured).  It makes me wonder how much of a precedent there is for this Bach influence in Blunstone's earlier writing.

I'd noticed before that the first few notes of the solo in "How We Were Before" (D, A, B, A, F#) are the same (even in the note values) as those in the introduction of the Byrds' version of Dylan's "Mr. Tambourine Man," which, apparently, McGuinn took from Bach's "Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring."  (Interestingly, both parts are played on twelve-string guitars too.)  So I'd always thought that Argent had a hand in that part of "How We Were Before" - because of that Bach connection.  But with this similarity to Bach on a Blunstone song on an album that Argent had almost no involvement with (he played keyboards on only one track), I'm not sure what to think about that part in "How We Were Before."

"How We Were Before"

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Two days ago, I was playing around with some guitar chords, and I realized that "How We Were Before" includes a chromatic phrase… sort of.

I'm not sure that the chords are played as straight chords; I think they're broken into arpeggios or something.  Still, there's a chromatic phrase within the chord progression.

D major (D, F#, A)

D major 7th (D, F#, A, C#)

D major dominant 7th (D, F#, A, C)

G major (G, B, D)

G minor (G, Bb, D)

D major (D, F#, A)

Although, since it's in D major, it might technically be A# instead of Bb.  So the chromatic phrase is D, C#, C, B, A#, A.

Excepting the numerous instances three-note chromatic phrases, I think this is the third chromatic phrase I've found now.  (The other two are in the bass parts of "Indication" and "This Will Be Our Year.")

"Woman"

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I listened to the Beatles' Please Please Me this morning, and I noticed that "Ask Me Why" has some lyrics in common with "Woman."  "Ask Me Why" has:

I can't believe
It's happened to me
I can't conceive
Of any more misery

And "Woman" has:

I can't conceive, no
I can't believe you love me too

"Woman" uses believe and conceive more as an internal rhyme where "Ask Me Why" uses them for a line-ending rhyme.

"Ask Me Why" was released as the b-side to the "Please Please Me" single on 11 January 1963, and "Woman" was released as the b-side of the "Leave Me Be" single on 16 October 1964.  (Coincidentally, both songs were the b-side of each band's second single.)  So, between the chronology and the Beatles' influence on Rod Argent (which he's mentioned multiple times), there might be a connection between these two songs.  On the other hand, rhyming believe and conceive isn't too unusual, so it might just be a coincidence that both songs use them.  At best, it's just a conjectured influence.

"She Does Everything for Me"

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I transcribed the lyrics to "She Does Everything for Me" because - while I haven't really learned any more of it - I've been kind of obsessed with it lately.  And I found something interesting.

There are falsetto parts during the second half of each of the verses (or whatever they're called; I'm bad at song terminology; they might technically be pre-choruses), and in both cases, those falsetto parts are reductions of the lyrics in the verse proper.

[Disclaimer that my transcribed lyrics are as I hear them and quite possibly might be wrong.]

So, in the second half of the first verse, the lead vocals are:

She won't lead me up with air
And tell me that she doesn't care
About the way I feel
'Cause I'm a fool

[Side note to point out the interesting line-ending words here (feel and fool), which differ only in the vowels.]

And the falsetto part is:

She won't lead me
Up with air and
Tell me I'm
A fool

So, all of the lyrics in the falsetto part are contained within the lead vocals:

She won't lead me up with air
And tell me that she doesn't care
About the way I feel
'Cause I'm a fool

And in the second half of the second verse the lead vocals are:

She's a girl who makes me feel
That you're not there, you weren't real
I feel so good that
I don't care at all

And the falsetto part is:

She's a girl who
Makes me feel that
I don't care
At all

So, likewise:

She's a girl who makes me feel
That you're not there, you weren't real
I feel so good that
I don't care at all

I'm pretty sure that some of these features in the main vocals/backing vocals relationship (with special regard to lyrics) are also present in some Argent songs.  Maybe not where the lyrics in the backing vocals are reductions of the lyrics in the main vocals, but at least where the backing vocals are delivered with either longer notes or melismas so that they sort of match up to the main vocal's longer lyrics.  (Looking quickly, the only one I can find that does this is "Sleep Won't Help Me" from Ring of Hands.  During the choruses, the backing vocals deliver the same lyrics as the lead vocals but with different note values corresponding to particular syllables.)

Anyway, I think this is a really cool feature.  It's almost like counterpoint, but lyrically instead of musically.

Recording Session

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Fifty years ago to-day (13 August 1964), the Zombies recorded demos of "Sometimes," "Woman," "Kind of Girl," and "Leave Me Be" at Ryemuse Studios.

Three of these can be heard on the third disc of Zombie Heaven.

"I'm Going Home"

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I've been learning the bass part to "I'm Going Home."  It changes about halfway through, and so far, I know only the first minute.

I wrote out most of the notation for what I know, and I think the first introductory part is in a different time signature than the rest of the song.  It seems like it's in 3/4 and the rest is 4/4.

I'm still not very good at that aspect of music though, so I could be wrong about it.

"Keeper of the Flame"

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I'm not even sure this is really worth posting, but anyway….

I listened to Argent's Nexus to-day, and I thought the organ part at the beginning of "Keeper of the Flame" sounded like it would be pretty easy to figure out.  Not really.

I think I got most of it, but I'm still missing a chord (G minor?) and some other bits.  Also I couldn't really find a setting that matches the Hammond organ as it sounds on the original.  I really want a Hammond organ, but I have neither the money to buy one nor the space to put one.

Interestingly, a phrase in this organ part resembles the bass part of "Hung up on a Dream."  There's an ascending diatonic phrase that then descends by a half-step.  Here, it's G A Bb C D Db.  ("Hung up on a Dream" has B C# D# E F# G# G.)

That whole sticking-to-one-song-for-a-month-or-so didn't last very long.  Also, this song is new to the catalogue.

"I Could Spend the Day"

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I couldn't sleep, so I decided to transcribe the lyrics to "I Could Spend the Day," which I apparently hadn't done yet. (As a side note: I think I'm going to start focusing on one song in particular for, say, a month, in the hopes that a sustained effort will yield more results.)

In any case, I discovered two things:

1.  There's an instance of internal rhyme in the second verse - "'Til deeper sleep arise."

2.  The version on Into the Afterlife doesn't repeat the whole of the first verse before the fade out.  It ends after "I could spend the day / Just laying here."  The Zombie Heaven version repeats the entirety of the first verse before fading out with "Oh oh oh, I…"

I'm not sure if it's that much to remark on, but I like the parallelism between "I could spend the day / Just laying here / Sweet, beside you" in the first verse and "Would you spend the day / Just laying, sweet, with me?" in the third verse.  (Although I'm not sure if my line breaks are in the correct spots there.)

"I Could Spend the Day"

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I've made some more progress on "I Could Spend the Day."  I relearned most of the guitar parts (because apparently I'd forgotten that I knew them), and I figured out the chords for the middle part (although I don't think they're actually played as straight chords).