Rod Argent

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Rod Argent around 1980, found on page 59 of Rock Hardware on Google Books.

Counterpoints / Moving Home

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For Christmas, I got vinyl records of Argent's Counterpoints and Rod Argent's Moving Home, so now I'm pretty sure I have the complete catalogue of both (although Rod Argent has done guest appearances on a lot of tracks and albums by other artists).  I've listened to both only once so far, but here are my initial thoughts and comments:

• John Verity sings more leads parts on Counterpoints than he did on Circus (actually, I'm not sure if he sings any leads on Circus), and he sounds a lot like Russ Ballard, which is interesting because Verity (and John Grimaldi) joined Argent around 1974 since Ballard left.
• One of the songs on Counterpoints (I'm pretty sure it was "Rock and Roll Show") references Chuck Berry's "Johnny B. Goode."
• It seemed that a lot of the songs on both albums mention memories, dreams, and home, which wasn't very surprising since a lot of the earlier Rod Argent-related songs have those same themes.
• There's a greater degree of synth parts on both too.  On Moving Home, there's a picture of Rod Argent with a Minimoog (which is probably the only synth I'd recognize by sight), and the credits also list the Yahama CS80 (which I've heard of because it's also listed in the credits of some Electric Light Orchestra albums).
• I'd seen a picture of the record sleeve for Moving Home, which has all of the lyrics, so I knew that "Home" is the same song that's on Colin Blunstone & Rod Argent's Out of the Shadows, but I was surprised to find that "No. 1" on Moving Home was later re-recorded (solely on piano) and re-titled "Sea Picture No. 1" for Rod Argent's Classically Speaking album.

At some point, I'm going to make vinyl rips of the albums, so that listening to them is more convenient.  But I'm probably going to do the same thing I did with Still Got That Hunger and just take a year to familiarize myself with them.

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I also got a sustain pedal for my keyboard, which means I can start going through my piano books again.  I started going through them over the summer, but I ran into difficulties when both of them wanted to teach me how to use the pedal.  I didn't have one to learn how to use.

I also got a few other related albums:  a vinyl-reissue of Bill Evans' Portrait in Jazz, which I wanted because Rod Argent's mentioned him in some interviews; Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier, which I plan on listening to a lot next year; and a set of John Lee Hooker, although it doesn't include "No One Told Me," the song that Rod Argent took the first line of "She's Not There" from.

"Just a Little Bit"

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I've been looking into bass parts recently, so I wrote out the notation for "Just a Little Bit."  In doing so, I discovered that I was wrong about the bass part during the organ solo.  I'd thought the notes get progressively shorter, but it's actually just that they become more frequent.  What I thought were whole notes and half notes are actually just quarter notes.

I should also mention that I'm not quite sure about the time signature change at the end.  But I knew that if I didn't write down something, the notation I'd already done would just languish unfinished.

For much of this, the guitar just doubles the bass, just an octave higher.

"If It Don't Work Out"

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Last week, I was thinking about the rhythms in the bass parts of some Zombies' songs (ones written by Rod Argent, specifically).  I plan to write a lengthy post about them, but for now, here's the notation for the bass part in "If It Don't Work Out," which is one of the songs I was looking into:

"Without Her"

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Yester-day I listened to a Harry Nilsson compilation album.  The bass part for "Without Her" (which Colin Blunstone covered under his Neil MacArthur pseudonym) sounded easy, so I just figured that out (while simultaneously notating it [it's still incomplete, but I have at least one instance of each section written down]).  I just referenced the Neil MacArthur version and discovered that while that bass part is more complex, at least it's in the same key.  Honestly, I'm not exactly sure what key it is, but I would guess A minor because there aren't any accidentals.