"Never Get over You"

I listened to Still Got That Hunger to-day (because it was released to-day in 2015), and I noticed a small feature in "Never Get over You."  In the line "Not after all this time," the phrase "all this time" is sung to notes of all different pitches (C D F), giving a sense of that entirety.

I referenced Colin Blunstone's solo version ("Now I Know I'll Never Get over You" on The Ghost of You and Me) and discovered that this feature is there, too, but because that version is in a different key, the specific pitches are different (E F# A).

"Indication"

Recently, I heard a clip of the beginning of Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D minor, BWV 565 (quoted in Garth Hudson's improvisation "The Genetic Method"), and I realized that the final phrase in "Indication" has the same sort of musical vocabulary.

The bass register is something like this (played with a ritardando):

And here's the beginning of Bach's toccata:

[source]

In both, there's a diatonic descent followed by an accidental on the seventh degree of the scale (G# in the A minor of "Indication" and C# in the D minor of Bach's toccata).  This accidental is also at or near the end of the phrase and played with a longer note value than the preceding notes.

There's a definite similarity here, and Rod Argent sometimes mentions Bach (in the liner notes for Classically Speaking, he wrote, "And I've always loved Bach!" and in a 2009 BBC radio segment, he called Bach "without any question, the greatest musician who ever lived"), but of course, it's just speculation on my part that this is an instance of Bach's influence.

For what it's worth:  in the live version of "Hold Your Head Up" from the Zombies' concert at Abbey Road, Argent even plays part of the fugue that follows this toccata. 

"It's Alright with Me"

I watched the Zombies concert from Abbey Road on its anniversary on the 18th, and at some point since then, I had the notion that there's some similarity between "It's Alright with Me" and "I Want You Back Again."  The lyrics of the two songs don't have much in common, though (both rhyme "on my own" with "alone"); maybe the similarity I was thinking of is just that both songs are in C minor.*  In any case, as I was looking at the lyrics of "It's Alright with Me," I noticed some significance in the structure.

The couplet "But if you want to stay around and love me / You know it's alright with me" recurs at the end of each verse, providing a sense of the constancy of "stay[ing] around."

The rhyme scheme of the verses is AABB (if rhyming "me" with itself counts), but in the bridge, this is replaced with ABA ("I'm sick and tired of being on my own / But you know I'll take nobody / Who's gonna leave me tired and alone").  Unlike in the verses, the sequential lines don't rhyme, so there's a sense of the isolation of "being on my own."

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*As I've noted before, though, the version of "I Want You Back Again" on Still Got That Hunger is in D minor.

"Different Game"

I haven't written about any of the songs on Different Game yet because, like I did with Still Got That Hunger, I want to enjoy simply listening to the album for a while before I start analyzing the songs.  Yester-day, though, I watched the performance of "Different Game" from the concert at Abbey Road Studios, and I noticed a small point.  In the line "Such a different game" in the choruses, "different" is sung with three syllables rather than just two, lending a sense of degree (for "such").

Earlier in the song, in the line "God knows life seemed such a different game" in the verse, "different" is sung with only two syllables, so even within the song, the articulation shifts, and this change highlights the word's meaning.

"It's Alright with Me"

I was thinking about "It's Alright with Me" yester-day and realized that the line "I got a leak in my bucket and a great big hole in my floor" contains a sort of merism.  The "leak in my bucket" implies a small hole, and this contrasts with the "great big hole."  Naming these two opposites indicates the variety or range of ways in which the narrator is "a man that's poor."

"Thunder and Lightning" b/w "The Coming of Kohoutek"

According to Russo's Collector's Guide, fifty years ago to-day (2 September 1974), Argent's "Thunder and Lightning" (edited) b/w "The Coming of Kohoutek" (Epic 8-50025) was released in the U.S. and Canada.  This seems to be the last single Argent released in these countries; Russo doesn't list any more.

"The Tracks of My Tears"

I recently listened to Colin Blunstone's Collected (for only the fourth time), specifically to hear his version of "The Tracks of My Tears" and see if it has the same features that I'd noticed in the original by Smokey Robinson & the Miracles.

At the end of the bridge, there's the line "My smile is my makeup I wear since my break up with you," sung to a melody something like this:

(Blunstone's version is even in the same key as the original, so I could re-use my notation excerpt from my post on how this line may have influenced the keyboard solo in an alternate take of the Zombies' "Nothing's Changed.")

After the initial D note, the melody repeats the same triplet until the phrase "break up with you," at which point it diverges.  These changes in the repeated sequence of pitches and in the rhythm musically illustrate that "break."

Because I've commented on Shakespeare references in other Zombies and Colin Blunstone songs, I feel I should mention that the idea of "the tracks of my tears" is basically the same as "With cadent tears fret channels in her cheeks" in King Lear (I.iv.292), although this seems to be just coincidental.  In this video (starting at ~10:16), Smokey Robinson talks about the song a bit, including how he came up with the title phrase.

For what it's worth:  these features are also in the version by the Roulettes (a band that Russ Ballard and Robert Henrit were in before Argent), although that's a whole step lower, in F major.

Encore

I watched the Beatles movie A Hard Day's Night yester-day (partially because this month marks its sixtieth anniversary), and it gave me an opportunity to write about something I'd realized last year but forgot to write about here.

The cover of Argent's Encore shows a number of film strips of various shots of the group playing live:

This is the same basic idea as one scene during the press conference in A Hard Day's Night where a photographer takes multiple pictures of George Harrison as he makes various faces and the movie shows the resulting film strips:

I don't know if this was the intent for Encore, but there's certainly a resemblance between the album cover and this shot in A Hard Day's Night.

When I was thinking about this again yester-day, I realized that the back cover of the Zombies' I Love You album uses this idea, too.  Here's a scan of the CD booklet (in which the back cover of the record sleeve has become the inside back cover), showing the group playing live on a television show in Sweden in November 1966:

According to the liner notes of the CD, this compilation album was originally released only in continental Europe and Japan since "Decca's affiliates in other countries were aware of the band's status and the need for a second long player, but the band apparently lacked the necessary profile at home to be taken seriously by the label."  Because of these circumstances, I doubt that the Zombies themselves had any input in the design of the album cover, but the similarity to the shot in A Hard Day's Night still seems to point to the Beatles' influence.

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For what it's worth, here's a post about the cover of Begin Here, which also seems to indicate a Beatle influence, and here's an-other post about the front and back covers of I Love You, where I detail some investigation I did on these pictures.

"Nothing's Changed"

Yester-day, I was thinking about Smokey Robinson & the Miracles' "The Tracks of My Tears," specifically the line "My smile is my makeup I wear since my break up with you" at the end of the bridge, which is sung to a melody something like this:

I realized that there are some similarities between this and the keyboard solo (Hohner Pianet + Vox Continental) in the alternate take of "Nothing's Changed" (track 15 on disc 3 of Zombie Heaven), which is something like this:

Both consist primarily of a repeated set of descending triplets (although the intervals in the two parts aren't the same), and both start with an eighth note pick up and an ascending fourth.

According to the Zombie Heaven liner notes (p. 52), the Zombies performed "The Tracks of My Tears" live, so it's possible that the melody and rhythm of the vocal part here had something to do with Rod Argent's keyboard solo in "Nothing's Changed," even if merely subconsciously.

"So Much More"

This is just a minor point, but the line "Ev'ry night and ev'ry day" in "So Much More" contains a temporal merism.

Also, this is my 1,000th post on this blog.

"The Best Is Yet to Come"

I listened to Colin Blunstone's On the Air Tonight last week and noticed a handful of small features.

In the line "You say the words that help me carry on" in "The Best Is Yet to Come," "on" is sung with a melisma (A E G), giving a sense of that continuation.

In the line "'Cause it's hard, but it's the same for ev'ryone," "ev'ryone" is sung with a melisma, giving a sense of breadth.  Initially (at ~0:41 and ~1:44), it's A G A B, but later in the song (at ~2:56), it's E F# E B C# B.

In the line "When ev'rything is wrong, hold on," the three syllables of "ev'rything" are all sung to different pitches (C B A), providing a sense of that breadth.

"This Is Your Captain Calling"

I was thinking about Colin Blunstone's "This Is Your Captain Calling" recently and noticed a handful of features, all in the first iteration of the chorus:

This is your captain calling

This is your captain calling

To tell you I'm out of my brain again

This is your captain calling

And if you think we're falling

You're perfectly right

And I'd be delighted if any of you

Could give us a hand and land the plane

In the line "And if you think we're falling," "falling" is sung to a descending pair of notes, providing a sense of its meaning.  It's only a small interval (a whole step:  F# to E), but it's somewhat conspicuous because up to that point, the melody ascends and holds steady ("And if you think we're" is sung to the notes C# D E F# F#)

In the line "And I'd be delighted if any of you," the phrase "any of you" is sung to notes of all different pitches (A G# F# E), giving a sense of the breadth of "any."

The line "Could give us a hand and land the plane" exhibits internal rhyme ("hand" and "land"), hinting at the stability that would result from "land[ing] the plane."