Unit 4+2's Singles As & Bs

For Christmas a few years ago, I got Unit 4+2's Singles As & Bs.  At the time, I knew only "Concrete and Clay" (I knew "You Ain't Going Nowhere" via the Byrds' version, but I hadn't heard Unit 4+2's), but the album quickly became one of my favorites over the course of the following year.  I started drafting a post about a year after I got it, but then I sort of forgot about it (the post).  I figured I'd finally finish it.

"When I Fall in Love"

The "fall in love" in the titular line is sung to a descending phrase (E D# B, I think), so there's a musical representation of the falling, even if it is only metaphorical.

When I originally transcribed the song, I rendered a pair of lines as "And too many moonlight kisses / Seem to cool in the warmth of the sun," but when I looked over my transcription a few weeks later, I realized that it could also be "And too many moonlight kisses / Seem too cool in the warmth of the sun."  In the first rendering, "to cool" is an infinitive; in the second, "too cool" is an adverb/adjective combination modifying the "kisses" from the previous line.  That second rendering is probably what's intended because then there's a parallelism between "too many" and "too cool."  Still, it's one of those great features that's ambiguous when heard but has to fall one way or the other when it's written out.

I also noticed something about the first two lines of the last verse:  "And the moment I can feel that / You feel that way too."  There's a caesura after the "that" in the second line, so even though the two "that"s function differently (the first is an indicator of an indirect statement and the second is a demonstrative adjective modifying "way"), because of that pause there, it briefly sounds like there's a parallelism between "I can feel that" and "You feel that."  There's a pairing there, which is appropriate for a song about falling in love.

"You've Got to Be Cruel to Be Kind"

The titular phrase - slightly altered - comes from Shakespeare's Hamlet.  In Act 3, Scene 4, Hamlet says, "I must be cruel, only to be kind" (III.iv.199).  The song doesn't really have anything to do with Hamlet, but that's the origin of that phrase.

"I Won't Let You Down"

The line "Hurtin' in my body and the sweat on my brow now" in the first and third verse (it's the same verse repeated) references Genesis 3, if only indirectly.  Because of the fall into sin, Adam has to work in the fields in order to eat, and in verse nineteen, God tells him, "By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food."  It's basically the same as the phrase in the song, but since it's become a common phrase, I don't think it's really intended as a Biblical reference.

"3.30"

One of the verses has the lines "And again I try / Not to reason why."  Like the allusions I found in the other songs, I don't think this is intended as anything more than just the borrowing of a phrase, this time from Tennyson's "The Charge of the Light Brigade."  In the third stanza, one of the lines is "Theirs not to reason why."

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For my Collection Audit project, I've also written about "I Will" (which quotes a Bach violin partita) and "A Place to Go" (which has a lyrically significant key change).

Badfinger's "Storm in a Teacup"

This afternoon, I listened to Badfinger's Magic Christian Music, and I noticed something about "Storm in a Teacup," which is included as a bonus track on the CD re-issue I have.

The first verse is:

Well, you just slammed the door in my face
Well, that ain't any disgrace
It's a natural thing to do
Because true love never runs smooth

That last line ("true love never runs smooth") is a near quote of a line from Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream.  In the first act, Lysander says, "The course of true love never did run smooth" (I.i.134).

Mel Tormé's Jazz and Velvet Disc 3 - Blue Moon

About three weeks ago, I listened to a four-CD set of Mel Tormé titled Jazz and Velvet.  There were a couple things I'd previously noticed about a couple songs on disc three (subtitled Blue Moon), and I thought I'd write about them this week.

"Pythagoras, How You Stagger Us"

The first two lines of this song are "Friends, Romans, and fellow students / Gather 'round and little to [a] little math,"  I might not have the end of that second line right, but in any case, it's a reference to the first line of Mark Antony's speech in Shakespeare's Julius Caesar: "Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears" (III.ii.73).

If I understand the liner notes correctly, this was a song from Tormé's radio show, which had a collegiate setting (an-other song on the disc is "Dear Old Fairmont"), so along with the mathematics that are integral to the song, literature and history are also touched on via that allusion.

"The French Lesson"

This is probably pretty obvious, but there are some quotations of "La Marseillaise" here.  There are a few instrumental quotations throughout, and at the end, Yvonne sings the first line: "Allons enfants de la Patrie."  Since the song is about learning French and "La Marseillaise" is the French national anthem, it makes a lot of sense.

People/Candles

I've finally started doing the idea I had back in February.  Namely, listening to all of my Argent albums every week in August (also, alliteration).  However, since I decided to do that, I bought Circus.  It had worked out perfectly:  seven albums for seven days of the week.  Now I have eight albums that I have to squeeze into seven days.  So I've decided to listen to Greatest: The Singles Collection and Encore on Sunday and then listen to the other albums on the rest of the days of the week, going chronologically:

• Monday:  Argent
• Tuesday:  Ring of Hands
• Wednesday:  All Together Now
• Thursday:  In Deep
• Friday:  Nexus
• Saturday:  Circus

So because to-day is Thursday, I listened to In Deep to-day.  And I realised a few things:

I've heard "God Gave Rock and Roll to You" dozens of times, but until to-day, I had never been able to understand what Rod Argent sings at about 3:45.  It's "To every boy he gave a song to be sung."

I'm pretty sure that Rod Argent musically quotes some classical piano piece in "Be Glad."  I'm fairly certain that it's something he later recorded for Classically Speaking, but I have yet to listen to both albums back to back and figure out which one it is.

I revisited an earlier idea I had about "Candles on the River" and figured out something interesting.  According to Bob Henrit's comments on the LP sleeve, "Candles on the River," while billed to "Argent/White," is mostly a Chris White song.  And the "candles" part reminded me of "Brief Candles" from the Zombies' Odessey and Oracle, which Chris White also wrote.  He re-uses the metaphor of people as candles.  But then I remembered that that wasn't his original idea; he took it from Aldous Huxley's collection of short stories titled Brief Candles.  And Huxley took "brief candle" from Shakespeare's Macbeth.  But I realised that Shakespeare didn't really come up with the metaphor of people as candles either.  It's in Isaiah 42:  "Behold my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen, in whom my soul delights; I have put my Spirit upon him; he will bring forth justice to the nations.  He will not cry aloud or lift up his voice, or make it heard in the street; a bruised reed he will not break, and a faintly burning wick he will not quench." (Emphasis added.)

Which has a lot of interesting connections.  Even though it doesn't appear that Chris White was familiar with the "brief candles" line in Macbeth, the Zombies did list Shakespeare as an influence.  There's a quote from The Tempest in the original liner notes to Odessey and Oracle.  Similarly, while Argent (the band) may not have recognized the Biblical reference that the people/candles metaphor has, there are religious influences in their work.  There's the musical quotation of the Latin hymn "Dies Irae" in "The Coming of Kohoutek" from Nexus.  In the version of "Hold Your Head Up" on Encore, Rod Argent includes part of "God of Grace and God of Glory" in his solo.  And there are also religious connections (or at least hints to them) in "God Gave Rock and Roll to You," "Gonna Meet My Maker," "Music from the Spheres," and "Rejoice."

So even though it doesn't appear that these bands realized where some of their references came from, the references still fit within the context of the band's past work and acknowledged influences.

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