"The Coming of Kohoutek"

About a month ago, I got a Moog synthesizer (the Subsequent 37).  I still have a lot to learn, but the first thing I did was try to replicate a little tune that Mike Vickers played on the BBC in 1969.  (I don't think he ever gets enough credit for this, so I'll mention it:  Vickers set up the Moog synthesizers for the Beatles' Abbey Road and for Emerson, Lake, & Palmer.  In December 1968, he did some orchestral overdubs for Zombies songs, as heard on Into the Afterlife and the second disc of Zombie Heaven.)

This was my second objective:  the first bit of "The Coming of Kohoutek."

I'd noticed before that the Moog and the Mellotron violins play the same thing (a loose quotation of "Dies Irae"), but I don't think I'd noticed the lower Moog part (panned right) until I started examining the song more closely.  My audio example is just those three parts plus some guitar arpeggios.  I played to a click track, not to the original Argent recording, so the tempo might not be very accurate.

"I Must Move"

I was thinking about "I Must Move" yester-day and realized that there's some significance to the shape of the vocal melody in the chorus.  It's something like:

The lyrics here are:

I must move on, must move on; I can't stand still

I must move on, must move on, must go

(I'm still a bit unsure about my transcription though; some of those "on"s might be "I"s.)

Like I noted before (but had completely forgotten), the phrase "can't stand still" is sung entirely to A notes, so while it's negated, there's a musical sense of "stand[ing] still."  In contrast to this, the rest of the melody here rarely stays on the same pitch (there are two sequential Ds at the beginning and three sequential Cs in the next measure).  The melody itself has a sort of wandering nature that mirrors the narrator's need to "move on."

One Year

According to Russo's Collector's Guide, fifty years ago to-day (5 November 1971), Colin Blunstone's album One Year (Epic S EPC 64557) was released.  The U.S. and Canadian release (Epic E 30974) was on 24 January 1972.

Live at Abbey Road, 18 September 2021

I attended the Zombies' virtual concert from Abbey Road on 18 September (technically my first Zombies' concert), and I felt I should write a post about it.

Here's the set list:

• "Moving On"
• "I Want You Back Again"
• "Edge of the Rainbow"
• "I Love You"
• "Say You Don't Mind"
• "Different Game" (with Mellotron and string quartet)
• [new song for which no title was given] (with string quartet)
• "I Want to Fly" (new arrangement by Chris Gunning, with string quintet)
• "Tell Her No"
• "Care of Cell 44"
• "This Will Be Our Year"
• "I Want Her She Wants Me"
• "Time of the Season"
• "Merry-Go-Round"
• "Run Away" (possibly to be re-titled "For All My Life")
• "Hold Your Head Up"
• "She's Not There"
• "The Way I Feel Inside"

This was the first performance by the Zombies that I'd seen for some time.  I think the last new performances I saw were from the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony in 2019.  While I was familiar with all of the old songs, I noticed some ways in which they were played differently.  For example, after the organ solo in "I Love You," there are usually just a couple bars of silence before the song resumes, but in this performance, Rod Argent played an electric piano trill just before the drums came back in.  Touches like that made the songs seem fresh.

I was a bit surprised that "Say You Don't Mind" wasn't played with the string section, like it is on One Year and even Odessey and Oracle {Revisited}.  I believe this is only the second time I've heard it in the "rock and roll" version (the first was on Live at Metropolis Studios).

Before the concert, the Zombies had posted a picture of the Mellotron at Abbey Road:

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I did some research and discovered that this is an M300 model.  I'm pretty sure that the Mellotron that Argent used on Odessey and Oracle was a MKII.  This is often said to have been John Lennon's Mellotron, but over the years, I've become more and more skeptical of this claim.  (But that's a topic for a different post.)

In the concert, the Mellotron was also used on "Care of Cell 44," but it seems to have been added later since the Mellotron is clearly seen sitting in a corner while the band is playing the song.

Usually, Argent uses his Kurzweil keyboard only for acoustic piano and Hohner Pianet sounds (I think that on rare occasions, he also layers the acoustic piano with a string sound, but off-hand the only instance of this that I can think of is "Care of Cell 44" on Extended Versions), but it sounded like he was using a Rhodes sound for "Run Away."  I think this may have been done to match the still unreleased studio recording.  Back in August, Tom Toomey posted some pictures from a rehearsal at Argent's studio, and a Rhodes Mark V is in a few of them:

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During the organ solo in "Hold Your Head Up," Argent included not only a quotation from Bach's Herz und Mund und Tat und Leben, BWV 147 (which I first saw in this performance from a number of years ago) but also - if I'm not mistaken - a quotation of Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D minor, BWV 565.

In "She's Not There," the instrumental players each got solo features.  In one of his spots, Søren Koch played the riff from the Beatles' "Daytripper."  The main motivation was probably a nod to the fact that the concert was in one of the studios that the Beatles often used, but on Live at the Bloomsbury Theatre, London, the Zombies' former guitarist Keith Airey included the same riff in his solo in the same song.  Argent played the riff from the Spencer Davis Group's "Gimme Some Lovin'," which I think I first saw during the performance of "She's Not There" at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony.

It seems like "The Way I Feel Inside" was done on the spur of the moment.  I don't know how frequently the Zombies perform this, but it was the first time I'd heard a live version of it.

"She Loves the Way They Love Her"

I listened to One Year yester-day and noticed a small feature in the line "Dreaming dreams of future time when she and me are all alone" in "She Loves the Way They Love Her."  The words in the phrase "all alone" start with the same sound, so there's a sense of the exclusivity of being alone.

"Caroline Goodbye" b/w "Though You Are Far Away"

According to Russo's Collector's Guide, fifty years ago to-day (8 October 1971), Colin Blunstone's "Caroline Goodbye" b/w "Though You Are Far Away" (Epic S EPC 7520) was released in the U.K.

"Closer to Heaven"

Yester-day, I listened to All Together Now to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the release of "Hold Your Head Up" b/w "Closer to Heaven" and "Keep on Rollin'" ("Closer to Heaven" is also included on the CD as a bonus track).  I noticed a small feature about "Closer to Heaven":  at ~2:35, there's an upward key change (I think it's C major to D major), and this musically illustrates the title line.

"Hold Your Head Up" b/w "Closer to Heaven" and "Keep on Rollin'"

According to Russo's Collector's Guide, fifty years ago to-day (2 October 1971), Argent's "Hold Your Head Up" b/w "Closer to Heaven" and "Keep on Rollin'" (Epic S EPC 9315) was released in the U.K.

"I Want You Back Again"

Recently, I noticed a couple small features in "I Want You Back Again," both in the lines "Since you have left me / I'm all alone."  "Alone" is sung with a melisma (it's Eb F C in the single version; I think it's also Eb F C in the alternate take; and it's F G F D in the version on Still Got That Hunger), giving a sense of degree (for "all").  The words in the phrase "all alone" start with the same initial sound, and this gives a sense of that singularity.

"Together"

I was thinking about "Together" (from As Far As I Can See) yester-day, specifically this section:

And I've come to

Need you like flowers need the rain

Have to love you

As much as seasons have to change in time

The majority of this section has fairly quick note values, but each word in the phrase "change in time" is held for a full measure.  This contrast musically illustrates that "change" in the lyrics.

"A Rose for Emily"

Partially because I felt I should be doing more on this project and partially because I've been doing these sorts of videos lately, I made a video about the Mellotron flute part in "A Rose for Emily," which actually wasn't used in the final version.

I played the Mellotron part and the piano part on my Nord Electro 5.  For the piano, I used Nord's Steinway sample.  I intentionally mixed the piano part a bit lower than I normally would have so that the Mellotron part is easier to hear.

The Mellotron occurs only in the second and third verses, so that's all I included (also because I don't know the piano part for the entire song).  For the piano part, I referenced a book published by Alfred (The Zombies' Greatest Hits), although I didn't follow exactly what that has.  As always, there's the disclaimer that what I have may be wrong.

Here's the notation:

Second verse:

Third verse:

"She Does Everything for Me"

An-other thing I noticed when I listened to I Love You yester-day is that "all" in the line "I don't care at all" in "She Does Everything for Me" is sung with a melisma (I'm unsure of the exact notes, but most - if not all - of them are C#s).  This articulation gives a sense of degree.

"Gotta Get a Hold of Myself"

I listened to I Love You yester-day because it was the fifty-seventh anniversary of the Zombies' first proper recording session.  I hadn't noticed this before, but it sounds like Rod Argent is using a volume pedal with his Vox Continental at the beginning of "Gotta Get a Hold of Myself."  I did some research, and I actually found a picture of him in the studio with the Continental and a volume pedal:

[source]

I'm pretty sure this picture is from 10 December 1964.  It was during this session that the Zombies received an award from Cash Box for the chart success of "She's Not There," so there was a bit of press coverage and a series of photographs.  Of course, "Gotta Get a Hold of Myself" wasn't recorded until 1966 (4 May, according to the liner notes of The Decca Stereo Anthology), but this picture proves that Argent had a volume pedal for his Continental.

I made an Instagram post about this to try to demonstrate it:

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"Misty Roses"

A couple days ago, Colin Blunstone's social media pages posted a few lines from "Misty Roses."  I was thinking about the song this morning and realized that "lovely" in the recurring phrase "too lovely to leave alone" is sung with a melisma (Gb F Eb), giving a sense of degree (for "too").  In referencing the recording, I discovered that the same is true for the "lovely" in the line "Too good to last, but too lovely not to try."  "Last" in that line is also sung with a melisma (I think it's C Ab), giving a sense of the word's meaning.

"Celebration" b/w "Kingdom"

According to Russo's Collector's Guide, fifty years ago to-day (2 April 1971), Argent's "Celebration" b/w "Kingdom" (Ger. Epic EPC 7120) was released in the U.K.  The U.S. and Canadian release (Epic 5-10746) was on 21 June 1971.

As far as I know, "Kingdom" hasn't been re-issued, and until looking through Russo's discography, I'd never heard of it, let alone heard it.

"Mary Won't You Warm my Bed" b/w "I Hope I Didn't Say Too Much Last Night"

According to Russo's Collector's Guide, fifty years ago to-day (19 March 1971), Colin Blunstone's "Mary Won't You Warm My Bed" b/w "I Hope I Didn't Say Too Much Last Night" (Epic S EPC 7095) was released in the U.K.

As far as I know, "I Hope I Didn't Say Too Much Last Night" hasn't been re-issued, and I haven't heard it.

"Sweet Mary" b/w "Rejoice"

According to Russo's Collector's Guide, fifty years ago to-day (15 March 1971), Argent's "Sweet Mary" (edited) b/w "Rejoice" (Epic 5-10718) was released in the U.S. and Canada.  The album Ring of Hands (Epic E 30128) was also released.

John Peel's Sunday Concert

A couple years ago, the Zombies Fan Club posted a link to an Argent performance from 1971.  I did some research (detailed here) and determined that this is from John Peel's Sunday Concert, originally broadcast on 14 February 1971, fifty years ago to-day.  According to this page, the performance was likely recorded on 4 February, so the release of Ring of Hands (on 5 February) came between the recording of this performance and its broadcast.  While introducing "Rejoice," Peel alludes to Ring of Hands and calls it "the group's current LP."

The audio file has five songs from the Sunday Concert ("Lothlorien," "Chained," "Rejoice," "The Fakir," and "Sweet Mary"), but then there are two other versions of "Rejoice" and "Chained."  These seem to be from the "unknown broadcast" in 1971 that Greg Russo details in his Collector's Guide.  It's the only other radio appearance where "Rejoice" and "Chained" are both in the set list.  According to Russo, Argent also performed "Time of the Season" at this session, but this isn't included in the audio file.

Ring of Hands

According to Russo's Collector's Guide, fifty years ago to-day (5 February 1971), Argent's Ring of Hands (Epic S EPC 64190) was released in the U.K.  The U.S. and Canada release (Epic E 30128) was on 15 March.

"Celebration" b/w "Where Are We Going Wrong"

According to Russo's Collector's Guide, fifty years ago to-day (22 January 1971), Argent's "Celebration" b/w "Where Are We Going Wrong" (CBS S 5423) was released in the U.K.