Banging On!

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I just got Bob Henrit's autobiography to-day.  I'll admit that I got it mostly for the parts about Argent, but I'm sure the other parts will be interesting too.  I've read only the first page so far, but I learned the Henrit's father was born the same day that the Titanic sank (14 April 1912).

"Shine on Sunshine"

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According to Russo's Collector's Guide, Argent's Circus came out to-day in 1975.  I listened to it and worked on transcribing the lyrics, but I found only one thing to say about it.

There's an-other instance of Rod Argent's gray image in the first chorus of "Shine on Sunshine":

So shine on, sunshine
Paint my life of gray
So shine on, sunshine
Warm my life away

Ostensibly, this builds on similar lines in "Imagine the Swan" ("For the colors are gone / You've become kind of gray") and "In My Mind a Miracle" from As Far As I Can See: "You turned me 'round / And made the colors true."

In the BBC MasterTapes interviews, Argent mentioned that part of Odessey and Oracle was about color.  The first time I listened to that, I thought he was talking about literal color, like in the song lyrics (although I never actually looked to see if there are any), but in referencing it awhile ago, I heard that part again and started wondering if he was talking about instrumental color (like timbre).  One or both of those might have some connection here.

I also referenced the version of "Shine on Sunshine" that's on Breathe Out, Breathe In, and I discovered that those lines aren't present (I haven't gotten around to transcribing them, but the lyrics are in the liner notes).  Each iteration of the chorus is virtually the same:

Shine on sunshine
Chase the clouds away
Shine on sunshine
Into my life each day

The last repetition has a slightly different last line: "Into my life always."

EDIT: It belatedly occurs to me that - duh! - "Shine on Sunshine" predates "In My Mind a Miracle."  Even though I had the chronology wrong, the images are still similar.

"Remember You"

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I just listened to the batch of songs that were recorded 50 years ago to-day, and I noticed something about "Remember You" (this is the soundtrack version, but I'm pretty sure it's in the single version too).

In both verses, there's a sort of parallelism.  In the first verse, "When I'm thinking back, I'll remember" is balanced with "When I'm thinking back, I won't forget you."  So there's "I'll remember" and "I won't forget," which say the same thing but in sort of opposite directions.

In the second verse, there's "When I'm thinking back, I'll remember" and "To when I last saw you; I can't forget you."  The beginnings of the lines aren't the same, but the ends exhibit the same thing as those in the first verse - saying the same thing but in different ways.

"Nothing's Changed" and "Remember You"

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According to the liner notes of both Zombie Heaven and The Decca Stereo Anthology, fifty years ago to-day (31 March 1965), the Zombies recorded "Nothing's Changed" and "Remember You" (the version for the soundtrack of Bunny Lake Is Missing).

The Decca Stereo Anthology also adds that they recorded the vocals for "Come on Time" (an ad for Bunny Lake Is Missing) using the backing track from "Just out of Reach."

"Baby Don't You Cry No More"

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The last things I noticed when I listened to Out of the Shadows a few days ago are in "Baby Don't You Cry No More."  At the end of the last section, a few lines are repeated, resulting in:

Baby, don't you cry no more
No more
My baby, don't you cry no more
I've been a lot of trouble, but I won't be any more
Baby, don't you cry, no
Baby, don't you cry no more

There are two interesting ambiguities in this (which typing the lyrics out kind of ruins).

First there's the line "I've been a lot of trouble, but I won't be any more."  That's the way it's printed in the liner notes, but audibly, it's no different from "I've been a lot of trouble, but I won't be anymore."  They negate slightly different things:  "I won't be any more" is quantitative ("I won't be any more [trouble]"), and "I won't be anymore" is more temporal ("I won't be trouble any longer").  However, just by hearing it, it could be taken either way.

Second, there's the "no" in "Baby, don't you cry, no" - the penultimate line.  That part isn't printed in the liner notes at all (apparently because it's just a repetition, so they assume the reader can figure it out), but like any more/anymore, it can be rendered in two different ways.  There's either "Baby, don't you cry no" or "Baby, don't you cry, no."  The comma makes a big difference.  Without the comma, it seems like the line is interrupted and that it was supposed to be the same as the following line "Baby, don't you cry no more" but the "more" was left out for any number of reasons.  With the comma, the "no" becomes an interjection instead of an adverb.  Those two options also vary the function of "cry" - whether it's transitive (taking "no more" as an object) or intransitive (taking no object at all).  The difference in semantics isn't as different here as it is with any more/anymore, but it's still an ambiguity that's present only in an audible form.

Referencing Rod Argent's version from Red House (titled just "Baby Don't You Cry"), I've discovered that the ambiguous "any more"/"anymore" and "no" are present there too.

"Sanctuary"

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While I was transcribing "Sanctuary" from Out of the Shadows, I noticed that Colin Blunstone and Rod Argent do something similar to what Sam Cooke does in "Summertime."*

The last verse of "Sanctuary" is:

Will you be my sanctuary
There for me when all the world's in vain
Shelter me when I'm runnin' for cover
And open my eyes and help me to be once again

(The lyrics as printed in the liner notes are slightly different.  There are different line breaks at the end so that it's five lines [with "Be once again" as its own line], but I think it looks better as four.  And they have one line as "when I run for cover," but I don't think that's what Blunstone actually sings.)

After that, the same words from that verse are sort of shuffled into:

Will you be
There for me, my sanctuary

Sections of earlier lines are reconstituted so that now they rhyme ("be"/"me"), excepting that vocative "my sanctuary."  Sam Cooke does a similar thing in "Summertime."  I've written about this before, but basically, he takes the ends of the first two verses ("So hush, little baby, don't you cry" and "With your daddy and mommy standin' by") and combines them in a new way to get "They're standin' by so don't cry."

I'm not sure if Blunstone and Argent shuffled their lines like that because Cooke did, but they have mentioned him as an influence, so I suppose it's possible.

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*Or, at least, it's in one of Sam Cooke's versions of "Summertime."  I have two different versions on different compilation albums, so apparently he recorded it more than once.

"Helpless"

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I was transcribing "Helpless" from Out of the Shadows a few days ago, and after I typed out these lines, I realized that they sounded familiar:

My hands are shaking; my knees get weak
Can't seem to stand on my own two feet

I actually ended up Googling them and discovered that they're from Elvis' "All Shook Up."  This morning, I listened to an Elvis compilation album with "All Shook Up" and started transcribing it.  I finished the relevant lines at least:

Well, my hand is shaky, and my knees are weak
I can't seem to stand on my own two feet

It's not an exact quotation, but it is an obvious reference.

I knew that Rod Argent was inspired by Elvis (I don't know how many interviews I've read or seen where he mentions the whole "I liked only classical music until Jim Rodford played me 'Hound Dog,' and then later I discovered that Elvis had our songs on his juke box!"), but I don't think I'd ever found anything in the music to demonstrate this.  So finding this quotation from "All Shook Up" was really exciting.

"A Girl Like That"

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When I listened to Colin Blunstone and Rod Argent's Out of the Shadows yester-day, one of the things I found was an instance of day and night parallelism in "A Girl Like That":

Spend my days without love
Spend my nights alone

I'm not sure if it's intentional, but it recalls the parallelism of "Walk in the light of day and talk the night away" from "I'll Call You Mine."  It's sort of opposite though in that "I'll Call You Mine" describes togetherness and that part of "A Girl Like That" is about solitude.

"Losing Hold"

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Two things:

1 . In that post about "Losing Hold," I forgot to mention that there's a chromatic phrase hidden in the chord progression.  It's C major, E minor, Bb major, F major, in which is hidden C, B, Bb, A.

2.  I just listened to Colin Blunstone and Rod Argent's Out of the Shadows because apparently it was released to-day in 2001.  Like always, I found a lot of stuff to write about, but I have to do some research on some things, so I won't be posting those for a few days yet.  There's some really exciting stuff though.

"Losing Hold"

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While listening to In Deep a few days ago, I figured out the part at the end of "Losing Hold."  It just alternates between sets of two notes and cycles among four chords.  While recording this, I realized that it actually has some resemblance to the chords in "Leave Me Be" (specifically C major to E minor) which makes some sense since "Losing Hold" is a White/Argent song.

I'm still not sure of the exact instrumentation, but I did the alternating notes and the chords on piano, the alternating notes on electric piano, and the chords on electric guitar.

This is pretty much just two and a half minutes of four chords.  On the record, it fades out, but I resolved it on C major.

This is also a new one in the catalogue.

"Candles on the River"

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Yester-day, after posting what I wrote about "Candles on the River," I realized that there's more evidence for that John Donne connection - "New World (My America)" from the Zombies' New World album.  Chris White says in the liner notes:

"New World (My America)" was co-written with Andy Nye (my nephew - it seems that Rod and I have this tendency towards nepotism - but only if the talent is there).  It was done specifically for the album and Colin's voice.  I got the idea from the poet John Donne; I think the poem "To His Mistress Going To Bed" was the starting point.  The line I was inspired by was "O, my America, my Newfoundland."

I actually have an original vinyl copy of In Deep (I have the wrong year in that post though), and in the sleeve notes, Bob Henrit notes that "Candles on the River" is a Chris White song (Argent and White were splitting the writing credits at this point):

The Donne connection in "New World (My America)" is undeniable, and since "Candles on the River" is also a Chris White song, I feel it's more likely that the "islands" in it is an intentional Donne reference.

"Candles on the River"

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Earlier to-day, I realized that I forgot something about "Candles on the River" in the post I wrote about Argent's In Deep.

The first verse (and the song itself) starts with the lines "Candles on the river / Islands in the rain."  As phrases, they're pretty parallel, but the interesting thing is the allusions behind them.

The "candles" part would seem to be a reference to the Zombies' "Brief Candles," which - according to the Zombie Heaven liner notes - is a title that Chris White took from Aldous Huxley's collection of short stories.  But Huxley himself took that phrase ("brief candle") from Shakespeare's Macbeth:

To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time,
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.  (Macbeth V.v.2376-2385)

Incidentally, Huxley also took the title Brave New World from Shakespeare.  Specifically The Tempest, which is also the source of the quotation in the original liner notes to Odessey and Oracle:

Be not afraid;
The isle is full of noises
Sound, and sweet airs that give delight and hurt not.
Sometimes a thousand twanging instruments
Will hum about mine ears; and sometimes voices

Also incidentally, William Faulker used this same section of Macbeth for the title for The Sound and the Fury.  Faulker also wrote "A Rose for Emily," which Rod Argent took for a title for an Odessey and Oracle song.

Anyway, it would appear that the line "candles on the river" is a reference to "Brief Candles," but I think the Macbeth reference is stronger.  In "Candles on the River," the candles represent people - the same representation they have in Macbeth.  In "Brief Candles," they represent memories: "bright and tiny gems of memory."

But listening to In Deep recently, the second line ("Islands in the rain") caught my attention (especially because I was working on transcribing the lyrics).  It could just be a phrase constructed to have a sort of similarity to "candles in the river," but because the first line has a literary allusion, I think the second does too - to John Donne's "No man is an island."

So there's the parallelism between both lines just as phrases, but there's also the parallelism between them as allusions to English writers - Shakespeare and Donne.  Interestingly, the order of the allusions in those lines mirrors Shakespeare's and Donne's lives.  While they were contemporaries, Shakespeare (1564-1616) was born sooner and died sooner than Donne (1572-1631).