Thursday, June 29, 2017

A Keyboard Approach

A couple months ago, I subscribed to the Zombies Fan Club's YouTube channel.  This morning, I was very surprised to find two clips from Rod Argent's A Keyboard Approach in my subscription box.  According to Russo's Collector's Guide it came out (on VHS) on 11 August 1992.  A couple times (even as recently as a month or two ago), I went looking for a used copy on Amazon, but I never had any luck.

It's an instructional video that runs just over an hour (66 minutes), but the clips feature only Argent's performances of "Baby Don't You Cry" and "A 4th Gymnopedie" from Red House (1988).



In the video itself, instead of "Baby Don't You Cry," as it's titled on Red House, Argent calls the song "Baby Don't You Cry No More," which is the title it later had on Out of the Shadows (2001).

Argent confirms what I was pretty certain of: "A 4th Gymnopedie" (titled "A fourth gymnopédie" on Classically Speaking) is meant as "a little tribute to" Satie's gymnopédies.  In verifying my spelling there, I discovered that Satie's gymnopédies were published in 1888, so Argent's "A 4th Gymnopedie" from 1988 is from a hundred years later.

A little bit of scrolling credits is included at the end of the video with "A 4th Gymnopedie."  All that's visible is "Fugue in C minor," which I'm assuming is Bach's Fugue in C minor, BWV 846 from The Well-Tempered Clavier, which Argent later recorded for Classically Speaking (1998).

I'm pretty sure that the "Baby Don't You Cry" video was filmed in the same studio where the Zombies recorded Breathe Out, Breathe In.  Here's the video of the title track for comparison:


Obviously, the equipment is moved around, but the windows look the same.