"What More Can I Do"

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This is the shortest song in the Zombies' catalogue, but I found a fair amount to say about it.

First, I learned the opening organ part (I think).  If I have it correct, it (and the rest of the song) seems to vacillate between A minor and A major.  In some ways, it's kind of like the Beatles' "I'll Be Back," which also seems to move between A minor and A major.  The verses in each have a chord progression in common too:  A major, G major, F major (F major 7th in "I'll Be Back"), E major.  Each chord lasts for two beats in "What More Can I Do," but four in "I'll Be Back."  The bass plays the root of each chord for that section in both songs too.

After the organ part, I learned the bass part (I'm pretty confident about one section [the first half of the verses and the solos, which is the same part], but not so much on the second [starting about halfway through the verses, at "But something always holds me back" in the first and "But something always keeps a hold on me" in the second]).  I was sort of surprised to find a three-note chromatic phrase in it.  That's typically a feature of Argent's writing, but this is a Chris White song.

Like I mentioned, some of the song seems to be in A major, but the bass outlines most of an A minor scale at the very end (and I'm pretty sure the guitar ends on an A minor chord).  I think there's a slight note-bend on the second-to-last note (a C), which I might have over-done.

The guitar part is much more accurate than in the last (and only other) recording I did, which had only the guitar part.  I figured out the rhythm of the first two chords in the verses, and - while it might not be exact - my arpeggiation of the next two chords sounds better than playing them straight.

In thinking about the lyrics, I noticed that there's either a line break or a caesura to separate "I wish I knew / What it is that stops me" and "From loving you," which emphasizes that hindrance.  In my transcription, I have it as a line break, but I might have my line breaks in the wrong places.

"I Remember When I Loved Her"

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I forgot how difficult to play this guitar part is.  They're all barre chords, so the fretting hand really starts to ache after a while.

I successfully re-learned the bass part though, and I put in the few notes I know of the organ solo.

"I Want You Back Again" [alternate version]

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I had to re-learn virtually all of this, but it came back pretty easily.  I think I need to start making a distinction between this alternate version of "I Want You Back Again" and the single version.  I haven't really compared the two, but that's something I should get around to doing.

While listening back to my own recording, I noticed the rhythm during the electric piano solo (which is missing in my version because I don't know it yet).  It's the same sort of thing that the Zombies did with "Just a Little Bit" on their radio performance, which I wrote about earlier this month.  There are progressively shorter note values.  At first, I thought, "Oh, so they're doing the same thing they did earlier on the radio," but then I realized I had the chronology backwards:  this version of "I Want You Back Again" was recorded in November 1964, and that radio performance was in November 1965.  As far as the record shows (no pun intended), that rhythmic feature was in "I Want You Back Again" first.

I tried notating it the same way I did the bass part in "Just a Little Bit," but in doing so, I discovered that "I Want You Back Again" is in 3/4 (which I hadn't realized) and - apparently - the notation system I have doesn't understand 3/4.  I tried putting in whole notes, but instead of counting for three beats (like they should in 3/4), they counted as four beats.  So I had to do the notation by hand:

My bass clefs look weird; I'm still not good at spacing my bar lines well; and I might have written the half rest on the wrong line, but there you go.

I checked the single version of "I Want You Back Again," and - while it does a similar thing during the solo - it's not the same as what this alternate version does.  The single version does have progressively shorter notes, but they don't divide as uniformly as they do in this alternate version.

"I Don't Want to Know"

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I have a binder in which I've been keeping the tabs, chord progressions, and occasional notation I've written down, and I looked in there last night to see what I had for "I Don't Want to Know."  I found that I had the whole twelve-string part (which I still remembered), but I didn't have the bass part (which I'd forgotten).  So I had to relearn the bass part, and then I wrote it down.

While writing it down, I realized that this does the same thing as "I Remember When I Loved Her" (the bass part to which I also need to re-learn) and "Time of the Season."  I mentioned about a year ago that the bass parts during the solos in those songs are the same as the bass parts during the verses but with extra notes.  The solo in "I Don't Want to Know" is much shorter (I think only eight bars) and on guitar rather than a keyboard instrument, but there's a similar feature here.  However, it's slightly different in that there are more notes rhythm-wise, not pitch-wise.  It's the same D, E, G, F# phrase, but with four notes of each pitch where there are only two or three of each in the verses.

"Is This the Dream"

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I just listened to the two songs that were released to-day in 1965.  I'd already finished my transcription of "Is This the Dream," but I looked over it anyway, and I finished transcribing "Don't Go Away."

Last time I worked on the transcription for "Is This the Dream," the line "'Cause, baby, you'll just cry for a shadow" sounded sort of familiar to me.  It wasn't until now though that I placed it.  "Cry for a Shadow" is the title of an instrumental Beatles song, recorded in 1961 when they were backing Tony Sheridan.  It's track #12 on the first disc of Anthology 1.  Apparently it was actually released (in 1964), but - while the Beatles are an acknowledged influence on the Zombies - I sort of doubt that the title of this particular song influenced that line.  Still, I thought it interesting.

"Sticks and Stones"

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I recorded this in something of a rush this morning before going to Thanksgiving and didn't get to upload it until now.

I haven't really made any progress on this, so it's mostly just the guitar part (with chords where the solo should be).  I did learn that the opening and closing guitar part is doubled with organ, and I think the closing on organ is an octave higher than the opening, but - like I said - this was recorded in a bit of a rush, so I might have that wrong.

"Is This the Dream" b/w "Don't Go Away"

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According to Russo's Collector's Guide and the Zombie Heaven liner notes, fifty years ago to-day (26 November 1965), the Zombies' "Is This the Dream" b/w "Don't Go Away" (Decca F12296) was released in the U.K.

The Zombie Heaven liner notes list just "November 1965" for the U.S. release (Parrot 9821).

Out of the Shadows

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As part of my listening schedule, I listened to Colin Blunstone & Rod Argent's Out of the Shadows this morning, and I noticed a couple things about a few songs.

"Sanctuary"

The vocal effects in the third verse are what I noticed here:

When all around seems to be trouble
When life seems only to deceive
When nothing really seems to matter
And I look in desperation
For something I can believe

I'm not sure if it's Blunstone doing separate backing vocals or some echo on the last word or two in each line, but after "When all around seems to be trouble," there's a separate "trouble."  There's the same thing with "to deceive" and "to matter" in the next lines.

For "trouble" and "deceive," that extra word emphasizes the lyrics.  The "trouble" in the main lyric is centered, but the echoed "trouble" seems distant, panned left and right.  So, directionally, there really is "trouble" all around.  That effect also is either the cause of or takes advantage of the inversion in that line - how it's "all around seems to be trouble" rather than "trouble seems to be all around."  That effect wouldn't be achieved as well if "trouble" didn't end the line.

There's a similar thing with "deceive."  There's the "deceive" in the lyric, but also the echoed "deceive," which provides a sense of duplicitousness since there are two of them.

Argent's harmony comes in for the last two lines, and having an-other voice for the "desperation" emphasizes that feeling too.  It's as if more force is mustered coming down to the last hour.

"Baby Don't You Cry No More"

After the first line of the first verse ("I'm listening to that midnight whistle blow"), there are some glissandi in the guitar part, apparently a musical representation of the whistle.

"Love Can Heal the Pain"

The first two lines of this (as formatted in the liner notes) are:

You know love can conquer
Almost every thing my friend

I found this interesting not so much for the lyric itself, but that it's an altered version of the old phrase amor vincit omnia, which - translated - is the title of "Love Conquers All" from the New World album, from about a decade before Out of the Shadows.  "Love Can Heal the Pain" was written by Argent; "Love Conquers All" by Blunstone.

"Care of Cell 44"

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Yester-day I was thinking about the bridge of "Care of Cell 44" again, and I realized that that G note isn't only in the chords and the bass part; it's in the vocal melody too.  There are only four different notes in the vocal melody for the bridge; the bold in the following is entirely G notes:

We'll walk in a way we used to walk
And it could be so nice
We'll talk in a way we used to talk
And it could be so nice

So now I know of three things there that emphasize the frozen and static nature of the past.

"Road Runner"

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Last night/this morning I figured out the bass part for "Road Runner."  While recording this, I also discovered that I'd unknowingly simplified one of the guitar parts into a B major chord.  I haven't figured it out yet though, so I just kept the B major chord.

Apparently, this is only the second time I've recorded "Road Runner."

"It's Alright with Me"

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Because I'll be focusing on the Begin Here sessions for the next week or so, I thought I'd actually listen to Begin Here.  The CD copy I have has bonus tracks, the first of which is "It's Alright with Me."  I noticed something about the first line of the last verse:  "So you see I can only offer a man that's poor."

It might be a bit pedantic, but I'm in favor of "that" for things and "who" for people as far as relative clauses go.  If you follow that rule, here, there's a "that" where there should be a "who."  The speaker/singer is devaluing himself, which seems to go along with the other not-so-positive qualities he chooses to mention, like the "frost and debt and trouble" in the next line.  Actually, having that second "and" there emphasizes it too.  "Frost, debt, and trouble" would be understandable, but "Frost and debt and trouble" has an insistence because of that repeated "and" (although meter and/or syllable count for the line might figure into that too).

"I'm Going Home"

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The first session for the Begin Here album (when the Zombies recorded "I'm Going Home," "Sticks and Stones," and "Road Runner") was fifty-one years ago to-day, so I have a bunch of songs to record new versions of and hopefully learn new parts to.  The second Begin Here session (seven more songs) was fifty-one years ago to-morrow, so I'll be doing this daily for a week and a half.

I picked "I'm Going Home" to do first (even though it wasn't on the album) because, of the three songs recorded during this session, I know the most parts for it.  The last time I recorded this was in August last year, so it's been awhile, and I had a lot I had to re-acquaint myself with.  Thankfully, I'd written out about a third of the bass part (in notation even!), so I didn't have to work so hard on that.

I learned a bit more of the bass part, but I'm still stuck on the part during the last section (the chords are the same as the earlier sections, so I played the bass part from the earlier sections).  I also cleaned up a phrase in the guitar part.  I think it starts with Es an octave apart and then alternates between progressively lower notes and that high E where earlier I'd started with a fourth (E to A) and then alternated with that A note.  I learned a bit of the organ part too, but I learned just the parts where the organ doubles the guitar part (or vice versa), so it's not that much progress.

"Care of Cell 44"

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A few days ago, I wrote about a feature that the chords in the bridge of "Care of Cell 44" share with the chords in the verses of "I Know She Will" and how - since "I Know She Will" is a Chris White song but "Care of Cell 44" is a Rod Argent song - it seems that Argent took the sequential-chords-with-a-common-note feature from White's song.  Just now though, I found something in those "Care of Cell 44" chords that's characteristic of Argent's writing: two linked half-steps.  After the initial G major, it's A7 (A, C#, E, G), C minor (C, Eb, G), G major (G, B, D).  That same three-note phrase is in the second chord sequence too: G major, A7 (A, C#, E, G), C minor (C, Eb, G), Dsus4 (D, G, A), D major.

"Hold Your Head Up"

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Yester-day I listened to Argent's Encore because according to Russo's Collector's Guide it was released in the U.K. on 22 November 1974.

I'm pretty sure I noticed this the first time I listened to the album, but I haven't written about it:  in that version of "Hold Your Head Up," Rod Argent includes half of a hymn tune in the solo (he plays it twice from about 6:01 to 6:26).  I know it best as the tune for "God of Grace and God of Glory," but the tune itself is known as "CWM Rhondda" and was written by John Hughes.

Argent includes some variations, but the original part that he quotes is:

"I Know She Will"

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Last night I was playing through the chords to "I Know She Will" on keyboard.  Since I learned the flute part, I've been playing that fairly regularly, and I really love the chords during the verses.  I think I had some suspicion that they were familiar, but I didn't place it until last night.  They share a feature with the chords during the bridge of "Care of Cell 44."

Both have a string of chords that all have a single common note, and they end in a modulation in which that single note falls a half-step (from a fourth to a third in relation to the root of the final two chords).  In "I Know She Will," that common note is an A, which then falls to a G#.  It's D major (D, F#, A), D7 (D, F#, A, C), A major (A, C#, E), Esus4 (E, A, B), E major (E, G#, B).  In the bridge of "Care of Cell 44," it's a G note, which is further emphasized because it's the only note played by the bass until that half-step descent, when the bass goes back to the opening phrase.  So, G major (G, B, D), A7 (A, C#, E, G), C minor (C, Eb, G), which - after going back to G major - repeats before going to Dsus4 (D, G, A), D major, (D, F#, A).

At first, I thought, "Oh, it's just Rod Argent doing the same sort of thing again," but then I looked up the writing credit for "I Know She Will" just to make sure, and I discovered that it's actually a Chris White song.  I think I've always regarded Argent as the more sophisticated writer from a technical standpoint, but it seems that in the bridge of "Care of Cell 44" he was actually taking something from White's writing.

"Maybe after He's Gone"

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I listened to the second disc of The Pet Sounds Sessions to-day, and during the tracking session for "God Only Knows," Brian Wilson says something about the E E F# G phrase that leads into the verses.  I didn't think very much about this at the time, but just now I was playing "Maybe after He's Gone," and I discovered that the vocal melody in the first two verses starts with that same E E F# G phrase.  The rhythm is slightly different, but the notes are the same.

Pet Sounds is often cited as an influence on Odessey and Oracle, but in interviews and things, the Zombies haven't seemed to talk about it all that much.  Rod Argent's talked about bass parts, but not very specifically, and Colin Blunstone has talked about being a fan of the Beach Boys.  "Maybe after He's Gone" is a Chris White song though, and I can't seem to remember his mentioning Pet Sounds in any interviews.

It's such a small phrase that they have in common, and that's even excepting the difference in rhythm, so I'm not sure whether there's anything to this or not.

"Chained"

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Last week when I listened to Ring of Hands, I forgot to mention that I discovered that the guitar solo in "Chained" is double-tracked.  Because I was still thinking about this (because I forgot to write about it), I realized that it's kind of a play on words with the title.  As a feature, double-tracking requires the second part to be exactly the same as the first, so in a sense the two guitar tracks have to be "chained" together.

"Pleasure"

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I listened to Argent's Ring of Hands this morning, and I think I figured out the arpeggiated keyboard part of "Pleasure."  I knew there was organ panned right, but I couldn't really tell what was going on in the left channel.  When I listened to it this morning, I thought it was electric piano doubling the arpeggios but with a guitar part of just the bottom note, but I split the stereo track, and - hearing it slightly more isolated - I think it's the electric piano playing both the arpeggios and the bottom note (an octave lower).  I'm fairly sure I figured out the specific notes for that whole section, but it goes too fast for my current ability, so I'll have to practice that before I attempt to record a version.

"Just a Little Bit"

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Verulam Cover Project:

According to the Zombie Heaven liner notes, fifty years ago to-day (8 November 1965), the Zombies recorded "Just a Little Bit" for "The Beat Show."  The show was broadcast on 11 November.

"Is This the Dream"

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I had some problems recording this, the bass part especially, which I had to record eleven times.  Eventually, I just stuck together two tracks.  I'm rushing the end a bit, but I didn't feel like recording it yet again.  The mixing didn't go too well either.

I figured out some of the electric piano part, but I'm still not very sure of it.  It doesn't help that Argent's Hohner Pianette has a brighter sound than the generic "electric piano" voice on my keyboard.  I plan on getting a Nord keyboard eventually, so I can use the Hohner Pianette samples from their library (along with the Vox Continental, the mellotron, and probably some others), but that's more than four times the total amount of money I currently have, so it's not an option.

In any case, there seems to be some similarity between this and "She's Coming Home" in that the verses are pretty much just E major and A major.  There's also a similar descending line; where "She's Coming Home" goes diatonically from E to B, "Is This the Dream" has E to F# - almost a complete E major scale.

"Is This the Dream"

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According to the liner notes of both Zombie Heaven and The Decca Stereo Anthology, fifty years ago to-day (10 November 1965), the Zombies recorded "Is This the Dream."

"Just a Little Bit"

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After listening to "Just a Little Bit" to-day, I figured out the bass part.  It gets pretty fast near the end, and since I just learned it, it's probably not as good as it could be.

I'd never really paid attention to it before, but the part during the organ solo is really interesting.  As it goes on, the note values become progressively shorter.  First, they're whole notes, then half notes, then quarter notes, and then finally eighth notes:

I'm not familiar with any other version of the song, so I don't know if that's a feature specific to the song or something that the Zombies came up with.

"Just a Little Bit"

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According to the Zombie Heaven liner notes, fifty years ago to-day (8 November 1965), the Zombies recorded "Just a Little Bit" for "The Beat Show."  The show was broadcast on 11 November.

"Caroline Goodbye"

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I listened to Colin Blunstone's One Year album to-day because according to Russo's Collector's Guide it came out in the U.K. to-day in 1971, but last night I figured out the rest of the chords to "Caroline Goodbye."  I've known the first part (which just alternates between two chords) for a fairly long time, but I was stuck on all the rest of it.

Two days ago, NPR posted the audio of a concert that the Zombies did about a month ago, and they performed "Caroline Goodbye."  I guess I was subconsciously thinking about it, and just in playing around, I happened across about half of the chorus.  So I spent a bit of time on it and figured out the connecting part.

I'm not sure if I have all of the rhythms right, but I'm pretty sure I have the chords right.

There are a couple of interesting features I want to point out.  During "No use pretending / I've known for a long time / Your love is ending," there's a descending chromatic phrase in the chords.  It starts with a major-to-major-7th transition, and while "Caroline Goodbye" was written by Blunstone, starting a descending phrase via a major-to-major-7th transition also seems to be a fairly common feature of Argent's writing (although Blunstone's "How We Were Before" has it too).  Here, it's A major (A, C#, E), A major 7th (A, C#, E, G#), A7 (A, C#, E, G), D major (D, F#, A).

In the choruses, there are cymbal hits on "better" and "sooner" in "But I should have known better" and "And I should have seen sooner."  They act as a type of emphasis.

In copying out those two lines just now, I've realized that "I should have known better" is also the title line in the Beatles' "I Should Have Known Better," so there might be a bit of Beatle influence there.

I also figured out some of the piano part, and the part immediately before "No use pretending" - while in a different key - is the same as a guitar riff in "Telescope (Mr. Galileo)," provided I have it (the part in "Caroline Goodbye") right.  I've actually written two other posts about this phrase because I found it in the Moody Blues' "So Deep within You" and the Tremeloes' "Hello World."

"Summertime"

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I listened to Gershwin's Porgy and Bess yester-day, so I started thinking about "Summertime," particularly the first line:  "It's summertime, and the livin' is easy."  It occurred to me that in the Zombies' version, there's a vocal glissando during that "easy," so there's a sort of melodic ease to which that word is sung.  I just went through about a dozen versions of "Summertime" that I have, and with two exceptions, none of them have that glissando.  (And neither of those two glissandi are very similar to the Zombies'.)  So while it's not unique to their version, it seem like it might be original.

Also, I got to thinking about the story that Argent's frequently told about how the line "Your daddy's rich, and your mama's good-lookin'" inspired the "Who's your daddy / Is he rich?" in "Time of the Season."  I think I found a few other lyrical nods to "Summertime" in "Time of the Season."  Both have a temporal element in their title and lyrics ("Summertime" and "Time of the Season," although Argent's also told the story about how he got the phrase "Time of the Season" from mishearing the lyrics in a Miracles' song), and both describe something as "high."  "Summertime" has "the cotton is high," and the "time of the season" in "Time of the Season" is "When love runs high."  There's a slightly different meaning there, but it's the same word in a similar description.

I would have thought those merely coincidental similarities were it not for Argent's admission of that "Your daddy's rich"/"Who's your daddy / Is he rich?" reference.

"Whenever You're Ready" and "Time of the Season"

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For a really long time (at least months, probably even a year or more), I thought the opening bass parts for "Whenever You're Ready" and "Time of the Season" had some similarity.  I got thinking about this last night, and I finally realized that they sound similar because they're essentially the same part.

While they're in different tempi, the rhythms are the same (I think I've notated them correctly):

Aside from the key, the notes that comprise the parts are the same degree on the scale.  It's the 5th, the 7th, and the octave (the root).

"Whenever You're Ready" is in C major, so it's G (the 5th), B (the 7th), and C (the octave).  "Time of the Season" is in E minor, so it's B (the 5th), D (the 7th), and E (the octave).

I should note that these aren't the same intervals.  The interval between the 7th and the octave is a half-step in a major scale but a whole-step in a minor scale.  So you couldn't transpose the opening bass part for "Whenever You're Ready" up a few steps and get the opening bass part for "Time of the Season," but they are incredibly similar.  For instance, the classic clap and exhale from "Time of the Season" fits during the opening of "Whenever You're Ready."

After I realized this, I thought it really interesting just because it seems to be such a feature of Argent's writing (that rhythm in "Time of the Season" is a fairly frequent topic in interviews), but then I remembered the story about "Hold Your Head Up" and how Chris White wrote it from a riff Argent (the band) improvised when playing "Time of the Season."  It seems that in concerts Rod Argent often introduces "Hold Your Head Up" with that story.  But because that phrase in the bass parts for "Whenever You're Ready" and "Time of the Season" are essentially the same, that story could have an even broader scope.