The Hollies' "Do the Best You Can"

After listening to the Hollies' first five albums recently, I decided to listen to the three-disc compilation 30th Anniversary Collection 1963-1993.  Even before I listened to it, I realized something about "Do the Best You Can," specifically this section:

If you leave your car
And you're not going far
Remember what time to be back
If it slips your mind
I'm sure in time you'll find
A Rita waiting in a mac

Instead of the implied "meter maid," there's just the name "Rita."  I'm pretty sure this is something of a reference to the Beatles' "Lovely Rita" from Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, specifically its recurring line "Lovely Rita, meter maid."  "Do the Best You Can" seems to assume familiarity with "Lovely Rita," and uses the name "Rita" as a short-hand for "meter maid."

I checkt the chronology, and it works out.  According to Mark Lewisohn's The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions, Sgt. Pepper was released on 1 June 1967, and according to the liner notes of 30th Anniversary Collection, "Do the Best You Can" was released over a year later.  It was the A side of singles in the U.S. and West Germany in July 1968, and the B side of "Listen to Me" in the U.K. in September 1968.

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.

The Beatles' Sunday Driving

A few months ago, I realized that the Beatles' "Day Tripper" and "Two of Us" both contain the phrase "Sunday driver" (or, as it appears in "Two of Us," "Sunday driving").  Recently, I transcribed and compared the lyrics.  There isn't much that would indicate that "Two of Us" is supposed to a sequel of sorts to "Day Tripper," but they are rather like two sides of a coin.

The lyrics of "Day Tripper" aren't super clear, but it seems to be about a relationship that the speaker/singer isn't going to continue, as the girl is flighty.  One repeated section starts with "She was a day tripper."  The third repetition includes the "Sunday driver" phrase:

She was a day tripper
Sunday driver, yeah
It took me so long
To find out
And I found out

On the other hand, the speaker/singer of "Two of Us" seems to mention only himself and his companion (each verse and chorus contains either "Two of us," "You and me," or "You and I") and their impending domestic return ("We're on our way home").  "Sunday driving" occurs in the first verse:

Two of us riding nowhere
Spending someone’s hard-earned pay
You and me Sunday driving
Not arriving
On our way back home
We’re on our way home
We’re on our way home
We’re goin’ home

"Day Tripper" is all about how there isn't a relationship, and "Two of Us" is about how there is.  Both contain "Sunday driving," but I think it's more significant that the girl in "Day Tripper" goes alone where the couple in "Two of Us" is together.

Apparently, "Day Tripper" is mostly a John Lennon song, and "Two of Us" was written entirely by Paul McCartney, but I don't know how/if that affects that common phrase.

Gene Vincent's "Wear My Ring"

Over the past two days, I listened to two discs of a compilation album of Gene Vincent.  It's his first two albums with some bonus tracks.  In any case, some of the backing vocals during "Wear My Ring" sounded pretty familiar, so I checked some things and discovered that the backing vocals in the Beatles' "In Spite of All the Danger" are comprised of the same four notes.

In "Wear My Ring," after the line "To remember when December comes in May," the backing vocals go from B to E to D# to D.  The backing vocals in "In Spite of All the Danger" use those same four notes.  There's a slight difference in that the note values in "Wear My Ring" are all the same, where "In Spite of All the Danger" stays on the E a bit longer.

The chronology and influence match up too.  According to the liner notes of Anthology 1, the pre-Beatle Quarry Men recorded "In Spite of All the Danger" in the spring or summer of 1958.  Gene Vincent's "Wear My Ring" was recorded in 1957.  Anthology 1 also contains the Beatles' version of "Ain't She Sweet," and the liner notes mention that "the Beatles usually performed this in the more mellow style of Gene Vincent and his Blue Caps' influential 1956 version."  So the Beatles held Gene Vincent in some regard, and it's chronologically possible that they based the backing vocals in "In Spite of All the Danger" on those in Vincent's "Wear My Ring."  (As a sidenote: the song was written by Bobby Darin and Don Kirshner, but that phrase doesn't appear in the backing vocals in Darin's version, which was actually released after Vincent's version, in 1958.)

I've read that "In Spite of All the Danger" bears some resemblance to Elvis' "Trying to Get to You," so this resemblance to a Gene Vincent song has some precedent.  It's like "In Spite of All the Danger" is an amalgam of the Beatles' early influences.

Simon & Garfunkel's "A Simple Desultory Philippic"

I'm listening to Simon & Garfunkel's Parsley, Sage, Rosemary, and Thyme, and I'm pretty sure that there are two bass parts in "A Simple Desultory Philippic."  There's one panned left, and other panned right with fuzz-tone.  I'm not completely sure that the right-panned one is bass, but in any case it matches the bass part pretty closely.

I haven't listened to it for awhile, but apparently "Think for Yourself" from the Beatles' Rubber Soul has two bass parts too - one regular and one with fuzz tone.  And since "A Simple Desultory Philippic" contains a reference to the Beatles ("I’ve been Rolling Stone-d and Beatle-d ‘til I’m blind"), I think the similarity is intentional.  The Bob Dylan pastiche is clearly intentional, so why not the Beatle one?

Carnival Promises

One of the albums I've been listening to every week is Emerson, Lake, and Palmer's Brain Salad Surgery.  The whole second half of the album is the Karn Evil 9 impressions.  Listening to it to-day, I revisited an old idea I had:  Karn Evil 9 does the whole carnival/circus bit much better than the Beatles' "Magical Mystery Tour" or even "Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite!"

But it wasn't until now that I really thought about why.  "Magical Mystery Tour" makes all of these promises about how great the magical mystery tour is and invites you to "roll up for the mystery tour."  But before it actually shows anything from the Magical Mystery Tour, the song ends.  "Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite!" has a similar problem in that it advertises what will happen but never actually shows it.  "For the benefit of Mr. Kite / there will be a show to-night."  The first line indicates that the show is happening later, not now.

The Karn Evil 9 impressions fulfill that promise.  You actually get to see the attractions (in a figurative sense of course) in the present.  The show is happening right now.  While ELP also make promises not unlike a carnival barker attracting an audience ("Roll up!  See the show!"), at least they deliver on their promises in the present tense:

There behind a glass is a real blade of grass
Be careful as you pass
Move along!  Move along!

And then near the end, it's clear that something has actually happened:

We would like it to be known the exhibits that were shown
Were exclusively our own.
All our own.  All our own.

Unlike "Magical Mystery Tour" and "Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite!" which both remain in future tense, the Karn Evil 9 songs have past, present, and future.  Both groups of songs deliver initial promises, but only the Karn Evil 9 impressions fulfill that promise, reflected in the verbs' changing tense.  That's why the Karn Evil 9 impressions are better; instead of merely promising something, they actually show it.

---&---

{YouTube}{Tumblr}{Bandcamp}

Studio Fame

I've been listening to the Apples in Stereo a lot lately, and in reading some of the liners notes, I was reminded that a lot of the members of the Elephant 6 collective had their start in music just with four-track machines.  They would play all of the instruments and overdub them themselves.

And that's essentially the same thing that I'm doing now.  Technology has progressed, so I use my computer instead of a four-track machine, but it's still the same do-it-yourself feeling.  Often, I think about what difficulties would arise if I tried to perform my songs live.  Many of the songs I've written have three simultaneous guitar parts, which I obviously can't play live.  So for the time being, I've pretty much abandoned all hopes of playing live.  It's not really a thing I think I would enjoy very much anyway.

And yet, just because I can't play my songs live doesn't mean that success can't be attained.  The Alan Parsons Project - while it may have more of a cult following than mainstream success - were still received well despite their lack of any kind of live show.  They were based mostly on studio performances but still attained some level of success.  But what I can't figure out is how the Alan Parsons Project started.  Who came up with the notion that a band could be successful without that touring element, and how was that marketing plan drawn up?

I may be mistaken, but I believe that the Beatles were the first band to completely shun live performances and focus solely on studio work.  But even when they were doing things only in the studio, they had at least five years of live performances behind them.  They had built up their fame with those live performances, and their studio work needed only to sustain that attention.

The Alan Parsons Project didn't have that.  They just sprung up in the studio, and they had to create a following based only on records, not on live performances.  That's what I really need to figure out how to do because I doubt I'll be doing any live performances any time soon.

---&---

{YouTube}{Tumblr}{Bandcamp}