"The Ghost of You and Me"

I was thinking about Colin Blunstone's "The Ghost of You and Me" recently and realized that the phrase "all these blues" in the first line ("What am I supposed to do with all these blues") is sung to notes of all different pitches (A B C).  While the span here is only a minor third, this articulation does give something of a sense of breadth or entirety.

"Circus"

While re-reading The Merchant of Venice recently, I found a passage that seems to be quoted (or at least referred to) in the lines "In the circus / Each must play a part" in Argent's "Circus."  In Act One, Scene One (lines 77-78), Antonio says, "I hold the world but as the world, Gratiano: / A stage where every man must play a part."

"I Remember When I Loved Her"

Years ago, I wrote a post about "I Remember When I Loved Her," specifically that the archaic use of "strange" had precedent in Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet and that this connected to Rod Argent's comment about Shakespeare in Johansen's The Zombies: Hung up on a Dream (p. 30):  "The language spoke to me; it had an indefinable, spiritual quality."

I recently started re-reading The Merchant of Venice and found a passage in which "strange" is used in a sense closer to that in "I Remember When I Loved Her" than the one in Romeo and Juliet is.  In Act One, Scene One (roughly lines 66-68), Bassanio says to Salarino and Solanio, "Good signiors both, when shall we laugh?  Say, when?  You grow exceeding strange."

"Show Me the Way"

I listened to Breathe Out, Breathe In yester-day and noticed a small feature in "Show Me the Way."  In the lines "I'm sorry now / For all that I've done" (that's how they're formatted in the liner notes), the phrase "all that I've done" is sung to notes of all different pitches (spanning a fifth:  D C Bb G), giving a sense of this entirety.

"Be My Lover, Be My Friend"

Yester-day, I listened to Argent's performance at the Paris Theatre from 14 December 1972 and noticed that the line "You sounded so sweet" in "Be My Lover, Be My Friend" alliterates.  The repeated S provides a sense of degree, matching the adverb "so."

"Liar"

I watched Argent's appearance on Set of 6 yester-day (it's dated 29 May 1972, although Jim Rodford writes in his book Sideman [p. 177] that it was recorded in April), and I noticed some small features in the articulation of the vocal part in "Liar."  In referencing the studio recording to write this post, I found some more.

"Away" in the lines "Nothing you could do / That could turn me away" and "I won't move away" is sung with a melisma (Bb C Bb and Bb C Bb G, respectively), giving something of a sense of movement, although both are sort of negated.

The three syllables of "ev'ry word" in the line "Hanging on ev'ry word" are sung to all different pitches (F E D), lending a sense of number.

"All" in the lines "That's what you said / And I believed it all" is also sung with a melisma (C Bb G), here giving a sense of entirety, especially since these notes are all different pitches, too.

Finally, "go" in the line "I won't let you go" is sung with the same melisma (C Bb G), lending a sense of movement, although it seems to be used more metaphorically.

"Smokey Day"

Recently, I was thinking about "Smokey Day" and noticed some features in two of the lines.  In comparing the two versions (one sung by Rod Argent with backing by the band that would become Argent and one sung by Colin Blunstone on his One Year album), I discovered that there are slight differences in the two lines I was considering.  In the pre-Argent version, the lines are "Dulcet vesper voices / Calling gently for the night," sung to a melody something like:

but in the Colin Blunstone version, the lines are "Dulcet vesper voices / Calling gently through the night," sung to a melody something like:

These are small differences, but I'd never noticed them.

All of the words in the line "Dulcet vesper voices" come from Latin (dulcis, vespere, and vox [gen. vocis]), so there's a sort of linguistic coherence to the line.  Additionally, each word is two syllables (although Blunstone sings "vesper" with a melisma, so it has three syllables), and the first syllable of each word falls on a downbeat, so there's a sense of balance.

The line "Calling gently for/through the night" is sung to a melody that, despite some accidentals, is entirely conjunct (just three pitches: D#, C#, and C), and these small intervals match the adverb "gently."  (It's the same feature that I recently noted in "Hung up on a Dream.")

"Hung up on a Dream"

A few months ago, I was thinking about the shape of the vocal melody in "Hung up on a Dream," specifically for the lines "They spoke with soft, persuading words" and "Which gently touched my aching mind."  Each is sung to a melody something like this:

It's an entirely conjunct phrase, and the small intervals match the "soft" and "gently" in the lyrics.

"The Fakir"

I should preface this post with some background.  As far as I know, Argent played "The Fakir" only in live performances and never recorded a studio version.  I have three live recordings:  John Peel's Sunday Concert (14 February 1971), The Paris Theatre, London (14 December 1972), and The Palace Theatre (7 November 1973).  In introducing the piece, Peel comments, "This is, uh, actually not a group composition; it's a Don Ellis thing, arranged by Jim Rodford.  Uh, it's called 'Fakir.'"  At the Paris Theatre concert, Russ Ballard introduces it and remarks that "it's a thing that features our drummer; it's the one and only number that features him," and in his book Banging On!, Robert Henrit explains that "The Fakir" was basically his drum solo (pages 76 and 84).

There's a section in the Paris Theatre version where Henrit beats out a rhythm on the bass drum and simultaneously yells some indistinct words off-mic.  Recently, I discovered what he's quoting here.  A couple weeks ago, I watched the Marx Brothers movie A Night in Casablanca, in which Chico plays the tune on piano and introduces it as "Beer Barrel Polka."  According to this site, it's originally a Czech song called "Škoda lásky," which has many titles and lyrics in different countries.  In English-speaking countries, it's also known as "Roll out the Barrel," and these seem to be the words that Henrit is shouting.

(For what it's worth:  I'm most familiar with the tune as "Böhmische Polka" by Albert Vossen und Seine Solisten.)

"I Know She Will"

Earlier this month, I listened to a three-disc set of the Shadows because in Platts' Times and Seasons, I read the story about an early Zombies gig where Paul Arnold played the bass solo in the Shadows' "Nivram" note-perfectly but on the wrong fret (recalled by Colin Blunstone on pages 29-30), and I discovered that there's a very strong similarity between the introductions of the Shadows' "Blue Star" and the Zombies' "I Know She Will."  Both begin with an arpeggiation of the second inversion of A major (although the one in "I Know She Will" is two octaves lower than that in "Blue Star"), and while they have the same rhythm, it falls in different places in the measure ("I Know She Will" has some additional notes in a higher register, too).  The two introductions also simply alternate between two figures (excepting the triads in the higher register in "I Know She Will").

Here are the two parts in notation:

"Blue Star":

"I Know She Will" (I put the triads on a separate staff so the other notes are easier to compare with "Blue Star"):

While there's a definite similarity between these two introductions, it may be just coincidence.  "I Know She Will" was written by Chris White, and I haven't found any link between him and the Shadows.  He joined the band as Paul Arnold's replacement, so he obviously wasn't around for this version of "Nivram," and while Paul Atkinson notes (on page 12 in the Zombie Heaven liner notes and on page 47 in Claes Johansen's Hung up on a Dream) that the Zombies played other Shadows tunes, it's unclear whether White was part of the band then.

The Influence of Elvis Presley's "Hound Dog"

Last month, I got and started reading Robin Platts' Times and Seasons: The Rise and Fall and Rise of the Zombies.  I decided to listen to what musical pieces are mentioned in the book (provided I have them), and the first album I listened to was Elvis 56, specifically for "Hound Dog," whose effect on a young Rod Argent is discussed at some length on the first two pages of the book.  (Incidentally:  I got Elvis 56 a number of years ago because Rod mentioned it specifically in this video from Amoeba Music).  I think I'd previously noticed that the bass part in "Hound Dog" has a dotted rhythm, but the particular context in which I'd listened to it this time made me realize that it may have influenced the rhythm that's present in a number of Zombie bass parts, which - as Rod briefly explains in the BBC Mastertapes program (at ~20:28 in the A-Side) - he often used to write for his own songs.

The bass part in "Hound Dog" varies a little bit from verse to verse, but it's something like this:

While the tonality is different, many bass parts in Zombies songs also have this sort of dotted rhythm.  For example, here's the bass part in the verses of "I'll Keep Trying":

(There are a couple measures in the chorus that I'm a bit unsure about, but otherwise, the entire bass part in "I'll Keep Trying" exhibits this initial pair of dotted quarter notes in each measure, save for the last bar.)

The bass part in the verses of "If It Don't Work Out" also has this rhythm for all but the last two measures, but since there are nine consecutive measures of nothing but D notes, I felt an excerpt of the notation wouldn't be very helpful in illustrating my point.

More often, however, there's a slight difference in the rhythm in that this single quarter note is replaced by a pair of eighth notes, which sometimes precedes the dotted quarter notes and acts as a pick-up.

For example, the beginning of "Whenever You're Ready":

The beginning of "Time of the Season":

And the verse in "Tell Her No":

(These parts may show the influence of Ben E. King's "Stand by Me" more than Elvis's "Hound Dog," though.  As I pointed out before, albeit imperfectly, so I won't link to it, these bass parts share the same rhythm and the same tonality as "Stand by Me":  root, fifth, and seventh.)

"Her Song"

I was thinking about "Her Song" yester-day and noticed a couple features in the lyrics.

The lines "And in the light there I can see / A sleepyhead so close to me" could be understood in two different ways.  "So close to me" seems to be meant primarily literally (in physical proximity), but it could also be taken more metaphorically (in the sense of a deep emotional attachment).

In the line "And ev'rything I have is nothing if it can't belong to you," there's a copulative clause that can be simplified to "ev'rything is nothing."  Because the subject and the predicate nominative have similar forms (both end in "-thing"), there's a sense of balance between the two halves (despite the opposite meanings of "ev'rything" and "nothing"), and consequently, there's a sense of precision in the sentiment.