Into the Afterlife

Backdated, archival post

[link to original on tumblr]

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I listened to Into the Afterlife to-day and noticed some things:

"She's Not There" - Neil MacArthur

For the first two sections, there's an acoustic guitar panned right and an electric guitar panned left.  But after the string glissando and tremolo, (at about 2:12) they've flipped channels.  The acoustic is now panned left, and the electric is panned right.  I've had this album for something like seven years and only just now noticed that.

"Twelve Twenty Nine" - Neil MacArthur

I'd a bit unsure of the "I died" (although I suppose it's an appropriate phrase for a former Zombie), but I think the first two lines of the second verse are:

I died as I kissed the last tear I kissed from her face
And through the blur of my own I hurried away from that place

That "face"/"place" rhyme is also present in the Zombies' "Remember You":

I remember your face
When I think of this place

There's something like five years between the two songs, and it's almost certainly a coincidence, but I still thought it interesting.  For the record, "Remember You" is a Chris White song, and "Twelve Twenty Nine" was written by Peter Lee Stirling and Chris Sedgewick according to the Into the Afterlife liner notes.

"I Could Spend the Day" - Rod Argent/Chris White

I'm pretty sure I've noticed this before, but I don't think I've written about it.  The "fall" in "Words you want to hear / Would fall" has a melisma with the later syllables at lower pitches than the earlier ones so that the word itself sounds like it's falling.

"Ma non è giusto" - Neil MacArthur

I'd either started or completed transcriptions of all of the Into the Afterlife songs with the exception of this one, an Italian version of Neil MacArthur's "She's Not There."  I figured I'd finally give it a go, since I've been learning Italian since last summer.  I didn't get very far, but one of the phrases I was able to pick out is "Io vedo lei" ("I see her").  That's not in Argent's original lyrics, so I'm wondering what else I'll find if I get better at my Italian.