"The Feeling's Inside"

The last thing I noticed when I listened to Argent last week is that there's an instance in "The Feeling's Inside" where the structure mirrors the lyrics:  the first line of the bridge is "And you begin to feel your life was changed," and the bridge is a musical change in the song.  Before it, there's an organ introduction and two verses.  It's not the most significant point, but I thought it was interesting.

"The Feeling's Inside"

Last week I listened to Argent and noticed something about the lines "She bought you coffee in a special cup / Which made you warm from deep inside" in "The Feeling's Inside."  A couple years ago, I discovered that they're quite similar to some lines in Ray Charles' "Hallelujah I Love Her So," but now I found something about the lines themselves.

"Which made you warm from deep inside" is a relative clause, but its antecedent is ambiguous.  It could refer to the noun "coffee" or the whole clause "She bought you coffee in a special cup."  Rephrased, it could be either "The coffee that she bought you made you warm" or "That she bought you coffee made you warm."  One focuses on the heating effect of the coffee (the physical), and the other focuses on the warm emotions that result from the gift (the intangible).  The emotional warmth is probably the intended reading, but both are grammatical viable.

"The Feeling's Inside"

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Collection Audit:

Yester-day I listened (for the first time) to the first disc of a three-CD set of Bo Diddley.  I'm listening to the second disc to-day, and I think I found a reference to Ray Charles' "Hallelujah I Love Her So" in "Don't Let It Go (Hold on to What You Got)."  There's the line "She brings me my coffee in her favorite cup," which is very similar to Charles' "She brings my coffee in my favorite cup."  According to the credits for the two compilation albums I have these songs on, "Hallelujah I Love Her So" is from 1955, and "Don't Let It Go (Hold on to What You Got)" is from 1959, so chronologically, that reference is possible, but since I don't know much about Bo Diddley (this is the first album of his material that I have, and this is only the first time I'm listening to it), I'm not sure if that's a viable connection.

This is a sort of relevant post from my Collection Audit project.

I mentioned before that I'm pretty sure this line from Ray Charles' "Hallelujah I Love Her So" inspired the line "She bought you coffee in a special cup" in Argent's "The Feeling's Inside."  But there might be something to this Bo Diddley connection too.  The Zombies covered his "Road Runner," but I don't know how familiar they were with his other work.

I still think Charles is the main referent though because in this interview from a few years ago, Rod Argent specifically mentions Charles as one of the artists he still listens to twenty years later.  In more recent interviews, I think he credited him as an influence for "Edge of the Rainbow" from Still Got That Hunger too.

"The Feeling's Inside"

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I've been in one of my guitars-are-too-popular phases and thinking I should get better at other instruments, so I was playing around on keyboard to-day and decided to figure something out.  When I listened to Argent recently, I noticed that there's an organ overdub at the beginning of "The Feeling's Inside."  So I learned that (although I'm a bit unsure of one note), and I also got the bass register of the "proper" organ part - the one that this part was overdubbed onto.

"The Feeling's Inside"

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[link to original on tumblr]

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I usually date the notes I write of things to look into, but I neglected to do that for this one.  I think it was early January 2014 though because I'd been listening to the Ray Charles set I have.  Anyway, I'm listening to that again so I can (finally) check a possible connection between "Hallelujah I Love Her So" and Argent's "The Feeling's Inside."

"Hallelujah I Love Her So" contains the lines "Every morning 'fore the sun comes up / She brings my coffee in my favorite cup," which is fairly similar to "She bought you coffee in a special cup" in "The Feeling's Inside."  (The first line of "The Feeling's Inside" is "When you woke up on this cold winter's day," which seems to suggest morning.)  Both songs also mention a sort of euphoria related to love - "And if you're feeling very good today" in "The Feeling's Inside," and the titular "Hallelujah I love her so" in "Hallelujah I Love Her So."

I'm slightly more sure of this connection because in this Rod Argent interview, he mentions Ray Charles, but - like most of these - it's still just conjecture.