"Sometimes"

I listened to Begin Here a few days ago (on 25 November because one of the recording sessions for the album was on 25 November 1964), and I noticed a small feature in "Sometimes," which is included as a bonus track on the CD.

The line "I've been hurt so many times before" is sung to a melody something like this:

(I'm not completely sure of the key, although the song does end with a D major chord.)

There's a denser concentration of notes for the word "many" (sung to a pair of sixteenth notes), and to some degree, this gives a sense of its meaning.

Encore

According to Russo's Collector's Guide, fifty years ago to-day (22 November 1974), Argent's Encore (Epic S EPC 88063) was released in the U.K. The U.S. and Canada release (Epic PEG 33079) was on 9 December.

Additionally, the single "Keep on Rollin' (#2)" b/w "I Am the Dance of Ages (live)" (Epic S EPC 2849) was released in the U.K.  Apparently, this single wasn't released in the U.S.  As far as I can tell, this second version of "Keep on Rollin'" has never been re-issued.

"Music from the Spheres"

I recently recorded a version of "God Rest You Merry, Gentlemen" using the Hohner Pianet and Vox Continental sounds on my keyboard.  As I was editing a video for it, I was thinking about the lyrics, and I realized that they may have had an influence on Argent's "Music from the Spheres."  The first verse of "God Rest You Merry, Gentlemen" (as I know it, at least) is:

God rest you merry, gentlemen; let nothing you dismay

For Jesus Christ our Savior was born on Christmas day

To save us all from Satan's pow'r while we were gone astray

Oh, tidings of comfort and joy, comfort and joy

Oh, tidings of comfort and joy

The phrase "To save us all from Satan's pow'r" has the same basic idea and even some of the same vocabulary as the line "'God save us from the devil' was their prayer" in "Music from the Spheres."  Later in the song, "God save us from the devil" appears by itself, too.

I vaguely remembered some link between "God Rest You Merry, Gentlemen" and "Indication," but I had to do some research to find where I'd learned this.  It's in Claes Johansen's Hung up on a Dream.  On page 149, Argent says, "We used to do a Jimmy Reed song on stage, a blues thing called 'Baby What You Want Me To Do'.  At the end of that I used to go into this long improvisation based around 'God Rest You Merry Gentlemen'!  It was quite bizarre.  I even used to start singing along with the improvisation.  It got quite wild.  We wanted to use that on a record.  So that's what we did on 'Indication', with a guitar sound that was supposed to be really out in the background.  It was supposed to be this thing we used to do on stage and which went down a storm."  Argent quotes "God Rest You Merry, Gentlemen" in the version of "Indication" on Live at the Bloomsbury Theatre, London (starting at ~2:13) and in the live recording of "I Am the Dance of Ages" from the Paris Theatre on 14 December 1972* (at ~23:39 in the audio file).

While there is a lyrical similarity between "God Rest You Merry, Gentlemen" and "Music from the Spheres" and Argent was obviously familiar with it, it's only speculation that it was an influence here.

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*I found this concert in June 2022.  The link I posted then doesn't work anymore, but the link above leads to the same recording.  As I explained two years ago, I think the date given (6 January 1973) is wrong.  In researching for this post, I also discovered that I had the title wrong there; it's "God Rest You Merry, Gentlemen," not "God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen."