The Moody Blues' "House of Four Doors (Part 1)"

I just listened to the Moody Blues' In Search of the Lost Chord for the first time.  I'm not sure, but I think they quote part of Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue" in "House of Four Doors (Part 1)."  At around 3:15, a melody emerges from the rumbling.  As far as I can figure out, the notes are C# D E A.  What I think is a corresponding melody occurs in "Rhapsody in Blue" at around 11:30 in the version I have by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra.  I'm pretty sure that it's G# A B and then E and B (an octave lower) simultaneously.  Simplified to representative notes of the scale, it's the third, the fourth, the fifth, and the tonic (plus the fifth in the case of "Rhapsody in Blue," if I have it correct).  These two sections are either in the same rhythm or a very similar rhythm, and after each, the melody continues to rise.

According to the Wikipedia page, each section in the song is supposed to represent an era of music, so perhaps it's a conscious nod to Gershwin.

The Byrds' "The World Turns All Around Her"

I'm currently listening to the Byrds' Turn! Turn! Turn! for the first time.  I know some of these songs, but there are some I haven't heard before, including Gene Clark's "The World Turns All Around Her."  In about the middle of the song, there's a drum part that's really close to the introductory drum part of the Beatles' "What You're Doing."  I don't know drum terminology, but the drum part in "What You're Doing" sounds more drum-centric where the drum part in "The World Turns All Around Her" includes some of the other percussive elements of the drum kit (I think it's just that "The World Turns All Around Her" uses the snare drum, and "What You're Doing" doesn't).  "What You're Doing" was on Beatles for Sale, which came out in 1964, and Turn! Turn! Turn! was released in late 1965, so that specific influence is possible, as far as chronology goes.

It's also pretty likely that the Beatles influenced the Byrds.  In the liner notes for this album, Derek Taylor explains that George Harrison and Paul McCartney went to visit the Byrds while they were recording the album.  And I remember reading somewhere that Roger McGuinn, Gene Clark, and David Crosby were doing Beatles covers even before the Byrds started.  Plus McGuinn got his twelve-string Rickenbacker after seeing George Harrison's in A Hard Day's Night.

The Rolling Stones' "Street Fighting Man"

Three days ago I listened to the soundtrack to Wes Anderson's Fantastic Mr. Fox, and to-day I'm listening to the Rolling Stones' Forty Licks.  Both contain the song "Street Fighting Man."  I noticed something about it while listening to the Fantastic Mr. Fox soundtrack, but I didn't think it important enough to write a post about.

But hearing it again on Forty Licks, I felt I should.  And besides, this project is for documenting what I discover about my music collection, whether or not it's obvious.

In "Street Fighting Man," there's the line "Summer's here, and the time is right for fighting in the street."  I would be very surprised if this was not intended as a reference to Martha and the Vandellas' "Dancing in the Street," which has the line "Summer's here, and the time is right for dancing in the street."  There's only one word different.

It's interesting how efficacious that one word substitution is.  Looking at just that line, changing "dancing" to "fighting" indicates the speaker/singer's tone for the whole of the song.

Roy Orbison's "Running Scared"

I'm listening to an-other Roy Orbison compilation album, titled For the Lonely: 18 Greatest Hits.  Last month, I had wondered whether the rhythm in "Running Scared" is the same as that in Maurice Ravel's Boléro.  As it turns out, the rhythm isn't the same.

However, listening to the song this time, I realized that the structures are fairly similar.  Ravel's Boléro is based almost entirely on a percussion rhythm.  (If I recall correctly, Ravel joked about this, saying that it's a shame that there's no music in the Boléro.)  Orbison's "Running Scared" is also built on a rhythm that's the same throughout the entirety of the song.

But what's more interesting about "Running Scared" is that the rhythm changes instruments.  For the first half a minute, the rhythm is in an acoustic guitar - the only instrument present.  Then, bass and drums (and I think electric guitar) come in, playing the same rhythm.  At about fifty seconds in, violins come in, with the same rhythm.  At about a minute and a half, the rhythm in the drums changes (albeit only slightly), but brass comes in and sustains the original rhythm until the end of the song.

So "Running Scared" is the same as Ravel's Boléro in that it's based entirely on one rhythm, yet unlike Ravel's Boléro, that rhythm is played by more than one instrument.  (Although, to be honest, it's been awhile since I've last listened to Ravel's Boléro, so maybe the rhythm is made obvious in an-other instrumental part in that piece too.)

The Zombies' I Love You

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.

Little Richard's "True Fine Mama"

This morning, I listened to the second disc of a Little Richard compilation album.  One of the songs included is "True Fine Mama."  I'm more familiar with this phrase as it appears in Five Man Electrical Band's "Money Back Guarantee" - "It's hard to believe this is my love song / I only hope I didn't take too long / But this here's the point I've been working up to / True fine mama, I do love you."

As I heard it in the Five Man Electric Band song, I thought there were more commas in it: "True, fine, mama."  Rendered in this way, it appears as if the speaker/singer is more hesitant to say it and reveals it only when pressed.  But finding the same phrase in Little Richard's song, I've realized that both "true" and "fine" are adjectives, where I had thought that "fine" was an exasperated interjection.

I don't know much at all about the history of the Five Man Electrical Band, so I don't know if they were influenced by this Little Richard song or whether that's even a possibility.  But in any case, it's helped me make more sense of "Money Back Guarantee," which I've always thought was a really good song.

Roy Orbison's "Sweet and Easy to Love"

Yester-day, I listened to an album of Roy Orbison songs titled The Essential Sun Years.  One of these was stuck in my head last night, and I noticed something when I was playing it over in my head, but I wanted to verify it before I wrote a post about it.

But it does check out, and there's some really interesting duplicity going on in "Sweet and Easy to Love."  If you pay attention to just the lead vocals, it seems like just a regular sort of 1950s love song.  The first line is "Well, it's so sweet and easy to love you."

But if you pay attention to the backing vocals later in the song, you start to realize that the song has more depth than just those platitudes.  After the guitar solo, the backing vocals change from just "ahs" to "sweeter than easy."  "Sweeter than easy" implies that there is some difficulty in loving whoever's the subject of the song.  Everything's not as picture-perfect as it seemed.

If you re-listen to the beginning with that "sweeter than easy" in mind, the lead vocals aren't quite as convincing.  The first few lines are "Well, it's so sweet and easy to love you / Like I do / Yes it's true / I love you."  To me, saying, "Yes it's true" indicates that the speaker/singer is trying a bit too hard to have this pristine loving relationship come across.  And the backing vocals are what call this into question.

Of course, it could just be that "sweet and easy" was a syllable too short for the backing vocals so they added "-er" and substituted "than" for "and," but I think it's more interesting to look at it with the duplicity between the lead vocals and the backing vocals.

Carl Perkins' "I Care"

Between yester-day and to-day, I listened to a two-disc compilation album of Carl Perkins called The Fabulous Carl Perkins.  The first two lines of "I Care" sounded really familiar - "Now you got me started / Don't you leave me broken-hearted."  It wasn't too hard to place these as lines that also appear in Cliff Richard's "Too Much" because I had just listened to a Cliff Richard compilation album a few days ago.

But I'm not sure what to make of these two lines' appearing identically in two different songs.  "I Care" is from 1957, and "Too Much" is from 1959, so if one was influenced by the other, it would be "Too Much" influenced by "I Care."  But I don't really think that's the case here.  I think it's just a weird coincidence that illustrates that a lot of the songs from the 1950s use a lot of the same elements.  I think rhyming started and broken-hearted was just pretty common back then, and the rest of the lines for these two songs just happened to be filled in with the same words.

Roy Orbison's "Trying to Get to You"

I listened to an-other Roy Orbison compilation album to-day (The Essential Sun Years), which includes "Trying to Get to You."  I wrote a post about this at the beginning of the year in which I remarked upon the similarities between this song and the Beatles' "In Spite of All the Danger."

Listening to it again, I became more convinced of these similarities.  I just looked it up, and the Wikipedia article on the song corroborates this, although it says the Beatles were inspired more by Elvis' version of "Trying to Get to You" than Roy Orbison's version.

Bob Dylan's "Jokerman"

I'm listening to Bob Dylan's The Essential Bob Dylan.  Some of these later songs I don't know very well because my Dylan knowledge (sparse as it is) is mostly centered around the mid-60s albums.  But in any case, I noticed that in "Jokerman," he quotes the old standard "Fools Rush In" in the line "Fools rush in where angels fear to tread."