The Moody Blues' "Ride My See-Saw" and "The Voice"

Last month, I realized that two Moody Blues songs have rather similar lines.  There's "School talk one and one is two / But by now that answer just ain’t true" from "Ride My See-Saw" and "Won’t you take me back to school / I need to learn the golden rule" from "The Voice."  Both deal with almost elementary education (simple addition and the golden rule), but - interestingly - the songs are by different writers.  "Ride My See-Saw" is by John Lodge, and "The Voice" by Justin Hayward.  I'm not sure if there's really anything else comparable between the two songs, but those similar lines at least illustrate the consistency of the Moody Blues' writing, especially since "Ride My See-Saw" is from In Search of the Lost Chord from 1968 and "The Voice" is from Long Distance Voyager from 1981.

Incidentally, while transcribing the lyrics to "The Voice" (and then checking them against the ones in the CD booklet once I remembered that they were printed in the liner notes), I found two instances of structural parallelism: "Make a promise, take a vow" at the beginning of the third verse and "With your arms around the future / And your back up against the past" - the last lines of the second bridge.

It also occurred to me that the last two lines of the first bridge ("Can you hear the spirit calling / As it’s carried across the waves") are probably a reference to the second half of Genesis 1:2 - "The earth was without form and voice, and darkness was over the face of the deep.  And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters."

The Kinks' "Get Back in Line"

For Christmas, I got a bunch of the early Kinks albums, and after listening to them, I listened to the other Kinks albums I had.  Even before I got around to listening to Lola vs. the Powerman & the Money-Go-Round, Pt. 1, I started thinking about "Get Back in Line."  In particular the line "He's the man who decides if I live or I die, if I starve or I eat."

The order of the last part of that line is interesting - "if I live or I die, if I starve or I eat."  In the first pair, the optimistic option (living) is first, but in the second pair, it's second (eating).  And it's reversed for the other pair - the negative outcome is second in the first pair (dying), and first in the second pair (starving).

I think that shift in the order is a subtle indication of the unpredictability of the union man; neither is consistent.

Monsters University Soundtrack

I got the soundtrack to Monsters University for Christmas, and when I first listened to it, I found a phrase in "Did You Do This?" that sounded very familiar.  I eventually placed it; it's from the soundtrack to A Bug's Life, specifically "A Bug's Life Suite."

In "A Bug's Life Suite," that phrase is in the flutes at the beginning, and - with a slightly different rhythm - it's also present at ~1:00.  The brass phrase at the very beginning of "Did You Do This?" starts out the same, although it differs near the end (click on the image to enlarge it):

[I should note here that I did the notation myself, so it's likely that I might have some of the note values wrong.  I also have suspicions that the phrase from "A Bug's Life Suite" actually begins on a downbeat.  I'm fairly certain of the pitches though.]

Before writing this post, I listened to both soundtracks again (to confirm the track titles), and I found an-other similar phrase:

[Of course, the same disclaimer as above applies to this too.]

The menacing figure in the strings in "Hopper and His Gang" from A Bug's Life appears (again in the strings) in "Field Trip" from Monsters University.

Randy Newman composed the scores for both A Bug's Life and Monsters University, so it's not a huge surprise that there are similar phrases.  Pixar is well-known for hiding visual references to their films in other films, so I'm wondering if these are instances of Newman's doing the same thing in his scores or even if these phrases in the score indicate a corresponding visual reference in the film.

The Steve Miller Band's "The Joker"

A few months ago, I listened to the only Steve Miller Band album I have - Greatest Hits 1974-1978.  A line in "The Joker" sounded familiar to me:  "I really love your peaches; wanna shake your tree."  It took me months to actually place it, but I'm fairly certain that it comes from Jerry Lee Lewis' version of Carl Perkins' "Matchbox."

I listened to and transcribed Carl Perkins' version (from 1956), but I didn't find that phrase in it.  However, it is in Lewis' (from 1958):

Well, if you don’t like my peaches, honey, please don’t shake my tree
If you don’t like Jerry’s peaches, don’t pull around on his tree

Incidentally, it's also in the Beatles' version (from 1964):

Well, if you don't want my peaches, honey, please don't shake my tree
If you don't want Ringo's peaches, honey, please don't mess around my tree

I don't know much about the Steve Miller Band (after all, I have only one album by them), but that phrase in "The Joker" is so similar to that in "Matchbox" that I don't think it's just a coincidence.

Simon & Garfunkel's "Go Tell It on the Mountain"

During the last six weeks of 2014, I listened to Simon & Garfunkel's Wednesday Morning, 3 AM every Wednesday.  The album includes "Go Tell It on the Mountain," and since I was listening to this during Christmastime and heard "Go Tell It on the Mountain" in church, I started comparing the two versions.  According to the liner notes in Wednesday Morning, 3 AM, Simon & Garfunkel arranged their own version, and according to my hymnal (The Lutheran Service Book), the other version of "Go Tell It on the Mountain" with which I'm familiar was arranged by Hugh Porter.

The part that I noticed specifically is the music that accompanies the word "everywhere" in the lines "Go tell it on the mountain / Over the hills and everywhere."  I think the Simon & Garfunkel version treats this much better in relation to the text.

As far as I can tell, this is the music for everywhere, given as the individual parts and together:

There are two things here that I think are significant as far as the text.  First, Paul Simon's part sort of looks like the titular mountain.  Second, the parts are moving in opposite directions.  Garfunkel's moves down and then ascends; Simon's rises and then falls.  So, between the last two notes, there's an expansion in the parts, which helps to reflect the lyric - "Go tell it on the mountain / Over the hills and everywhere."  Garfunkel goes to the higher registers, and Simon to the lower.

The notation for the music as it appears in both Lutheran Worship and The Lutheran Service Book looks like this:

To some degree, this too reflects "Go tell it on the mountain / Over the hills and everywhere."  The first four notes could be seen as a sort of gesticulation.  It's the same sort of motion a farmer would make in casting seeds out into his field.  But I think Simon & Garfunkel's version is superior in mirroring the text to the music.  The shape of their phrase reflects the mountain itself, and the convergence and expansion of the harmony illustrates the telling mentioned in the title.

Additionally, the phrase in Porter's arrangement (in G major) ends on a G, so there's a feeling of completion.  But if the invocation is to "tell it... everywhere," it seems as if that phrase shouldn't resolve so soon.  Simon & Garfunkel's (which I'm pretty sure is in F major), ends that phrase with a C and an E.  There isn't any resolution there, implying that the telling still continues.