Backdated, archival post
[link to original on tumblr]
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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.)
I was (and I guess still am) very excited about that melisma in "Tell Her No" partially because it's an example of how songs can develop through playing them live so often (it's like the guitar part that precedes the second verse of "She's Not There;" it's not in the original, but it's been in every live version for about the last eight years, so it's become a part of the song). I referenced every live version of "Tell Her No" I have, and the period live recordings (on the fourth disc of Zombie Heaven) have the three-note melisma, but the more recent live versions (on Live at the Bloomsbury Theatre, London; Live at Metropolis Studios; and Extended Versions) all have the four-note melisma.
