The Zombies

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I don't want to say that they're wrong about this (after all, it is their album, so they should know when it was released), but the book where I've been getting the dates for their releases (Greg Russo's Time of the Season: Collector's Guide) says that the LP came out in the U.S. on 8 February 1965.

And, actually, the picture they have there is the re-issued album from 1973.  You can tell by the catalogue number (PAS 71001).  The original album was PA 61001 (and in rechanneled stereo as PAS 61001).

"Be Free"

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After listening to Argent this morning, I learned some of "Be Free."  I'm most certain of the organ part in this.  The guitar part is pretty close, but some of the notes might be wrong, and I'm even less sure of the electric piano part (although I'm pretty sure the chords are right).

Oh, and this is a new one in the catalogue.  A good way to start the year.

Keats

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An-other one of the many CDs I got for Christmas is Keats' self-titled, debut, and only album.  Keats was a band in the mid-80s composed of Colin Blunstone, Pete Bardens, Ian Bairnson, David Paton, and Stuart Elliott.  I've heard it described as an Alan Parsons Project spin-off band.  Except for Pete Bardens, all of the band members were involved with the APP, and the album itself was produced by Parsons.

In any case, more songs to learn!  I didn't know this until listening to the album, but it contains what is apparently the original version of "Turn Your Heart Around," which Blunstone re-recorded for his somewhat-recent album On the Air Tonight.

Speaking of the APP…  I'd been unsure of what to do with the handful of APP songs that Colin Blunstone provided vocals for, but I recently started an-other blog that's virtually identical to this one where the object is to learn all of the parts to all of the songs by the Alan Parsons Project.  So those songs will appear over there (hopefully).  I'm sure it'll be a bit rough in the early stages because I don't really know any APP songs yet.

Argent

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I listened to Argent this morning and worked on transcribing the lyrics.  And I noticed some things.

In "Like Honey," there are some lines about flying:

So rise and learn to fly
Help the lonely hour of the night pass by
So rise and spread your wings
Help the lonely hour of the night begin

And then a few songs later, in "Be Free," there are more lines about flying:

If you're gonna spread your wings
And hear the song that freedom sings
Remember that I told you to be free
If you're gonna sweep the sky
And feel the wind come rushing by
Remember that I told you to be free

Both sets of lyrics are also pretty parallel structurally.

This might even bear some comparison to "Wings against the Sun" from the Zombies' 2004 album As Far as I Can See.  I haven't explored that yet.

On the second side, there's an-other instance of this - where the same theme is present in two songs - although it's not as strong a connection as that between "Like Honey" and "Be Free."  "Stepping Stone" has the line "I would gladly made you happy," and "Bring You Joy," the next song, has:

And I'll make you feel so happy
You could cry
Yes, I'll make you feel so happy
You will die

However, while those lines are sort of similar, the songs have different outlooks.

Additionally, I found some more instances of remembering, which is a major theme in Chris White's and Rod Argent's songs.  "Be Free" has the line "Remember that I told you to be free."  "Schoolgirl" (written by Russ Ballard) starts out with "Remember when you were a schoolgirl."  And "Stepping Stone" starts out with "Remember days when we were close and warm as night turned to dawn" and later has "Remember fresh and sweet the thought of summer ways, loving eyes, lazy day."  Those lines in particular connect "Stepping Stone" to the Zombies' "Beechwood Park," specifically the first two verses:

Do you remember summer days just after summer rain
When all the air was damp and warm in the green of country lanes
And the breeze would touch your hair, kiss your face, and make you care
About your world, your summer world
And we would count the evening stars as the day grew dark in Beechwood Park

Do you remember golden days and golden summer sun
The sound of laughter in our ears and the breeze as we would run
And the breeze would touch your hair, kiss your face, and make you care
About your world, your summer world
And we would count the evening stars as the day grew dark in Beechwood Park

Both refer to summer, warmth, and the day-to-night transition (although "Beechwood Park" is day to night and "Stepping Stone" is night to day).

"Tell Her No" b/w "Leave Me Be"

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Fifty years ago to-day (28 December 1964), the Zombies' "Tell Her No" b/w "Leave Me Be" was released in the U.S. and Canada (PAR 9723).

Red House

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For Christmas, I got Rod Argent's 1988 album Red House.

There's a hole punch in the liner note booklet, but otherwise it's in really good condition, considering its age.  It's mostly an instrumental album, and it's pretty synth-heavy (not surprising for the '80s, I guess), neither of which I was expecting, so I don't quite know what to think about it yet.

I was kind of surprised to find that I already know three of the songs - "A 4th Gymnopedie," which also appears on Classically Speaking from a decade later, "Helpless," and "Baby Don't You Cry," both of which appear on Rod Argent & Colin Blunstone's Out of the Shadows from 2001 (although on Out of the Shadows, "Baby Don't You Cry" appears as "Baby Don't You Cry No More").

Also, in looking up the release dates, I've discovered that both Red House and Out of the Shadows came out in the U.S. years after they came out in the U.K.  Red House came out in 1988 in the U.K. but in 1991 in the U.S.; and Out of the Shadows came out in 2001 in the U.K. but in 2003 in the U.S.

"Brief Candles"

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Last night, I figured out the mellotron parts for "Brief Candles."  Or at least I think I did.  I think there are mellotron parts throughout the choruses, which I hadn't noticed; I'd thought they were just in the bridge.  I used the fake flute setting on my keyboard, which I think has a bit too much tremolo to sound mellotron-like, but it's the best I could do.  I've been thinking about getting a Nord keyboard so I can use their mellotron samples, but I don't have the money for it yet (and probably won't for a long time).  They also have Hohner Pianet samples, which I could definitely use.  They even list the Zombies under famous uses of the Pianet.

I still don't know very much of the piano part (so a lot of this is empty space), and I still have to record what I know with two tracks because I can't play both parts at once (so they don't match up perfectly).

But because I learned the mellotron part, I think I now know all of the mellotron parts on Odessey and Oracle ("Care of Cell 44," "Brief Candles," "Hung up on a Dream," and "Changes").  What I know for "Hung up on a Dream" might not be too accurate though.  (There's also the un-used mellotron part for "A Rose for Emily," but I haven't gotten around to learning that yet.)

"You Make Me Feel Good"

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This is a thing I've been meaning to write about for at least a few months, if not a year or more.

In figuring out the opening riffs for "Sticks and Stones" and "You Make Me Feel Good," I found a few similarities.  I felt it would be better to write out the notation for them rather than try to describe them verbally.  (Actually, I figured out how to make notation in Cubase, which is infinitely better than my trying to do it manually.  Plus I could check the note values with MIDI.)  I've put different colored boxes around the parts that are similar.

Both songs are (mostly) in E major, but even the accidentals have some similarity.  There are the same two in the opening riffs (D natural and G natural), and both songs include a descending chromatic phrase (G to F# to F to E) at the very end ("Sticks and Stones" has it as major chords and has it at the beginning too - after the riff).

I haven't found anything that confirms that the Zombies performed "Sticks and Stones" early in their career, but since "You Make Me Feel Good" has a riff that's pretty clearly inspired by it and since "You Make Me Feel Good" is one of the first songs they recorded, I'm fairly certain that "Sticks and Stones" was in their repertoire before they were signed to Decca.

Begin Here Session

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Fifty years ago to-day (10 December 1964), the Zombies had an-other session for the Begin Here album.  They recorded "Can't Nobody Love You," "The Way I Feel Inside," "I Got My Mojo Working," "You've Really Got a Hold on Me/Bring It on Home to Me," "I Can't Make up My Mind," and "Work 'n' Play."

They also received an award for "She's Not There" - it had been #1 on Cashbox.  I'm fairly certain that most of the pictures of the Zombies in the Decca studio in West Hampstead were taken on this day, as some sort of publicity event because they received that award.

"I Must Move"

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OK, so commentary on "I Must Move."

Like I mentioned when I first figured out the bass part, it's based on the D F# G A motive that Chris White uses a lot, although here the G and A are inverted, so it's D F# A G.

The chords over the first part of that bass motive are D F#m A (although almost all the chords in the song are broken up into arpeggios), which is sort of the opposite of the opening chords of "Hung up on a Dream" - G Em C.  Each modulation changes only one constituent note from chord to chord.  D major (D, F#, A) to F# minor (F#, A, C#) to A major (A, C#, E) in "I Must Move" goes higher, and G major (G, B, D) to Em (E, G, B) to C major (C, E, G) in "Hung up on a Dream" goes lower.

After that D F#m A G progression, there's a modulation from G major to G minor.  A modulation like that (from the major to the parallel minor) is actually pretty common in Zombies songs.  There's F major to F minor in "Walking in the Sun," G major to G minor in "How We Were Before," E major to E minor in "The Way I Feel Inside," and a whole slew in "A Love That Never Was" (D major to D minor, B major to B minor, and A major to A minor).

What makes that modulation interesting in "I Must Move" is that the humming part (and I think the melody too) arpeggiates those (already arpeggiated) chords.  It seems like I've run across this in some other Zombies songs - where there's an ascending melody in the major followed by a descending in the minor (or vice versa), but the only example I can think of off-hand is "The Way I Feel Inside," during the line "I can tell the way you smile."  However, I'm not sure if that's the same sort of situation.  There's no major-to-minor modulation there (although there is one elsewhere in the song), and those notes might just be accidentals, not in an-other key.  I have a feeling there's something like this in "Butcher’s Tale" (because at various points it contains both A major and A minor), but I'm not certain.

That modulation in "I Must Move" is also significant because of the lyrics that accompany it.  In one verse, that modulation accompanies "good" in the line "But that won't be any good."  In fact, there's a melisma there so that "good" is drawn out to a second syllable for that major-to-minor modulation.  So the minor shift musically portrays how it "won't be any good."  This is the opposite of what White later did in "This Will Be Our Year," where there's a minor-to-major shift to accompany the line "'Darling, I love you.'"

In an-other verse, that major-to-minor modulation accompanies "if" in the line "That I love you, and even if I do."  It sort of emphasizes the conditional clause and seems to portend that "even if" the singer does love the girl, it won't turn out well, which is exactly what the lyrics indicate - "Even if I do / I must move."  Again, this is a precedent for an-other Zombies' song; this time, it's Rod Argent's "I Want Her, She Wants Me."  There, a key change (from G major to Eb major) accompanies the line "She told me to be careful if I loved her."  It doesn't match up exactly with "if" (it hits "loved" instead), but it still draws attention to the conditional clause and the possibly-disastrous results.

"I Must Move" - through that G major to G minor shift - has that same sort of key change (at least, it does if my understanding of music theory is right).  The song is (mostly) in D major, and G minor is the relative minor of Bb major.  So - if I understand this correctly - that shift briefly moves the song's key over four spots to the left in the Circle of Fifths (from D major to G minor/Bb major), which is comparable to the G major-to-Eb major change in "I Want Her, She Wants Me."  Additionally, there's the same G major-to-Eb major change in "Care of Cell 44" at the end of some of the lines ("Hoping you're OK," for instance).  I don't think that really has any other bearing on the lyrics as is the case in "I Must Move" and "I Want Her, She Wants Me," although, as I've pointed out earlier, during the line "Thinking of me while you are far away," that key change does sort of emphasize the distance.

"I Remember When I Loved Her"

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Three days ago, I got a tambourine, so I wanted to do "I Remember When I Loved Her" because the tambourine part seemed pretty easy.  (This was pretty much the first time I'd ever played tambourine.  At least I got to slather on the reverb, which made it sound a bit better.)  And I also tried to figure out the rest of the bass part, but I'm still not that sure about it, especially during the solo.

Also, I'm still not that good at the guitar part.  It's almost entirely barre chords, so it gets tiring, especially if I do more than one take (this was the second).

"I Must Move"

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Yester-day, I had the Zombies section of my music collection on shuffle, and I was playing along to bass parts.  I tried figuring out the humming part of "I Must Move" on piano, and - while I never actually figured out that part - I think I figured out the guitar part.  I'm not so certain about the second-to-last chord though.

Also, I discovered that I had a bass note wrong in the last iteration, so I fixed that.

This should be on acoustic guitar, but I was making so many mistakes on it when I was practicing last night that I just did it with electric.

I have a lot to say about the musical aspects of this because there is so much in it that appears in other Zombie music, but I'm going to wait awhile before posting that because I want to make sure I remember everything I wanted to say about it (plus it'd be too long to post along with this and I have some things I have to verify).