December 1968 Overdubs

According to the Zombie Heaven liner notes, fifty years ago this month, the Zombies recorded additional parts for songs they originally recorded between 1964 and 1966: "If It Don't Work Out," "Don't Cry for Me," "I Know She Will," "Walking in the Sun," "I'll Keep Trying," and "I'll Call You Mine."  These were all done at Morgan Studios, Willesden.

"Don't Cry for Me"

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The Decca-era song I lookt into last week was "Don't Cry for Me."  I wrote out the bass part and put the guitar chords above the staff:

The guitar part has this little lick during the first two measures:

The tildes (~) indicate glissandi.

According to what I figured out, the bass part is usually the root note of whatever chord it's beneath (with the notable exception of a D note underneath an F major, essentially making an F major 6th [although writing it out made me question my accuracy there]), which is why it's so baffling to me that in The Zombies: Hung up on a Dream (p. 138), Claes Johansen says that the song is "driven along by Grundy's excellent drumming and Chris White's increasingly innovative bass-playing."  I think Chris White's a great bass player (although I'm obviously biased), but I have to say: this isn't the most interesting bass part.

"Don't Cry for Me"

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Collection Audit:

The second thing I noticed when I listened to the Zombies' The Decca Stereo Anthology yester-day was some melismas in "Don't Cry for Me."  I'd noticed the descending melisma on "down" before, but apparently I'd neglected to recognize the melisma'd "heart" in the line before it:  "Don't break your heart / Thinking you have let me down."

The descending melisma for "down" is easily explained as a musical representation of the "down," but I was initially confounded by the melisma'd "heart."  The full line is "Don't break your heart," but that melisma does break the heart (into notes of different pitches).

After thinking about it for a while, the only explanation I can come up with (aside from just a simple vocal embellishment) is that the sentiment there is disingenuous.  The singer/speaker says, "Don't break your heart," but he doesn't really mean it.

"Don't Cry for Me"

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Just over a week ago, I figured out most of the instrument parts for the Beatles' "I'll Be Back" (I have a project like this for the Beatles too, although I'm focusing mostly on A Hard Day's Night for now).  I'm not as convinced of this as some other potential influences, but the first guitar phrase in "I'll Be Back" is fairly similar to the first guitar phrase in "Don't Cry for Me."  The first three notes of "I'll Be Back" arpeggiate an inverted Bsus4, and at the beginning of "Don't Cry for Me" - after a few notes - there's an arpeggiated and inverted Bbsus4 before the verse starts.

After that arpeggiation, the songs go to different chords (even adjusting for key).  "I'll Be Back" goes to A major, and "Don't Cry for Me" goes to F major.  Still, they both start with an inverted sus4 chord.  It's a very slight resemblance, but it's still possible that it's an indication of the Beatles' influence.

Odessey and Oracle

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I listened to Odessey and Oracle to-day (with bonus tracks), and I discovered a lot of new things!

"Care of Cell 44"

The last three lines of the first verse all start with words that end in "-ing," but their meaning is sort of ambiguous.

Good morning to you I hope you're feeling better, baby
Thinking of me while you are far away
Counting the days until they set you free again
Writing this letter hoping you're OK

The "thinking" seems to go along with the "you're" from the previous line, so: "I hope you're feeling better [and] thinking of me...."  (Although the "thinking of me..." could also be a participial.)  The subject of "counting" could be either the "you" or the singer/speaker.  "I hope you're... counting the days..." or "[I am] counting the days."  (Again, "counting the days..." could be a participial too, modifying either the "you" or the speaker/singer.)  The subject of "writing" is clearly the speaker/singer.  Things could be divided a couple different ways there.

"A Rose for Emily"

There's an extra line in the second and third verses (which I knew), but this time I realized the significance of the music's repetition there.  The chords under the second half of "The roses in her garden fade away" (A and Bm) are also used for the next line: "Not one left for her grave."  Musically, there's a return to "the roses in her garden," as if to check if there's one for her grave.

"Maybe after He's Gone"

There's some parallelism in the lines "I feel I'll never breathe again / I feel life's gone from me."  Particularly because both start with "I feel," "I'll never breathe again" is equated to "life's gone from me."

"Brief Candles"

I got thinking about the "tight" in the first line: "There she sits her hands are held, tight around her glass."  In that rendering, it's an adjective, but it could also be parsed as a flat adverb:  "There she sits her hands are held tight[ly] around her glass."  There's no real difference in the meaning, but grammatically it's different.

I also discovered a consistency in the rhyme scheme.  Each verse has a rhyme scheme of AABB, but the B's carry over: the last two lines of the first verse end with "stay" and "way;" the those in both the second and third verses end with "say" and "way."

I think I noticed this before but forgot to write about it: the vocals are double-tracked during Blunstone's verse (as are the others'), except for the second "say" in "He does not say a single word, no word of love to say."  It draws attention to itself because that second voice is missing, and it musically portrays the lack of a "word of love."

"I Want Her She Wants Me"

The continual repetition of "I want her she wants me" at the end mirrors the cyclical nature of the statement itself.  It just keeps going around.

"Butcher's Tale"

I noticed this earlier, but I've neglected to write about it:  the repetition of the "can't/won't stop shaking" line reflects the inability to cease.

A new thing I noticed though is the rhyme scheme of the first verse, which is different from all the others.  The first verse has ABAB ("trade," "fee," "stayed," "see") where the others are ABCB.  So as the speaker/singer looks back on his past life ("A butcher, yes, that was my trade...") things have a stronger coherence than they do once he goes to war.

"Friends of Mine"

I'd previously noted the parallelism in "That's something to see; that's nothing to hide," but I noticed a new one in the chorus:  "And they've got something it's so hard to find" parallels with "And they've got something you don't often find."  It's not as strictly parallel as some other instances, but it's pretty close.

—Bonus Tracks—
"I'll Call You Mine"

I've been meaning to mention this since 19 April:  although "I'll Call You Mine" is a bonus track, it works really well sequenced after "Time of the Season" (as it is on one of the Odessey and Oracle CD re-issues I have) because they're in relative keys.  "Time of the Season" is in E minor, and "I'll Call You Mine" is (at least mostly) in G major.

I did notice a new thing too.  During this section:

I couldn't chance to break the spell we had
The happy times we had, and yet the times were sad
Just for me, baby, you understood then
I was afraid to try to call you mine

Blunstone is singing the lead vocal, and Argent is doing the harmony vocal.  But Argent's harmony vocal drops out for the third line.  So there's only one voice (Blunstone's) singing "Just for me...."  It emphasizes the exclusivity.

"Don't Cry for Me"

An-other thing I've neglected to write about:  the "down" in the lines "Don't break your heart / Thinking you have let me down" is broken into syllables (a melisma), and the later notes are lower in pitch, so the word itself is going down.

"Smokey Day"

Like the "tight" in "Brief Candles," there are words here that could be either adjectives or flat adverbs:  "Soft, serene, she dances" or "Soft[ly], serene[ly] she dances."

"She Loves the Way They Love Her"

Surely I must have noticed this before, but I don't think I've written about it:  in the first line of the third verse, there's a multitude of internally-rhyming words:  "Crying, dying, sighing, whining, shining in the microphone."

"Don't Cry for Me"

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I split the track from The Decca Stereo Anthology in order to refresh my knowledge of the bass part for this, and I think I learned a part that I'd been oblivious to.  The bass part is mostly the root notes of the chords, but after the second line in each of the verses ("If there's one thing I found out" in the first verse, for instance) there's an E in between the F# and the D - a diatonic descent during that line break.

Recording Session

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According to the liner notes of both Zombie Heaven and The Decca Stereo Anthology, fifty years ago to-day (8 July 1965) the Zombies recorded "How We Were Before," "I Love You," "If It Don't Work Out," "I Know She Will," and "Don't Cry for Me."

"Don't Cry for Me"

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January's Cloak:

I covered the Zombies' "Don't Cry for Me."

"It's Alright with Me" / "Don't Cry for Me"

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I think I just learned the bass part for "It's Alright with Me."  It's pretty fun, but also slightly exhausting.  I hadn't noticed this until I really started paying attention to it, but contained within it is the really common bass line from the 1950s.

I also learned the bass part for "Don't Cry for Me," which is really easy.  Except for one part, all of the bass notes are the root of whatever chord they're played beneath.

"Don't Cry for Me"

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Last night, I recorded a version of "Don't Cry for Me."  I simply left out the "ah"s in between the verses because I cannot hold a consistent note unless I'm singing actual words.  However, I (sort of) solved that problem this morning:  I figured out the background vocal parts (or at least some of them) on keyboard.  I just added those to what I recorded last night, and it doesn't sound too bad.

I'm still not going to upload anything for awhile yet because I'm still busy doing FAWM, and then I have to get back to my EP.  But hopefully by the summer I'll start posting some works in progress.

"Don't Cry for Me"

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A few weeks ago - around the time I started learning "Remember You," I also figured out most of the chords for "Don't Cry for Me," but I was stuck in a few.  I figured those out just now.  It was F#m and C.  Yeah.

Again, I probably won't post even a rough version for a while because I'm busy with FAWM, and I don't want to mess up my note continuity project.