Argent Live at the Paris Theatre, London 1972

Via the Zombies fan club on Facebook, here's a recording of an Argent concert from 1972.  The accompanying text claims that the set list includes "God Gave Rock and Roll to You," but the recording actually consists of "Be My Lover, Be My Friend," "Sweet Mary," "Hold Your Head Up," and "He's a Dynamo."  Except for "Hold Your Head Up," I'd never heard live versions of any of those.

"The Coming of Kohoutek"

Recently, I finally got around to notating the synth/mellotron quotation of "Dies Irae" at the beginning of Argent's "The Coming of Kohoutek."  I've known the guitar quotation for years, but this keyboard quotation (which I learned in August) is at a lower pitch.  After I notated it, I lookt at my old posts about "The Coming of Kohoutek," and I discovered that I haven't written much about the "Dies Irae" quotation, so I'm doing that now.

I identified the quotation myself (after hearing a similar phrase in Berlioz's Symphonie Fantastique and doing some research), but I also found this interview with Rod Argent where he talks about the song a bit and confirms the "Dies Irae" quote:

Progsheet: Argent's The Coming Of Kohoutek got lots of airplay on FM radio here in the States. Please give me some background on the song. 

Rod Argent: The comet was heralded as being potentially one of the most spectacular events to occur in the sky for many years. In the far past, spectacular comet visitations had been linked to all sorts of prophesies of doom and destruction, and I included a very famous musical theme - the Dies Irae, (Day of Wrath), written in the 13th century. It was a short theme that's been used by many composers. I just thought it was interesting to look at things a bit from a historical perspective, and it was the dramatic nature of the whole event that fascinated me. In the end, the comet Kohoutek was pretty much a damp squib!!

Here's the "Dies Irae" tune:

[source]

And here's the synth/mellotron quotation from the beginning of "The Coming of Kohoutek":

Argent uses only the first two thirds of the "Dies Irae" and changes the rhythm a bit (notwithstanding the overall lengthening of the note values), but the intervals remain the same.

Update

Two significant things happened on 15 February.  First, I finished transferring my old posts from tumblr to this blog.  I did skip a couple, but mostly they were just links to interviews that I'd posted without any commentary.  All of the "essential" things are here now.

The other bit of news is more exciting.  I finally acquired a Nord Electro 5D (which I've been eyeing since at least December 2014), so now I can play a whole host of keyboard parts with more accurate sounds.

I'm still figuring out how to use it, but one of the first things I did was load the Hohner Pianet sample.  Other relevant sounds for this project include Vox Continental, Hammond B-3, mellotron (flute and strings), and Fender Rhodes (for some of the later Argent material).  There are some harpsichord sounds, but they're recorded from actual harpsichords rather than an electric harpsichord, which is what Rod Argent used on "I Want Her She Wants Me" (I'm not sure about the specific instruments used for others things like "Imagine the Swan" and Colin Blunstone's version of "(Care of) Cell 44").  The piano sounds are vastly superior to the old Yamaha PSR-320 that I'd been using for the last five or six years.

One of the reasons I wanted the Electro 5D is that it has physical drawbars.  I couldn't really do anything to alter the organ sounds on the Yamaha keyboard, but I can on the Nord.  Because I'm in the midst of FAWM though, I haven't had much time to play around with them yet, and I still have no idea what I'm doing.

I have a notion of going through the whole catalogue and re-recording everything for which I know keyboard parts, but I'm not sure I'll actually do that.  Learning how to use drawbars is my first priority, and then I think I might make a list of the specific keyboard instruments used in each song.

Breathe Out, Breathe In

Last night I watched the four videos of songs from Breathe Out, Breathe In, and I realized something about the title track:

The piano solo has a baroque feel, and while that might be the influence of actual baroque music (as Argent says in the liner notes for Classically Speaking, "I've always loved Bach!"), it might also be the Beatles' influence, specifically the baroque-inspired keyboard solo played by George Martin in "In My Life."

---&---

This morning I listened to the entire album, and I noticed something about "A Moment in Time":

As rendered in the liner notes, the first few lines are:

All my beginnings

That preciously I find

Lead me to sorrow

Or happiness incline

I'd write these as two lines rather than four, but regardless, there's a syntactical inversion.  Instead of "beginnings that lead me to sorrow or incline me to happiness," the second of those verb phrases is inverted, and that inversion mirrors how sorrow and happiness are opposites.

---&---

As a general point, I also noticed that a number of the songs mention breath or breathing.  I lookt through the lyrics, and six of the ten songs have one or the other.  Obviously, there's "breathe out, breathe in" in the title track, but there's also "I'd take my last breath whispering your name" in "Any Other Way," "She reminds me of / The breath of summer sun" in "Shine on Sunshine," "Feeling for the breath of angels" in "A Moment in Time," "You take my breath away" in "Another Day," and "Like a baby I'm learning to breathe" in "I Do Believe."  So Breathe Out, Breathe In is appropriately titled.

"Shine on Sunshine"

Because of Jim Rodford's recent and unexpected death, I've been listening to Argent albums.  Yester-day I listened to Circus (the first Argent album with a song written by Rodford: "Trapeze"), and I noticed a small thing about "Shine on Sunshine."

In the second verse, after the line "The rain that breaks your heart" in the lead vocals, that same line is sung in the backing vocals to a melody something like:

(I guessed on the key based on the pitches in this phrase.)

The "breaks" is sung with a melisma (G# to A# in the second measure), giving a musical impression of the breaking.

I referenced the version that the Zombies recorded for Breathe Out, Breathe In, but it doesn't have this feature because the second half of the verse is re-written (along with other sections of the song).  In Argent's version, I think it's:

Better yet by far
The best I ever saw
The rain that breaks your heart
Won't bend our love for sure

But in the Zombies' version, it's:

Better yet by far
The best I ever saw
Each time the clouds start crying
She dries their tears once more

Odessey and Oracle

According to the Zombie Heaven liner notes, fifty years ago to-day (1 January 1968), the Zombies did some work on Odessey and Oracle.  The entry reads "EMI Abbey Road Room 53 Odessey & Oracle original master (stereo)."  As with the corresponding entry for 28 December, I'm not entirely sure what this means, but I'm assuming it indicates when the Zombies gather together the stereo mixes for Odessey and Oracle.

Odessey and Oracle

According to the Zombie Heaven liner notes, fifty years ago to-day (27 December 1967), the Zombies mixed the stereo versions of "Time of the Season," "Beechwood Park," "Maybe after He's Gone," and "I Want Her She Wants Me."

The entry for the next day (28 December 1967) is "EMI Abbey Road Room 53 Odessey & Oracle (master)."  I'm not entirely sure what this means, but I'm assuming it has something to do with gathering together all of the mixes.  There's a corresponding entry for 1 January 1968 that reads "EMI Abbey Road Room 53 Odessey & Oracle original master (stereo)," so I'm assuming (again) that this 28 December entry refers only to the mono version of the album.

"Memphis"

Last month I listened to As Far As I Can See, and I noticed something about "Memphis" that should have been obvious much earlier.  Although the phrase has acquired a larger application, "trace the writing on the wall" refers to a story in the Bible.  In Daniel 5, a hand literally writes on a wall, and Daniel interprets it.

Odessey and Oracle

According to the Zombie Heaven liner notes, fifty years ago to-day (19 December 1967), the Zombies mixed the stereo versions of "Changes" and "Friends of Mine."

Odessey and Oracle

According to the Zombie Heaven liner notes, fifty years ago to-day (8 December 1967), the Zombies mixed the stereo versions of "This Will Be Our Year," "Care of Cell 44," and "Brief Candles."

"Caroline Goodbye"

I'm still slowly adding backdated posts from my old tumblr account to this blog (I have roughly January through June of 2016 left).  I recently archived a post where I wrote out the chords to "Caroline Goodbye," but I discovered a couple months ago that what I had is wrong.  In July this year, the Zombies did a radio session for The Summit, and because Rod Argent was unavailable, Colin Blunstone performed some songs with Tom Toomey providing guitar accompaniment.  Because there's a video, I could watch Toomey's hands as he played the chords for "Caroline Goodbye."  While this confirmed most of the chords I had (including some subtle differences between regular major chords and major 7ths, which I'd suspected but wasn't completely confident about), I discovered that I had one chord wrong.  In that post from last July, I said I was "a bit unsure of the F major 7th chord that alternates with the A major near the end of the verses" specifically whether it was "a straight-forward major chord or a major 7th."  It turns out that it's neither; it's a D minor.

Here are the corrected chords:

|: F major 7th | C major 7th :|
F major | C major
F major | Esus4 | E major
A major | A major 7th | A7 | D major
|: D minor | A major :|

That whole section repeats, but the next time (with the guitar solo) it's different:

|: F major 7th | C major 7th :|
A major | A major 7th | A7 | D major
|: D minor | A major :| F major 7th

After I discovered my error, I realized that part of this chord progression (adjusted for key) is also in "How We Were Before," which - like "Caroline Goodbye" - was written by Colin Blunstone.  The A major | A major 7th | A7 | D major | D minor | A major progression (which, incidentally, contains a descending chromatic phrase: A, G#, G, F#, F, E) is in the verses of "How We Were Before," just a fourth higher and arpeggiated rather than strummed: D major | D major 7th | D7 | G major | G minor | D major (the chromatic phrase here is D, C#, C, B, Bb, A).

"Beyond the Borderline"

This is the last in my series of initial posts on Still Got That Hunger.

One of the lines in "Beyond the Borderline" is "Can you feel it humming in the air," which is fairly similar to "Tonight I feel excitement humming in the air," which is a line from Argent's "Celebration."  Both lines are about "feel[ing]" something "humming in the air."

The only other comment I have is about the line "That magic moment's here."  Of course, there's the alliteration in "magic moment," but that phrase also brings to mind the Drifters' song "This Magic Moment."  Rod Argent often mentions being on the same bill as Ben E. King and the Drifters when the Zombies played the Brooklyn Fox in December 1964.  I'm assuming he's familiar with "This Magic Moment," but I don't know if there's really any connection between the song and this line in "Beyond the Borderline."