Argent's "Celebration"

This morning I listened to Argent's Ring of Hands, and I noticed something about "Celebration," the first track.  The first couple lines ("Celebration / An invitation") are sung by just one voice, but then more voices join in for the next lines ("To come and join in / The ring of hands together"), so there's a musical representation of that "join[ing] in."

Colin Blunstone & Rod Argent's Live at the Bloomsbury Theatre, London

To-day I listened to Colin Blunstone & Rod Argent's Live at the Bloomsbury Theatre, London, and I noticed a couple things.

"In My Mind a Miracle"

This is the first track on As Far As I Can See (which was the first album for which Blunstone and Argent used the Zombies moniker again).  I'd previously noticed the importance of sight in the lyrics, with lines like "No longer blind, I see because of you" and the hint at the classical blind seer, like Tiresias, (and the Zombies' Odessey and Oracle) with "In you I found my Odyssey and Oracle" (in the liner notes, they've finally fixed the spelling).  I'd noticed all of those visual things, but I'd neglected to notice the Latin root of "retrospect" in the line "The things that I've done in / Retrospect have caused me pain."  In Latin, spectare is the verb to look at.

"Hold Your Head Up"

This is something that should have been obvious, but in the "Hold your head up" chant after the organ solo, "Hold your head" is all sung to one note (a D), but the "up" is sung to a higher note (an F), so there's an ascent in the music and the lyrics.  This feature is also in Argent's original (from All Together Now).

Argent's In Deep

Last night I listened to Argent's In Deep, and I noticed two small things about two songs.

"God Gave Rock and Roll to You"

The first line of the first verse is "Love your friend and love your neighbor," and the "Love your neighbor" part is a quote from the Bible.  I think it's actually in a couple places, but this is the first one I thought of:

But when the Pharisees heard that he [Jesus] had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together.  And one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him.  "Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?"  And he said to him, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.  This is the great and first commandment.  And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.  On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets." (Matthew 22:34-40)

For what it's worth, last year, I wrote about what I think are some more Biblical references (to the Sermon on the Mount) in "It's Only Money, Pt. 1" and "It's Only Money, Pt. 2" (a lot of the lyrics are the same in both songs).

"Losing Hold"

I'm surprised I hadn't noticed this before, but "slide" in the line "Let my fingers slide" has a melisma.  Instead of being sung as just one syllable, it's sung as two, and the note changes from an A to a B, so the word "slide" is itself sliding between those two pitches.

Argent's "Pleasure"

I just listened to a compilation album of Argent (Greatest: The Singles Collection).  I'd previously noticed the melisma'd "rain" in the line "Falling rain to cool my aching face" in "Pleasure," but I'd failed to realize that - because the notes are descending (F# E D# C# B, I think) - the melisma helps to convey that the rain is falling.

Argent's "Lonely Hard Road"

This morning I listened to Argent's eponymous and debut album, and I noticed something about "Lonely Hard Road."  During the first half of the song, the backing vocals are panned to the right, but after the tempo change at about 2:39, when they appear again, they're panned to the left.  If those backing vocals are assumed to be static; their apparent shift from right to left is actually the movement of everything else to the right.  So between those shifting backing vocals and that tempo change, the singer/speaker seems to have made some progress in his walk.

Argent's "Tragedy"

This morning, I listened to Argent's Greatest: The Singles Collection.  I started paying a lot of attention to the Hammond organ in "Tragedy," and I realized that about halfway through the choruses (between "tragedy before your eyes" and "tragedy for every man"), Rod Argent turns his Leslie speaker from the slow rotation to the fast rotation.  At the same time, the chord progression moves up to include higher notes, which the increased oscillation of the Leslie helps to intensify.

The version of "Tragedy" on Greatest: The Singles Collection is the single version (as the title of the album would suggest), but the changing speed of the Leslie speaker is also included in the album version (on All Together Now).  I haven't listened to the two versions back-to-back, but I think the only difference is a few guitar lines that aren't included in the single version.

Rachmaninoff's Symphonic Dances, Op. 45, No. 3

Along with making my way through my digital collection of music, I've been listening to the 22 LPs in Funk & Wagnalls' Family Library of Great Music.  To-day was the record of Rachmaninoff, which includes the Piano Concerto No. 2 in C minor, Vocalise, Op. 34, No. 14, and Symphonic Dances Op. 45, No. 2 & 3.

I noticed that at the very end of the No. 3 Symphonic Dance, Rachmaninoff quotes "Dies Irae" in his brass part.

It's sort of funny that I'm realizing this now, as listening to these records last year is what introduced me to the "Dies Irae" - it's also quoted in Berlioz's Symphony Fantastique, which is the 22nd LP in this collection.  Actually, I recognized it as part of Argent's "The Coming of Kohoutek," and enough looking led me to the "Dies Irae."