The Moody Blues' Keys of the Kingdom

Last month I read Matthew 16:19, where Jesus tells His disciples "I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven."  This reminded me of the Moody Blues album Keys of the Kingdom, and I started wondering whether this verse had any influence on the album title.  I listened to Keys of the Kingdom a few days ago, and while I didn't find anything that connects it to this verse from Matthew, I did find a couple things to write about.

"Bless the Wings (That Bring You Back)"

The last three lines of the bridge are "The dust of many centuries / Has blown across this land / But love will not be scattered like the sand."  These are fairly similar to the bridge of "Lovely to See You" from On the Threshold of a Dream: "Tell us what you've seen in faraway forgotten lands / Where empires have turned back to sand."  There are a number of similarities here: both songs were written by Justin Hayward; both of these sections are bridges; and both rhyme "land(s)" with "sand."

A couple months ago I wrote a post about the bridge in "Lovely to See You" and postulated that it might have been influenced by Percy Bysshe Shelley's poem "Ozymandias," which has the same image of a domain erased by sand and even the same land/sand rhyme.  This same image appearing again in "Bless the Wings" (although this time with love surviving) could be coincidental, or it might be Hayward's revisiting either his older song or Shelley's poem.

"Once Is Enough"

A year or two ago I noticed that the Moody Blues reference themselves at the beginning of the second verse.  According to the lyrics printed in the liner notes:

Sometimes you're first
Sometimes you're last
Then again you're somewhere
In your "days of future passed"

Days of Future Passed is the title of the Moody Blues' second album.

Listening to the song again recently, I noticed something besides this allusion.  The first line is "Just ask me once," and it's sung by a single voice.  The second line is "Don't ask me twice," and it's sung by two voices.  In those two lines, the number of voices singing is a musical representation of the "once" and "twice."

The Moody Blues' "Lovely to See You"

A few weeks ago, the Moody Blues' "Lovely to See You" was in my head when I woke up (although, at the time, I hadn't listened to On the Threshold of the Dream [the album it's on] for about three months).  The bridge is what was in my head:

Tell us what you've seen in faraway forgotten lands
Where empires have turned back to sand

That's how it's rendered in the liner notes, although - appropriate to their having been forgotten - the word "lands" is cut off:

In any case, this image of "empires... turn[ing] back to sand" reminded me of Percy Bysshe Shelley's poem "Ozymandias."  It has the same image of a once-vast domain that has since "decay[ed]" so that only "lone and level sands" and fragments of a statue remain.

There really isn't anything else in "Lovely to See You" that seems connected to "Ozymandias," but between the same image of "empires... turn[ing] back to sand" and the land(s)/sand rhyme (which is also in "Ozymandias"), I think Shelley's poem might have influenced "Lovely to See You," if only slightly.

The Moody Blues' Days of Future Passed

Over the last two months I listened to the Moody Blues' Days of Future Passed every Thursday.  Originally, I'd intended to keep this up until the end of the year, but I got busy with other projects and reconsidered it.  In any case, I found a few things to write about.

"Evening: The Sun Set/Twilight Time"

During the bridge of "Twilight Time," there's the line "Building castles in the air."  The melody to which this is sung ascends, representing the increasing height of the castles as they're built:

I should mention that I guessed on the key, but whatever key "Twilight Time" is in does have at least two flats.  There's an Eb in the vocal melody and a Bb in the recurring piano phrase.

"The Night: Nights in White Satin"

During the line "Impassioned lovers wrestle as one" in the closing narration, there are tremolos in the strings, apparently to musically represent that "wrestl[ing]."

The Moody Blues' "Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood"

Last month, I got a CD re-issue of the Moody Blues' Days of Future Passed.  I already had the album itself (I have an older CD re-issue and even an original vinyl copy from 1967); I got this particular edition mostly for the bonus tracks, one of which is a version of "Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood" performed live on the BBC.  Shortly after I listened to this edition of the album for the first time, I learned the guitar phrase and chords for the Animals' version of "Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood" (which I've been familiar with for years).  Shortly after I learned those parts, I tried playing the guitar phrase from the Animals' version on flute (which is how it's played in the Moodies' version).  In doing so, I discovered that the Moodies' version (in A minor) is a whole step lower than the Animals' version (in B minor).

At first, I thought the key was changed just to make the guitar phrase from the Animals' version easier to play on flute*.  In the Animals' version, it's:

On guitar, that C# to D transition isn't anything special, but it's a bit difficult on flute.  The fingerings for C# and D don't have any keys in common.  Here's part of the fingering chart from the back of my flute book:

Lowering the phrase a whole step makes it a lot easier to play on flute.  Here's the notation:

(I should note that in a few instances of this phrase, Ray Thomas adds some trills, but I didn't include those in my notation.)

Here are the relevant fingerings:

All of the fingerings here have at least two keys in common.

Initially, I thought that facilitating that part on flute was the reason the Moody Blues lowered the key from the Animals' version, but as I continued to think about the song, I realized that there might have been an-other reason.  B minor has two sharps, but A minor doesn't have any accidentals.  It might be a bit arcane, but that lack of accidentals is a musical representation of the purity mentioned in the line "I'm just a soul whose intentions are good."  (There are some accidentals in the song [for example, there's a D# in the bass part during the verses and - although I think it might be more implied than outright strummed - there's an E major chord, which contains a G#], but there aren't any accidentals "built-in" as it were in A minor.)  That extra-musical meaning might just be a coincidence and moving the song to A minor was just for a practical purpose, but it's still a valid exegesis.

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*Because the liner notes specifically mention the Animals' version and because the two versions of the song have roughly the same structure, I'm assuming that the Moodies based their version off the Animals' version.  There are some significant differences in the lyrics though.

"It Ain't Necessarily So"

Over the last two months, I listened to three different versions of Gershwin's "It Ain't Necessarily So" from Porgy & Bess for my Collection Audit project.  A couple days after I listened to the Moody Blues' version (on The Magnificent Moodies), I realized something about the song; however, one of the sections I realized something about isn't in the Moody Blues' version.  So when I listened to Brian Wilson's version (on the Reimagines Gershwin album) about a month ago, I was paying a bit more attention than I would have otherwise.

Some syllables in specific words are omitted so that words that wouldn't rhyme ordinarily do rhyme here.  Liable is shortened to li'ble in order to rhyme with Bible in the lines "The things that you're li'ble / To read in the Bible," and possible is shortened to poss'ble in order to rhyme with Gospel in the line "I take that Gospel whenever it's poss'ble" in the bridge.  The words that rhyme with Bible and Gospel are truncated, and doing that demonstrates exactly what the speaker/singer plainly says in the song: he takes the Bible "with a grain of salt."  In the same way those words lack some syllables, the speaker/singer lacks complete faith.

In looking into this, I discovered that - of the four recordings I have of "It Ain't Necessarily So" - only one is complete: that by the Bethlehem Orchestra (apparently their 1956 recording of Porgy & Bess was only the second complete recording of the opera).  Both Bobby Darin's version and the Moody Blues' version omit the the bridge ("To get into Heaven, don't snap for a seven..."), and Brian Wilson's version omits the verse about Methuselah.  For what it's worth, in addition to the bridge, Darin's version also omits the verse about Moses, and the Moody Blues' version also omits the verse about Methuselah.

Looking at what version has what verses, it occurs to me that none of them have the verses in the order in which the people named in them are in the Bible.  In chronological order, it would be Methuselah, Moses, David, and then Jonah.  Except for the Moody Blues, who switch Jonah and Moses, the order is David, Jonah, Moses, and the Methuselah.

The Tremeloes' "Hello World"

Last month, I wrote about a riff that's in both the Moody Blues' "So Deep within You" from On the Threshold of a Dream and Rod Argent and Chris White's "Telescope (Mr. Galileo)," which was recorded after the Zombies broke up.  At the time, I'd thought I knew an-other song that had a similar-sounding part, but I couldn't identify it.  Recently though, I listened to an anthology of the Tremeloes, and I discovered that I'd been thinking of the beginning of "Hello World."

The phrase in "Hello World" is longer than those in "So Deep within You" and "Telescope (Mr. Galileo)," and it repeats more frequently.  The song starts with it played four and a half times.

In "Hello World," it starts on a different pitch relative to the key than in "So Deep within You" and "Telescope (Mr. Galileo)," but the intervals are the same in all three (and the pitches of the first five notes are the same between "Hello World" and "So Deep within You").

(click the image to enlarge it)

(standard disclaimer that the notation may be wrong because I did it myself)

Unlike the other two, the notes in that phrase in "Hello World" are picked individually where the second of each pair of eighth notes are hammer-ons in "So Deep within You" and "Telescope (Mr. Galileo)."

According to the liner notes in my Tremeloes collection (Silence Is Golden: The Very Best of the Tremeloes), "Hello World" was issued as a single in 1969.  On the Threshold of a Dream - the album on which "So Deep within You" appears - was also released in 1969 (specifically, April).  Apparently "So Deep within You" was the B-side to the "Never Comes the Day" single, released the same month.  According to the liner notes for Into the Afterlife, "Telescope (Mr. Galileo)" was recorded in March 1968, although it wasn't released until Into the Afterlife in 2007.

So I have even fewer answers than I did when I wrote my original post.  Now I have three songs that were all recorded and/or released within about a year and that all share the same phrase.

The Moody Blues' "So Deep within You"

When I listened to the Moody Blues' On the Threshold of a Dream last month, the recurring guitar riff in "So Deep within You" caught my ear.  I figured out how to play it and confirmed that - save for the key - it's identical to a part in "Telescope (Mr. Galileo)," which was recorded by Chris White and Rod Argent shortly after the Zombies broke up.  (There are two versions of "Telescope (Mr. Galileo)" on Into the Afterlife, but this riff is present only in the second version [track #18], the one with fuzz guitar.)

(click the image to enlarge it)
(standard disclaimer that since I did the notation myself, it might be wrong)

I didn't know how to indicate it in the notation, but the second note in each pair of eighth notes is a hammer-on.

In the Zombie Heaven liner notes, Paul Atkinson (the Zombies' guitarist) says that the Zombies were friends with the Moody Blues and used to go to their parties (p. 31).  While that provides evidence that the Zombies and the Moody Blues knew each other, it's slightly misleading as far as guitar players, since Atkinson didn't play on "Telescope (Mr. Galileo)."  The Into the Afterlife liner notes explain that it was Mac McLeod.

The chronology is also troublesome.  The Into the Afterlife liner notes say that the session at which "Telescope (Mr. Galileo)" was recorded was in March 1968.  On the Threshold of a Dream came out in April 1969.  But "Telescope (Mr. Galileo)" wasn't released until the Into the Afterlife album in 2007.  So while it would appear that there was some mixing of influences since the songs originated only about a year apart, since the riffs are so similar (with the same accidental even), and since the bands knew each other, it doesn't seem possible that the Moody Blues could have known "Telescope (Mr. Galileo)."  Apparently, the similarity is just a coincidence.

The Moody Blues' "Legend of a Mind"

Two months ago, I listened to the Moody Blues' In Search of the Lost Chord and started wondering about one of the musical phrases in "Legend of a Mind."  I'd thought that the "Timothy Leary"s at the ends of the verses had a melody that was similar to that of the "Pictures of Lily" in the Who's "Pictures of Lily."  Both lyrical phrases are five syllables, and both musical phrases are composed of only two notes, but that's where the similarities end.  There's no real resemblance between them.

However, I recently looked into "Legend of a Mind," and I found some other interesting things:

I'm fairly certain that the second (and also the third) verse contains the lines "Takes you trips ‘round the bay / Brings you back the same day" (I might be wrong in my transcription).  There's parallelism between "Takes you trips" and "Brings you back."  Both are alliterative, and the word order is similar ("Takes you trips" / "Brings you back" - [verb][direct object][word that alliterates the verb]).

More interesting, though, is the section half-way through, where the length of the lines increases:

Along the coast, you’ll hear the most about a light they say that shines so clear
So raise your glass, we’ll drink a toast to the little man who sells you thrills along the pier
He’ll take you up, he’ll bring you down, he’ll plant your feet back firmly on the ground
He flies so high, he swoops so low, he knows exactly which way he’s gonna go

The rhyme scheme here is the interesting thing.  The first two couplets rhyme with each other ("clear"/"pier"), but the last two couplets seem like they're each two couplets re-arranged into a single line.  So they could be re-rendered as

He’ll take you up, he’ll bring you down
He’ll plant your feet back firmly on the ground
He flies so high, he swoops so low
He knows exactly which way he’s gonna go

Later in the song, they do appear almost in that form:

He’ll take you up, he’ll bring you down
He’ll plant your feet back on the ground
He’ll fly so high, he’ll swoop so low
Timothy Leary

But in that lengthened verse, the internal rhyme is key.  "Coast," "most," and "toast" are irrelevant to the rhyming of the first two couplets, but they act as an indication of what the rhyme scheme will become.  The words that are in the same position in the line as "most" and "toast" (the words that the eighth syllable falls on: "down" and "low") will become important in that new rhyme scheme:

Along the coast, you’ll hear the most about a light they say that shines so clear
So raise your glass, we’ll drink a toast to the little man who sells you thrills along the pier
He’ll take you up, he’ll bring you down, he’ll plant your feet back firmly on the ground
He flies so high, he swoops so low, he knows exactly which way he’s gonna go

That internal rhyme acts as a sort of structural foreshadowing.

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."

Immersion

Over the past few years, I've noticed a lot of connexions between learning different instruments and learning foreign languages.  In general, each instrument or language is the same; they produce particular notes or particular meanings.  But each instrument and language does so in a particular way.

I'm sort of interested to see if immersion in particular music styles will have the same effect as immersion in a particular foreign language.  I've experienced this in more haphazard ways; during the past two summers, I went on a skiffle kick and ended up writing a skiffle song for 50/90.  But I haven't done it in a consistent way.

I've been listening to two albums every week this year - the Zombies' Odessey and Oracle and the Moody Blues' Days of Future Passed.  But I think I'm going to add more in the same sort of style and have an album (or an album's equivalent) for each day of the week.  And since one of my musical projects for 2013 is to increase the complexity of my arrangements, that's the central element I'm going to focus on.

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Sunday - Brian Wilson's SMiLE

I was really behind the crowd in discovering SMiLE.  Rumours about it have abounded since recording started on it in 1966; I didn't hear about it until the box set of those recordings was released in 2011.  I found the 2004 version at Half Price Books back in January, and I think I've listened to it every week or every other week since then.  I sort of think that SMiLE has unfairly eclipsed Pet Sounds for me just because I've listened to it so much more.  Brian Wilson's productions are always interesting because they have complex instrumentation and complex vocal parts.

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Monday - The Zombies' Odessey and Oracle

Naturally, I'm biased for this one.  The Zombies have been my favourite band since the end of 2008.  I heard their version of "You've Really Got a Hold on Me/Bring It on Home to Me" back to back with the Beatles' version of "You Really Got a Hold on Me," and there was no contest.  Before I looked at the artist, I thought the Zombies' version was a live recording of the Beatles because their version is just so much more energetic than the Beatles' plodding.

Then I started going through their back catalogue, which consists basically of two albums.  And since Odessey and Oracle is the one that they had the most control over, it's the better of the two.  They have a lot of interesting harmonies and a fair amount of mellotron overdubs.

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Tuesday - The Moody Blues' Days of Future Passed

I had the idea to listen to this every Tuesday just because it's set on a Tuesday ("Tuesday Afternoon") and 2013 started on a Tuesday.  But shortly before the year began, I decided to add Odessey and Oracle, and the two complement each other well, mostly because they both have a lot of mellotron parts.

Days of Future Passed is also significant in that it combines more traditionally symphonic elements with the rock band paradigm, which - granted - the Moody Blues are probably not the best example of, since they included keyboard instruments and flute.

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Wednesday - Emerson, Lake, and Palmer's Brain Salad Surgery

ELP are usually pretty broad in their scope, and I had to decide between this and Tarkus.  I think I like some of the individual songs on Tarkus better, but the songs on Brain Salad Surgery seem more consistent.  Also, the total running time of the different impressions of Karn Evil 9 is longer than the Tarkus medley.  Not that length is a definitive indicator of quality, but since my goal is elaborate and consistent production, it's a useful metric in this instance.

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Thursday - Delicious Pastries' Pretty Please and Will Dixon's This Upward Curve

Both of these are different from the other albums on the list because A) they're both shorter and B) they're indie releases.  Pretty Please has some clear influence from the sort of baroque pop that I'm fond of, and it includes string arrangements along with electric guitar.  And that bending of traditional instrumental corpora is a thing that I'm interested in.  This Upward Curve also has that to some degree; the songs are more folky, but the instrumentation is more rock-based.  It's like Simon & Garfunkel's electrified version of "The Sound of Silence" turned up a few degrees.

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Friday - Argent's Nexus

Argent is becoming my new favourite band.  It's the same kind of direction that the Zombies had (both were bands with Rod Argent, so that similarity is not a surprise), but the themes are beyond simple love songs and the musical scope is larger.  On All Together Now, there's about six minutes of just Rod Argent's organ playing.

I had to choose between Ring of Hands and Nexus (those two are my favourites), and I chose Nexus mostly because of the instrumental songs based on Kohoutek ("The Coming of Kohoutek," "Once around the Sun," and "Infinite Wander").  Lately, all of the songs I've been writing have been instrumental, and for the time being, I don't see that changing much (I have an-other post about this in the works), so I felt that listening to instrumental rock songs would have a greater influence.

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Saturday - The Alan Parsons Project's Eye in the Sky

The only reason I started listening to the Alan Parsons Project is that Colin Blunstone from the Zombies sang on a few of their tracks, including "Old and Wise" from Eye in the Sky.  The production on Eye in the Sky is perhaps less aggressive than that on Brain Salad Surgery or Nexus, but it's still complex - the instrumental part in "Silence and I" in particular.

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So I'm going to listen to these eight albums on these seven days of the week starting this week and continuing until the end of the year.  Hopefully some of the complexity of the arrangements and/or the production will rub off on me.

If you'd like, you can see exactly what I'm listening to by following my music journal blog.

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Argent August and Other Musical Prescriptions

One of my minor musical projects for 2013 is to listen to the Zombies' Odessey and Oracle every Monday and the Moody Blues' Days of Future Passed every Tuesday.  It started out as just Days of Future Passed on Tuesdays because 2013 began on a Tuesday and that's the album that contains "Tuesday Afternoon," but soon after, I added Odessey and Oracle just because I like it so much.

So far, I've been able to keep up with it (excepting one Monday when I was terribly ill).

For February Album Writing Month, I've excluded all string instruments and written all of my songs with at least some keyboard element.  In order to indoctrinate myself to that particular paradigm, I've listened to Rod Argent's Classically Speaking everyday for the past three weeks or so.

Because I've been listening to these albums so much, I've been able to pick out things that I hadn't heard before.  For instance, I hadn't realised how prominent the sound of the mellotron is for Days of Future Passed or Odessey and Oracle.  And I like having that; it's like I'm rediscovering music that I've known for years.

Last night, I realised that I have five Argent albums (Argent, Ring of Hands, All Together Now, In Deep, and Nexus) and that it would be interesting to listen to one of those for each day of the week.  I later expanded this to include the live album from 1974 and the greatest hits album I have, which includes different versions of the songs, such as the edited singles.  That makes seven albums - one for each day of the week.  So I decided to make this a project I'll do in August - listen to one Argent album everyday.

But then the more I got thinking about this, the more I realised that other groups could fit into this paradigm too (though they aren't as alliterative).  I have five Colin Blunstone albums (One Year, Ennismore, Journey, The Ghost of You and Me, and On the Air Tonight) - there's an album for every weekday of July.  And for June, I could have two albums by the Zombies.  One set of the original albums (Begin Here, Odessey and Oracle, New World, As Far As I Can See, and Breathe Out, Breathe In) and one set that includes the four discs of Zombie Heaven and Into the Afterlife, which includes some more Zombies songs and transitional tracks from the Zombies to Colin Blunstone and Argent.

I'll have to do some more planning to figure out specifically what albums I have to listen to on what days, but I think this is a good idea and it's certainly a thing I'm going to try to do.  Not only will it allow me to become more familiar with the artists that I enjoy, but it was also further cement them into my brain so that - with any luck - the songs I write will more closely resemble the songs that influenced them.

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