"Beginning"

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Collection Audit:

Last night I listened to Colin Blunstone's Journey and noticed a small thing about "Beginning."  The choral background doubles the "surrounds you in the night" in the line "Oh, self-doubt surrounds you in the night."  The choral background surrounds Blunstone's lead vocal just like the self-doubt in the lyric.

I noticed a small thing about "Beginning" for my Collection Audit project.

"Beginning" is one of the songs that Blunstone re-recorded for The Ghost of You and Me, but instead of a choral backing, that version has a string section.  So - as far as this feature is concerned - the original is actually better because the string version doesn't have that vocal surrounding to mirror that lyric.

"Butcher's Tale"

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Because I'm a nerd, I'm subscribed to the U.S. National Archives YouTube channel.  About two weeks ago, they uploaded a bunch of old footage from World War I, and I'm just now getting around to watching it.

From about 2:05 to 2:10 in this video, there are some shots of a man playing a harmonium:

I don't know the complete history, but apparently harmoniums were used in the army even until the Korean War.  I'd always assumed that the Zombies used one on "Butcher's Tale" because of its sort of eerie sound, but seeing one in this old footage made me realize that it's actually a historically accurate choice of instrumentation.

"Ma non è giusto"

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Yester-day I listened to the Into the Afterlife album.  I found a couple parts that sounded easy, and I'm going to try to figure them out, but no promises on those.  What I really want to write about is "Ma non è giusto," the Italian version of "She's Not There."

I've been learning Italian for two years, and I've practiced it everyday since March.  While I'm far from fluent, I'm getting pretty good, so I could pick out some more words in the lyrics.  The first line starts with "È così triste" ("It's so sad"), which certainly sounds like a Zombies song.  I also heard "Tu sei che" ("You know that"), "ma più di te" ("but more than you"), and - I think - "ci incontriamo" ("we meet").  It's an excruciatingly slow process, but I am transcribing and (sort of) translating it.  Like I mentioned one other time, the Italian lyrics seem to depart from Argent's original lyrics.

After I listened to the album and was thinking about these Italian lyrics, I realized that the Zombies are half of the reason I started learning Italian in the first place.  Chris White wrote "Brief Candles" loosely based on Aldous Huxley's book of short stories of the same title.  About five years ago, I got a copy of Brief Candles, and when I was re-reading it two years ago, I felt kind of stupid because I couldn't understand the Italian phrases in "The Rest Cure," one of the stories.  (At the same time, I was also reading Dante's Divine Comedy, and - even though this was an English translation - there were still some Italian phrases, with which I had the same problem.)  So I started learning Italian on Duolingo.  It seems to be going pretty well.

"Losing Hold"

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I don't think my recording really does this justice.

I can't change the tone of the organ presets on my keyboard (an-other reason why getting a Nord - with physical drawbars! - would be such an advantage), so the organ tone doesn't match that well.

The bass during the repeated part at the end (which I played only part of because I don't know the whole mellotron part) is more complex than what I played, but I haven't figured out that part perfectly yet.  This is actually a lot more than I thought I was going to do when I said I figured out some of the bass part.  Mostly I was talking about the staccato notes and the long phrases that replace them later (one of them extends two whole octaves, up to the twelfth fret G), but then I kept learning more of it.

In Deep is the only Argent album I have as a record, so I can refer to the record sleeve for publication data (I'm not always too confident that what I find on the internet is right).  The record credits "Losing Hold" to Argent and White:

According to the Zombie Heaven liner notes, Argent and White wrote separately but starting with "Imagine the Swan" they shared the writing credit.  Because of this ambiguity, I sometimes wonder if a song is an Argent or White song.  Obviously, I'm not sure of this, but I would guess that "Losing Hold" is a Rod Argent song because it has some of his characteristic three-note chromatic phrases in the bass part.  The staccato notes at the beginning are A G# G, over which are played A major, C# minor, and G major; the chromatic phrase starting from the root note of the first chord in the sequence is a very Argentian progression.  Later, during the repeated section at the end, there's a three-note chromatic phrase of C B Bb.

The chord progression has some resemblance to that of "Hung up on a Dream" too.  They both have a section where each chord is only one note different from the previous.  In "Hung up on a Dream" it's G major (G, B, D) to E minor (E, G, B) to C major (C, E, G).  Here, there's a section of F major (F, A, C) to A minor (A, C, E) to C major (C, E, G) to E minor (E, G, B) to G major (G, B, D).  This sort of incremental progression is more visually obvious on a keyboard instrument, which makes me think it's Argent's song.

"Be Glad"

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When I listened to In Deep a couple days ago, I thought this part (doubled on piano and tubular bells) from "Be Glad" would be easy to figure out.  It's only a couple bars from around the six minute mark, but because I figured this out, I'm pretty sure the song is in G major.

In Deep

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Collection Audit:

Last night I listened to Argent's In Deep, and I noticed two small things about two songs. 

"God Gave Rock and Roll to You" 

The first line of the first verse is "Love your friend and love your neighbor," and the "Love your neighbor" part is a quote from the Bible.  I think it's actually in a couple places, but this is the first one I thought of: 

But when the Pharisees heard that he [Jesus] had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together.  And one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him.  "Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?"  And he said to him, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.  This is the great and first commandment.  And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.  On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets." (Matthew 22:34-40)

For what it's worth, last year, I wrote about what I think are some more Biblical references (to the Sermon on the Mount) in "It's Only Money, Pt. 1" and "It's Only Money, Pt. 2" (a lot of the lyrics are the same in both songs). 

"Losing Hold" 

I'm surprised I hadn't noticed this before, but "slide" in the line "Let my fingers slide" has a melisma.  Instead of being sung as just one syllable, it's sung as two, and the note changes from an A to a B, so the word "slide" is itself sliding between those two pitches.

I found some more things about some songs from In Deep.  I also (finally!) sussed out a couple lines for my transcriptions:  "Gathering together a chandelier of time" in "Candles on the River" and "The thoughts in such a mind don't belong" in "Rosie."

I also figured out the part in "Be Glad" that's doubled on piano and tubular bells and - while I was figuring out the notes for that "slide" - the bass part at the very beginning of "Losing Hold."  I'll get around to recording and posting those in the next few days.

"I Want Her She Wants Me"

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I'm getting to this late, but here are the chords for "I Want Her She Wants Me."

Introduction

|: G major / D major / C major / G major :|

Verses:

G major / F# minor / B major / E minor

Note: This E minor has some extra notes played on top of it.  First, it's just a regular E minor, with the top string open (an E note).  Then, the top string plays an F#, a G, back to F#, and then back to a regular E minor.

So:

E|0-2-3-2-0
B|0-0-0-0-0
G|0-0-0-0-0
D|2-2-2-2-2
A|2-2-2-2-2
E|0-0-0-0-0

D major / G major / B major

|: G major / D major / C major / G major :|

Bridge

G major / G major dominant 7th (G7) / Eb major / G minor / C minor / G major

G major / G major dominant 7th (G7) / Eb major / D major

Tag

|: G major / D major / C major / G major :|

Recording Session

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I was too busy to make a note of this at the time, but yester-day was the 51st anniversary of an-other Zombies recording session.  On 24 June 1965 (incidentally, Colin Blunstone's 20th birthday), they recorded, "Don't Go Away," "I'll Keep Trying," and "Whenever You're Ready."

Like most of the songs from the 12 June session, I haven't learned any more parts to these since I last recorded them, so I won't be posting new versions.

"She's Not There"

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Yester-day I listened to the I Love You album, and I noticed a couple things.  One of them is about "I Love You," and since it's a musical thing and the anniversary of the recording is in about two weeks (8 July), I'll wait until then for that.

Here's the second thing then; it's about the bass part in "She's Not There."  I still don't know the whole thing, but I know the part during the verses, which is the significant one here.  It's the part during the "Well, let me tell you 'bout the way she looked" sections that I don't know yet.

I'd always thought that the bass part during the electric piano solo was just the same as it is during the verses, but there's a small change in rhythm.  At the beginning of the song, the bass part goes like this:

For the first bar of the electric piano solo, the bass part is the same, but then the first quarter note in each bar (an A note) changes to two eighth notes:

I really need to make a list of the songs that do this, but "She's Not There" is one of the earliest Zombies songs that has this feature: the bass part under the solo could be exactly the same as it is during the verses (the solo is based on the same chords as the verses are), but there's a change that makes it a little more complex.

"Care of Cell 44"

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Originally, I'd intended to post the guitar chords for "Care of Cell 44" with the mellotron part written out in notation.  In notating it though, I found some parts that I'm not sure I have right.  I'm pretty sure of the chords though, so I'm posting only those.

Verses:

|: G major / D major / E minor / D major / C major / B minor / A minor / D major
G major / D major / Bb major / Dsus4 / D major :|

For the "Feels so good" section:
G major / D major / E minor / D major / C major / B minor / A minor

There is no guitar part during the bridge.  You could play the piano chords for that part on guitar, but I'm a purist and wouldn't advocate it, so I'm not listing those chords here (if you're that determined though, you could find them elsewhere on this blog).

Near the end, after the "Feels so good" section there's a G major to G major dominant 7th (G7) modulation, and then the progression from the "Feels so good" section is repeated, resolving to a G major at the end.

"Indication" b/w "How We Were Before"

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According to both the Zombie Heaven liner notes and Russo's Collector's Guide, the Zombies' "Indication" b/w "How We Were Before" (Decca F.12426) was released in the U.K. fifty years ago to-day (17 June 1966).

"Butcher's Tale"

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I ran across the initial notes I made a year ago that ended up in this post about "Butcher's Tale," and I discovered that I forgot to mention something.

I didn't (and still don't) understand what the line "But the king's shilling is now my fee" really means, but a year ago, I realized that "shilling" sounds a bit like "shelling," so the accoutrements of war are sort of present even in the first verse.

Classically Speaking

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Last week when I scanned the liner notes from Greatest Hits, Greatest Recordings, I also scanned the liner notes from Rod Argent's Classically Speaking album.  To-day's his birthday, so I thought I'd post it.

Rod Argent

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To-day's Rod Argent's birthday, and here's a ramble-y post about him and Bach.

This morning I was thinking about Rod Argent's Classically Speaking again.  The only Bach piece on it is the C minor prelude and fugue from the Well-Tempered Clavier (BWV 847), and in the liner notes to Zombie Heaven, Argent says that "'Imagine the Swan' was written from the chord sequence of the first Bach prelude in 'The Well-Tempered Clavier' [BWV 846].  Well, actually it was Chris' chord sequence but we did it like that."

There have been a lot of interviews where Argent acknowledges his love of Bach.  In the liner notes to Classically Speaking, he says, "And I've always loved Bach!"

Until now I guess I hadn't really considered what of Bach's work Argent loves, but it probably would be the keyboard works.  In this interview, he explains that he has the complete Bach organ works performed by Peter Hurford* (whose name is misspelled).  But now that I've connected the influence that the Well-Tempered Clavier had on "Imagine the Swan" and Argent's including a prelude and fugue from it on Classically Speaking, I'm wondering how familiar he was with The Well-Tempered Clavier.

I'm woefully ignorant of it.  Aside from Argent's recording of the C minor prelude and fugue, I haven't even heard it, much less played it.  So there's an-other thing to work on.  I'm not sure how long this is going to last, but I think I might start going through the lesson book from the piano class I took in college.  Last time I did this, I lasted about six months (last June to December).  I'll never be as good as Argent, but I certainly can't get any better if I don't practice.

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*In his book, The Zombies: Hung up on a Dream, Claes Johanen explains that Hurford was in charge of the St. Albans Cathedral choir, which Argent was in.  That's kind of skipped around in the interview.

Unfortunately, Hurford's complete Bach organ works is out-of-print (it came out something like twenty years ago).  I have the two-disc set of excerpts (coincidentally, like the early Zombies stuff, it's on the Decca label), but I'm still trying to find the complete recordings (for an affordable price, that is).

Hurford also wrote a book, Making Music on the Organ, which I actually got a couple months ago.  I'm extraordinarily behind on my reading though, so I doubt I'll get to reading it anytime soon (although to-day I finished a Beethoven biography I've been reading since last March; the Well-Tempered Clavier was mentioned a few times in that too).

Update

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I'd intended to record new versions of "She's Not There," "You Make Me Feel Good," and "It's Alright with Me," but I listened to the recordings I made last year, and I haven't learned anything new since then, so it doesn't really seem worth it to re-record them if they'd be essentially the same.

I recently realized that it's impractical to continue recording everything on the anniversaries anyway, and since the 12 June session was the first official studio date the Zombies had, it makes sense to change what I'm doing now.  This might be subject to change later, but from now on, I'll record a song only if I've learned a new part or revised what I thought I knew, like those bass notes in "Summertime" that I had in the wrong octave.

"Summertime"

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This is now the 52nd anniversary of the Zombies' first session for Decca (on 12 June 1964).  I started with "Summertime" because I've been posting some form of notation (up to this point, it's been only chords) every Sunday and I can combine that with this anniversary.  Because I wrote out the bass part to "Summertime" in notation:

I mentioned this before, but when I was started writing this out, I discovered that I'd been playing some E and B notes in the wrong octave.  In the last measure of the first line, an erased E an octave lower is still faintly visible.  I'm pretty sure that now I have this right.

Because I corrected those notes and put them in the right octave, I also discovered some typical Argent three-note chromatic phrases.  And since I wrote out the notation, I can just say, "Look at the second and third measures of the third line."  It's E Db D.

I should really start trying to learn the electric piano part now....

"Pleasure"

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Collection Audit:

I just listened to a compilation album of Argent (Greatest: The Singles Collection).  I'd previously noticed the melisma'd "rain" in the line "Falling rain to cool my aching face" in "Pleasure," but I'd failed to realize that - because the notes are descending (F# E D# C# B, I think) - the melisma helps to convey that the rain is falling.

The Zombies

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When I listened to Greatest Hits, Greatest Recordings recently, I lookt through the liner notes again.  I thought this was a great picture, so I scanned it (I'm also using it as my header picture now).  It's the Zombies with their producer Ken Jones.  I like how Rod Argent is centered and everyone is looking in his direction, which makes sense because he was (and is) the leader of the Zombies.

Because Rod's playing harmonica, Paul has his twelve-string, and Ken Jones is in the studio, I'm assuming that they're rehearsing Jones' "Work 'n' Play."

The Zombie Heaven liner notes comment that at the 10 December 1964 session (when "Work 'n' Play" was recorded, among with some other songs), "a representative from the American trade magazine Cashbox arrived to present them [the Zombies] with an International Gold Award for having got to the top of their chart [with "She's Not There"]."  I'm pretty sure that most (if not all) of the Decca-era pictures of the Zombies in the studio are from this 10 December session, as something of a press event for receiving this award.

Classically Speaking

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Collection Audit:

This morning I listened to some excerpts of Grieg's lyric pieces for piano.  I'm most familiar with the first piece of the first book (Op. 12: I. Arietta) via Rod Argent's recording on Classically Speaking.  Although this was an album entirely of Grieg pieces, after the Arietta, I expected to hear Chopin's Etude in C minor, Op. 25, No. 12 because that's the second track on Argent's Classically Speaking.  I started wondering about the transition between the two pieces and thought there was something more to the relationship between them than just my familiarity with that particular sequencing. 

I lookt up the notation for Grieg's Arietta and discovered that it's in Eb major.  As the title of the Chopin piece would suggest, it's in C minor.  C minor and Eb major are relative keys.  Their scales contain all the same notes; they just start in different places.  My expecting the Chopin piece after the Grieg piece revealed a clever bit of sequencing on Argent's part.  There's a relatively smooth transition between the two pieces because they have similar tonalities.

I noticed something about the sequencing of Classically Speaking yester-day.

"I Can't Make up My Mind"

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As part of my Collection Audit, this afternoon I listened to a Zombies compilation album titled Greatest Hits, Greatest Recordings (which I got mostly because it has a half hour interview with Rod Argent at the end).  I discovered that I had a wrong word in my transcription "I Can't Make up My Mind."  I thought there were a sentiment spread over two lines as "I need guiding in my choice / Of what to do," but it's actually two separate things: "I need guiding in my choice" and "Oh, what to do."

Rickenbacker Guitar

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I was looking up pictures of the Zombies, and I discovered something moderately interesting.  I'd previously seen some pictures from the benefit concert for Paul Atkinson, and I noticed he had a Rickenbacker guitar.  I guess I'd assumed that it was the same one that he used for Odessey and Oracle (and concerts during the later days of the Zombies), but scrolling through the pictures this time, I noticed that it's black where the one from Odessey and Oracle seems to have a fireglo finish like this one at Chicago Music Exchange (which I'd buy if I had the money):

The picture's in black and white, but there's definitely a gradient in the finish:

Of the pictures from the benefit concert, I found a closer one from a different angle and discovered that this Rickenbacker's sound hole is a slit rather than the F-shape that the Odessey and Oracle one has:

Between the color and the shape of the sound hole, it's evident that these are two different guitars.

I've mentioned before that it's an eventual goal to have something of an instrumental accuracy with this project.  While the model of the black Rickenbacker is about the same price as the fire-glo one, I think that model is still in production, where the model of the fire-glo isn't.  I've done some research, and it seems that Rickenbacker had a limited re-issue a decade or two ago.  I think the one I found at Chicago Music Exchange is one of those re-issues, and that's still about $2000.  I'd hate to see what one from the mid-60s sells for.  The model is more important to me than the vintage, but if the model isn't made anymore, vintage models or re-issues would be my only choice.

Anyway, like I mentioned before, I should focus on getting instruments I don't have any sort of, and I already have a good guitar (an Epiphone SG-400).  I've been saving my money, and I think I'm about halfway to getting a flute so I can learn the Mike Vickers overdubs from December 1968.

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After writing this, I remembered that just recently I ran across a color picture of the Zombies on the BBC (Top of the Pops, apparently).  I still don't remember where I saw it, but I did manage to find the picture again, which confirms that the Odessey and Oracle Rickenbacker had a fire-glo finish:

The date given is September 1965.

"I'll Call You Mine"

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I think there might be a little more variation than just a straight G major chord for the beginning of the song (a G major followed by a single B note and then a single G note a third lower), but otherwise, the chords for "I'll Call You Mine" are pretty easy.  I think I have these right, and it's just that they're weird chords, rather than my having something wrong.

Verses:  G major / E major / F major / D major

Choruses:  G major / E minor / D major / C major / G major

They're Not There

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They're Not There

Honestly, I think BuzzFeed is kind of a waste of time (I know it only by the inane quizzes), but this is actually decent.  I was aware that there had been fake Zombies bands touring after "Time of the Season" was a hit, but I didn't know a lot of the specifics.

There are some errors in this that - Zombies pedant that I am - I feel I have to correct:

Ralston calls the Zombies a "reunited British psych-rock band," which... maybe?  In context, no, because White and Grundy were along only for the recent U.S. tours of Odessey and Oracle, but I suppose you could call the Blunstone, Argent, Rodford, Rodford, and Toomey incarnation a "reunited" band.

"Nobody even saw fit to correct the unintentionally misspelled 'Odessey' on the record's cover, viewed in hindsight as typical psychedelic-era wordplay."  In relatively recent interviews, Argent's explained that he caught the error, but not in time to fix it before the album went off to print.  He passed it off as wordplay when the album came out, not "in hindsight."

"She's Not There" and "Tell Her No" are "their early, more raucous hits"!?  This might be subjective, but I don't think there's anything "raucous" about either.

Not Zombies-related, but claiming that Don Kirshner "created the Monkees" is completely false.  The Monkees were created by Bob Rafelson and Bert Schneider.  Don Kirshner acted as a music director for the Monkees, choosing some of the songs they recorded and that sort of thing.*

I'm surprised that New World isn't mentioned at all.  From what I remember from Russo's Collector's Guide (which, admittedly, I haven't read for a few years), some of the original Zombies (Blunstone, White, and Grundy) wanted to do a tour to clear their name, but they needed an album to tour with.  They recorded New World in order to tour with it, but the tour never actually happened.

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*I've been reading Andrew Sandoval's The Monkees: The Day-by-Day Story of the 60s TV Pop Sensation (I'm at the end of 1966), and it seems that Kirshner was most heavily involved with More of the Monkees.  There was friction between him and the other Monkees (Mike Nesmith in particular), and I think he was gone by the Headquarters album.