Odessey and Oracle

According to the Zombie Heaven liner notes, fifty years ago to-day (27 December 1967), the Zombies mixed the stereo versions of "Time of the Season," "Beechwood Park," "Maybe after He's Gone," and "I Want Her She Wants Me."

The entry for the next day (28 December 1967) is "EMI Abbey Road Room 53 Odessey & Oracle (master)."  I'm not entirely sure what this means, but I'm assuming it has something to do with gathering together all of the mixes.  There's a corresponding entry for 1 January 1968 that reads "EMI Abbey Road Room 53 Odessey & Oracle original master (stereo)," so I'm assuming (again) that this 28 December entry refers only to the mono version of the album.

"Memphis"

Last month I listened to As Far As I Can See, and I noticed something about "Memphis" that should have been obvious much earlier.  Although the phrase has acquired a larger application, "trace the writing on the wall" refers to a story in the Bible.  In Daniel 5, a hand literally writes on a wall, and Daniel interprets it.

Odessey and Oracle

According to the Zombie Heaven liner notes, fifty years ago to-day (19 December 1967), the Zombies mixed the stereo versions of "Changes" and "Friends of Mine."

Odessey and Oracle

According to the Zombie Heaven liner notes, fifty years ago to-day (8 December 1967), the Zombies mixed the stereo versions of "This Will Be Our Year," "Care of Cell 44," and "Brief Candles."

"Caroline Goodbye"

I'm still slowly adding backdated posts from my old tumblr account to this blog (I have roughly January through June of 2016 left).  I recently archived a post where I wrote out the chords to "Caroline Goodbye," but I discovered a couple months ago that what I had is wrong.  In July this year, the Zombies did a radio session for The Summit, and because Rod Argent was unavailable, Colin Blunstone performed some songs with Tom Toomey providing guitar accompaniment.  Because there's a video, I could watch Toomey's hands as he played the chords for "Caroline Goodbye."  While this confirmed most of the chords I had (including some subtle differences between regular major chords and major 7ths, which I'd suspected but wasn't completely confident about), I discovered that I had one chord wrong.  In that post from last July, I said I was "a bit unsure of the F major 7th chord that alternates with the A major near the end of the verses" specifically whether it was "a straight-forward major chord or a major 7th."  It turns out that it's neither; it's a D minor.

Here are the corrected chords:

|: F major 7th | C major 7th :|
F major | C major
F major | Esus4 | E major
A major | A major 7th | A7 | D major
|: D minor | A major :|

That whole section repeats, but the next time (with the guitar solo) it's different:

|: F major 7th | C major 7th :|
A major | A major 7th | A7 | D major
|: D minor | A major :| F major 7th

After I discovered my error, I realized that part of this chord progression (adjusted for key) is also in "How We Were Before," which - like "Caroline Goodbye" - was written by Colin Blunstone.  The A major | A major 7th | A7 | D major | D minor | A major progression (which, incidentally, contains a descending chromatic phrase: A, G#, G, F#, F, E) is in the verses of "How We Were Before," just a fourth higher and arpeggiated rather than strummed: D major | D major 7th | D7 | G major | G minor | D major (the chromatic phrase here is D, C#, C, B, Bb, A).

"Beyond the Borderline"

This is the last in my series of initial posts on Still Got That Hunger.

One of the lines in "Beyond the Borderline" is "Can you feel it humming in the air," which is fairly similar to "Tonight I feel excitement humming in the air," which is a line from Argent's "Celebration."  Both lines are about "feel[ing]" something "humming in the air."

The only other comment I have is about the line "That magic moment's here."  Of course, there's the alliteration in "magic moment," but that phrase also brings to mind the Drifters' song "This Magic Moment."  Rod Argent often mentions being on the same bill as Ben E. King and the Drifters when the Zombies played the Brooklyn Fox in December 1964.  I'm assuming he's familiar with "This Magic Moment," but I don't know if there's really any connection between the song and this line in "Beyond the Borderline."