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Pictures of Jim Rodford in the Bluetones from this article that also reveals that he's writing a memoir!
A blog to document my over-ambitious project of learning all of the songs by The Zombies and related bands
This morning I listened to Argent's Ring of Hands, and I noticed something about "Celebration," the first track. The first couple lines ("Celebration / An invitation") are sung by just one voice, but then more voices join in for the next lines ("To come and join in / The ring of hands together"), so there's a musical representation of that "join[ing] in."
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A couple days ago I listened to Colin Blunstone's One Year (on vinyl, even), and I noticed some things about "Say You Don't Mind." I knew there are melismas during certain parts of the verses, but I found connections with the lyrics that I hadn't noticed before. The two melismas in question are for "growin'" (E D# C# C#) and "goin'" (E D# C# C# B A, I think) in the lines "I've been doing some growin' / But I'm scared of you goin'." The melisma for "growin'" sort of indicates the breadth of experience or knowledge that the singer/speaker claims he now has, and the melisma for "goin'" portrays the leaving of the titular "you." Both encompass a distance in pitch rather than a single note, which would imply staying the same or staying of a stationary sort, respectively.Here's a thing about "Say You Don't Mind" I noticed while doing my Collection Audit project. An-other thing I noticed (which I think is just coincidental) is that "dying" and "whining" are in the lyrics of the first and last songs on the album. They're both in the line "Crying, dying, sighing, whining, shining in the microphone" in "She Loves the Way They Love Her," and they're in the lines "I've been doing some whinin'" and "I've been doing some dyin'" in "Say You Don't Mind."
This afternoon I listened to the 30th anniversary edition of the Zombies' Odessey and Oracle, and I noticed something about "Hung up on a Dream." There's an interval of a fourth between "sights" and "above" in the line "And showed me strangest clouded sights above." "Sights" is sung to an A, and the two syllables of "above" are sung to D notes. The distance between the pitches of those notes helps to give a sense of the spatial distance mentioned in the lyric.
Over the last two days, I listened to the two discs of the Zombies' Odessey & Oracle {Revisited}: The 40th Anniversary Concert. I noticed some things (with melismas, naturally) on two songs on the first disc.
"Maybe after He's Gone"
The "breathe" in the line "I feel I'll never breathe again" is sung to two syllables instead of just one. There's a deliberateness in how it's sung, almost as if the speaker/singer wants to draw out the breaths he has now because he feels there will soon be a time he can't breathe at all (the next line is "I feel life's gone from me").
"Tell Her No"
The "charms" in the line "And if she tempts you with her charms" has a melisma. Instead of the one syllable it's spoken with, there are multiple syllables, as if to make the "charms" musically alluring.
---I found some more things about Zombies songs while doing my Collection Audit project. I didn'’t feel it important enough to include in that post, but I also noticed some consonance in "“Hung up on a Dream." "I stood astounded staring hard."
Both of these features are on the original recordings that the Zombies did in the '60s. However, on this live album, the melisma'd "breathe" in "Maybe after He's Gone" is more prominent, and the melisma to which the "charms" in "Tell Her No" is sung actually has more notes than the original recording. (It's G# E F# in the original; G# F# E F# in this live version.)
A couple days ago I listened to the Zombies' New World album, and I noticed two things.
"Nights on Fire"
I'm not fully convinced of this myself, but I think the line "Only believe and the door will open wide" might be a reference to the Bible, specifically "Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened" (Matthew 7:7-8). A couple of the other songs mention Heaven (although perhaps not in a religious sense), which seems to strengthen the possibility of this being an intentional Biblical reference.
Some more things I noticed about Zombies songs while doing Collection Audit."Knowing You"
In the line "Facing up to every day now, I will never be alone" there's a harmony part for "be alone," so the musical arrangement mirrors the lyric. The speaker/singer says that he won't be alone, and there's an-other voice there to demonstrate that.
The line "Running my hands through her hair" sounded familiar to me, and it wasn't too long before I placed it. There's an identical line near the end of Colin Blunstone's "She Loves the Way They Love Her" (on One Year). Both Blunstone and his former Zombies band mate Rod Argent (who wrote "She Loves the Way They Love Her") have listed the Beatles as an influence, and between that and both songs' rhyming "hair" with "there" ("There / Running my hands through her hair" in "Here, There, and Everywhere" and "Running my hands through her hair / And knowing she'll always be there" in "She Loves the Way They Love Her"), I think this is more than just a coincidence. At best, it might be an instance of subconscious influence.