"Andorra" b/w "Caroline Goodbye"

According to Russo's Collector's Guide, fifty years ago to-day (4 June 1973), Colin Blunstone's "Andorra" (edit) b/w "Caroline Goodbye" (Epic 5-11004) was released in the U.S. and Canada.

"Andorra" b/w "How Could We Dare to Be Wrong"

According to Russo's Collector's Guide, fifty years ago to-day (12 January 1973), Colin Blunstone's "Andorra" b/w "How Could We Dare to Be Wrong" (Dut. Epic EPC 1183) was released in the U.K.

"Andorra"

Backdated, archival post

[link to original on tumblr]

---&---

I was going over the chords for "Andorra" last night, and I discovered that I had one wrong.  It's A major, not A minor.

I had my bass out because I was practicing the E major scale, so I figured I would have an-other go at trying to figure out the bass part.  When I listened to Ennismore for my Collection Audit project a couple months ago, I thought the bass part sounded pretty easy to figure out, but it proved more difficult than I expected.

I got it this time though… the verses at least.  The "Why do I tell you it's always the same…" sections are still giving me problems, especially because the bass part isn't consistent.  It's different when that section is repeated.

I was going over the chords because I was going to post them in two weeks, but after I recorded this, I discovered that there are fewer chords than I thought.  During those "Why do I tell you…" parts, there are no guitar chords, only tremolos.  Since I have all of the chords in my recording, I'm just going to post them now:

|: E minor / D major / G major / A major :|

I don't think I played it accurately last time I recorded this.  The chords are played on the off beats, with upward strums.  I played it only enough to record this, but it's quite a different way of playing guitar.

Ennismore

Backdated, archival post

[link to original on tumblr]

---&---

Collection Audit:

This morning I listened to Colin Blunstone's Ennismore.  I noticed a couple things about two songs, but since they're not major points, I'm putting them in the same post. 

The first thing I noticed is in "I Don't Believe in Miracles."  After the line "I believe I was your game, your ball" in the lead vocals, the backing vocals echo, "Your ball."  There's something of a glissando on that "ball" though, so the pitch is raised as the word is sung, which anticipates the next line in the lead vocals: "If you threw me up, then I would fall." 

The other thing I noticed is that in "Andorra" after "rain" in the line "But down the mountains came the rain to soak our head," there's a guitar part that seems to represent raindrops.

Some notes on Ennismore from my Collection Audit project.

An-other thing I noticed when I listened to the album this morning is that I have a few notes wrong in the bass part for "I Want Some More," which I'll get to correcting in a few days.

"Andorra"

Backdated, archival post

[link to original on tumblr]

---&---

I listened to Colin Blunstone's Ennismore to-day because according to Russo's Collector's Guide, it was released in the U.K. to-day in 1972.

For awhile I'd be aware that I'd totally forgotten the chords to "Andorra," so I re-learned those (and wrote them down!), and I also learned the guitar tremolos.

This is only about the first third of the song because the sections repeat.

Ennismore

Backdated, archival post

[link to original on tumblr]

---&---

I just listened to Colin Blunstone's Ennismore while working on transcribing the lyrics, and - as usual - I noticed some things.

To go along with the conjectured influences I've been writing about lately, "A Sign from Me to You" might have some connection with the Beatles' "From Me to You."  In the phrase "from me to you" if nothing else.  I haven't looked into that very much.  More tenuously, the phrase "oh boy" in "Pay Me Later" might come from Buddy Holly's "Oh Boy!"  Since it's also just a phrase that people say, I'm not that confident in that connection.

There's an interesting progression of verb tenses in "A Sign from Me to You."  The first chorus has the line "I try so hard to prove that I have changed my ways," and the second chorus changes it to "I tried so hard to prove that I have changed my ways."  I haven't really looked into this yet either.

It struck me that many of the songs on the album contain similar sort of themes (if "themes" is the right word to describe it).  Basically, a lot of the songs talk about songs (sometimes breaking the fourth wall, or whatever the sonic equivalent is) and wine.

As far as songs, you have "This is a song written exclusively for me" in "Exclusively for Me," "Funny how the only song I could ever write for you / Is when you said you finally had enough" in "How Wrong Can One Man Be," and "Now that we've written this song / How could we dare to be wrong" in "How Could We Dare to Be Wrong."

And as for wine: "So don't you worry, I'm here for the day / With a bottle of wine on my knee" in "I Want Some More," "Hey, I said, 'Darling, it seems a waste of time / Hey, all we do is sit and drink our Spanish wine'" in "Andorra," and "Take me up, fill my cup with your wine" in "How Could We Dare to Be Wrong."

I think there's also a not insignificant number of references to remembering and summer, which seems a natural extension of Zombies themes, but I'll save that for later.

"Andorra"

Backdated, archival post

[link to original on tumblr]

---&---

Until yester-day, I didn't know any songs from Colin Blunstone's solo albums (aside from a bit of "Though You Are Far Away"), so I decided to learn the chords for one of them.  I figured that "Andorra" would be pretty easy, and, for the most part, it was.  The only difficult thing to figure out was a weird B7 in the chorus.  Usually, a B7 will retain a B as the root, but this one doesn't (assuming that I'm playing it correctly).