"Woman"

I recently re-learned the bass part for "Woman" (I'm in the midst of notating it) and found an old post on this blog where I'd written down the guitar and organ phrases (albeit just with note letters and I misidentified the organ as electric piano).  A couple days ago, I realized that since the guitar and organ play the same two-bar phrase, just starting at different points, they form a very simple canon:

My notation shows just four measures, but obviously, these phrases continue.

"Woman"

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I haven't learned any more of "Woman."  I know everything except the drum part and the solos.  I'm still a bit unsure of a few sections of the bass part too; it just goes so fast.

I make a few errors, but they're mostly just tempo-related, and I didn't feel like trying the parts yet again.

"Leave Me Be" b/w "Woman"

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Fifty years ago to-day (16 October 1964), the Zombies' second single was released: "Leave Me Be" b/w "Woman" (Decca F.12004)

Recording Session

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Fifty years ago to-day (5 September 1964), the Zombies recorded the vocal tracks to "Leave Me Be," "Kind of Girl," "Sometimes," and "Woman."

Recording Session

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Fifty years ago to-day (31 August 1964), the Zombies recorded the backing tracks to "Leave Me Be," "Kind of Girl," "Sometimes," and "Woman."

"Woman"

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I listened to the Beatles' Please Please Me this morning, and I noticed that "Ask Me Why" has some lyrics in common with "Woman."  "Ask Me Why" has:

I can't believe
It's happened to me
I can't conceive
Of any more misery

And "Woman" has:

I can't conceive, no
I can't believe you love me too

"Woman" uses believe and conceive more as an internal rhyme where "Ask Me Why" uses them for a line-ending rhyme.

"Ask Me Why" was released as the b-side to the "Please Please Me" single on 11 January 1963, and "Woman" was released as the b-side of the "Leave Me Be" single on 16 October 1964.  (Coincidentally, both songs were the b-side of each band's second single.)  So, between the chronology and the Beatles' influence on Rod Argent (which he's mentioned multiple times), there might be a connection between these two songs.  On the other hand, rhyming believe and conceive isn't too unusual, so it might just be a coincidence that both songs use them.  At best, it's just a conjectured influence.

Recording Session

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Fifty years ago to-day (13 August 1964), the Zombies recorded demos of "Sometimes," "Woman," "Kind of Girl," and "Leave Me Be" at Ryemuse Studios.

Three of these can be heard on the third disc of Zombie Heaven.

I Love You

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I realize I haven't been doing very much on this project lately, but by the end of the week, I'll be completely done with university, so I'll have some more time to work on this.  I do have some songs I've been meaning to update ("Is This the Dream," "Remember You," and "Beechwood Park" in particular).

In the meantime, I just wrote a post about the I Love You album as part of my Collection Audit project:

I went a bit out-of-order this morning and listened to the Zombies compilation album I Love You.  The Zombies have been my favorite band for the past five or six years, yet I'm still finding new things about their music (although I don't know whether that means they're a incredibly nuanced band or whether I'm not very good at listening). 

I finally determined that "How We Were Before" features twelve-string guitar.  I'd been suspicious of this (I'd played parts of it on my own twelve-string and thought it sounded pretty good), but now I'm fairly certain of it. 

I discovered that Rod Argent uses organ on "Woman."  This realization came after noticing the really long sustain on the G major chord during the guitar solo.  It just keeps going, which means it has to be organ rather than electric piano. 

For the first time, I noticed the three distinct vocals parts at the end of "Don't Go Away."  Two parts are alternating with "don't go away," but the third is just an "ooh." 

This album includes some stereo mixes of songs (which in some cases are different stereo mixes than those that appear on The Decca Stereo Anthology), so on some songs, things were placed in sonically different places, which made it easier to distinguish some parts.  This is the case on "I Love You," and because of that I heard some interesting rhythmical interplay between the guitar and the bass during the "if I can find / the words in my mind" part. 

Another suspicion that was confirmed is the guitar glissandoes at the beginning of "Remember You."  I'd been suspicious of these since I listened to The Decca Stereo Anthology about a month ago.  The guitar part at the beginning alternates between two D's an octave apart and a D and some-other-note-that-I-still-have-to-determine that then slides up to a D. 

Also, I may have found a reference to "She's Not There" in "She Does Everything for Me."  "She's a girl who makes me feel / That you're not there, you weren't real" recalls the "she's not there" from "She's Not There."  The "she" in "She Does Everything for Me" seems to have replaced the "she" in "She's Not There."  In any case, it's an interesting parallel, as "She's Not There" was the Zombies' first single for Decca, and "She Does Everything for Me" was the B-side of their last single for Decca.  Also, kudos to Rod Argent for getting the relative pronoun correct.

I got that album for my 17th birthday, and now I'm 22, but I'm still finding new things in the Zombies' music.

Also, I just checked my posts for "How We Were Before," and when I did a rough version last September, I actually did use twelve-string.  So apparently I forgot I knew it had twelve-string.

"Woman"

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Figuring out this one has an interesting story to it.

I had already learned (what I thought was) the guitar riff and the bass part.  The guitar riff I may have known since last year, but I think I learned the bass part sometime this spring.

I went back to listen to it a few days ago, and I realized that the guitar riff isn't what I thought it was.  I thought it was just a continuous repetition, but there are two distinct phrases that are juggled.  I started wondering what would happen if you played those two alternative riffs at the same time, so I tried doing it, but it didn't sound that interesting.

But then I listened to it again, and I realized that the electric piano plays the alternate riff.  So you have the D D F# D G F D C riff and the D D A B C B A F# riff playing simultaneously, but every time, they alternate instruments.  (I think it's the instrumentational alternating that makes it interesting.)

And after I recorded this, I panned the electric piano part a bit to the left and the guitar part a bit to the right.  Doing that made me realize that Rod Argent employs this same technique at the very end of "Lothlorien" from the band Argent's Ring of Hands album (except that's with guitar and organ).

This hadn't been one of my favorite songs, but now that I see how he used those alternative riffs between two instruments, I like it a great deal more.

Also, I think I messed up in the bass part after the guitar solo.  Well, the blank part where the guitar solo should be.