"Shadow of a Doubt"

I'd previously noticed the alliteration in the lines "The nosy next door neighbours would have laughed if they could see / That mutual acquaintance introducing you to me" in Colin Blunstone's "Shadow of a Doubt," but I was thinking about the song yester-day and realized a function of this alliteration.  The repeated N sound mirrors the persistence of being "nosy."

Journey

Backdated, archival post

[link to original on tumblr]

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Colin Blunstone's Journey was released in the UK to-day in 1974, so I listened to it.  (I've started doing this thing where I listen to the albums on their release dates in order to become more familiar with them.  Otherwise, I don't listen to some that often.)  In listening to it, I found a lot of interesting things.

I talked about some of the structure of "Wonderful" back in November, but I found two more things.  First, the progression between two lines in iterations of the bridge (possibly not really a bridge; I don't know how to classify it).  "I need you more than ever now, my love" becomes "I want you more than ever now, my love."  Interestingly, this same sort of thing is in a line from "Shadow of a Doubt" - "You're the very last thing I want; the first thing that I need."

Second - and not as interesting - there's also alliteration in the line "High in the hall."

There's a slight lyrical resemblance between "Beginning" and "Maybe after He's Gone."  "Beginning" has the line "Oh, self-doubt surrounds you in the night," and "Maybe after He's Gone" has "Night surrounds me."  I'm not sure, but the line "Let us begin by beginning" might also reference the Zombies' album Begin Here.

"Keep the Curtains Closed Today" contains some typical Zombie themes of home and crying.  There are the lines "Could this be just the start of coming home" and "Just wish you well and hope that we don't cry."

"Beware" also mentions typical themes of dreams, memories, and crying (tears):

So hard to be alone with these forgotten dreams
No bitterness could drive away the tears
No other one will take the place you have inside
I know the memories will last a million years

According to Russo's Collector's Guide, "Beware" was written by Argent and White (they also wrote "Wonderful").

I think it's also interesting that both iterations in the chorus of "Beware" have a word that doesn't fit into the rhyme scheme.  The first iteration:

Beware as you wander through the years
Beware that you keep your heart from fears
Take care, my love, to share your love
And though the road's been long
I'll say goodbye, and I was wrong
And I've been lovin' you too long
But now I love you more than ever so beware

And the second iteration:

Beware and I know your heart can sing
Beware for I wish your everything
Take care, my love, to share your love
And though the road's been long
I'll say goodbye, and I was wrong
And I've been lovin' you too long
But now I love you more than ever so beware, my love

In both, "your love" doesn't really fit with the pattern.  There's "years," "fears," the outlier "love," and then "long," "wrong," and "long."  The second iteration keeps the last three but switches the first group to "sing," "everything," and - again - the outlier "love."  It seems like it should be two groups of three and then the final line, but - perhaps significantly - the love doesn't cooperate.

"It's Magical" and "You Who Are Lonely" both contain lines about dreams.  "It's Magical" has "And when I go to sleep / All the dreams of you are mine to keep," but the dream reference in "You Who Are Lonely" is much more interesting.  The complete verse:

And a home without love
Is no home at all
I'm hanging on to a dream
Waiting to fall

There's the bit about home common to Zombies songs, but the line with the dream has "hanging on to," which immediately brought the Zombies' "Hung up on a Dream" to mind.  The last two verses of "Hung up on a Dream" seem to describe what the speaker/singer in "You Who Are Lonely" has lost:

They spoke with soft, persuading words
About a living creed of gentle love
And turned me on to sounds unheard
And showed me strangest, clouded sights above 

Which gentled touched my aching mind
And soothed the wanderings of my troubled brain
Sometimes I think I'll never find
Such purity and peace of mind again

Like the "love" in "Beware," "You Who Are Lonely" seems to have a significant inconsistency in that there's a line missing in the choruses:

You, you who are lonely know
How slowly time can go
When winds of sadness blow 

You, you who are lonely see
To be alone is not to be free
Nobody knows like me
And you who are lonely

There isn't a line to complete the first quatrain, as if to mirror the speaker/singer's lack of companionship.

"Shadow of a Doubt"

Backdated, archival post

[link to original on tumblr]

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I think I've been neglecting Colin Blunstone's solo career, so I started transcribing a few of his songs, which somehow led to learning the chords for "Shadow of a Doubt," which I think has become one of my favorites of his (I'd always liked it, but after looking at the lyrics, I like it even more).  It feels like I've been working on this for a few days, but I only transcribed the lyrics yester-day morning.

There's some alliteration in the first line of the third full verse: "The nosy next door neighbours," which I mention first only because I don't have anything to add to it.  There are more interesting things to say.

Like the first half of the second verse:

Company convivial, the drink went to my head
Conversation trivial, don't ask me what I said
Could have been pure coincidence the moisture in your eye

There's alliteration (with some really interesting phrases and internal rhyme), but the really interesting thing is that trivial doesn't fit into that alliteration.  As if the word itself - like its meaning - isn't important enough to merit that same starting letter.

Also the future tense in the bridge (I think it's a bridge):

What's passed is history I'll never wish to read
You're the very last thing I want, the first thing that I need

The singer/speaker is saying that he doesn't want to relive the relationship, but at some future time.  At the present time, he's still interested in thinking about it.

Also "You're the very last thing I want, the first thing that I need" is a solid example of structural parallelism.

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I'm not sure my voice suits this very much, but it's better than I'd feared.  The chords are sort of all over the place (and - as always - I may have gotten some wrong; I'm not sure there are actually full-blown chords during the bridge either), so I felt having the vocal would help glue it together.  I actually recorded this live (as electric guitar and vocals), but I wasn't paying attention to where the melody was going at one point, so I had to re-do the vocal track (and then I double-tracked it).  There's a bunch of just C and F chords at the beginning and end; they're supposed to have variations, but I know only one so far (the last one before the lyrics start), so those parts aren't that interesting.  Also, the solo is sort of painfully absent.

This is a new song in the catalogue.