"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 Searchers' "Sugar and Spice"

A couple days ago, the riff from the Searchers' "Sugar and Spice" popped into my head, and I realized that the notes are just quarter notes and eighth notes, so with my limited notation skills, this was a part I could notate.  My notate-a-part-every-week project kind of fell on its face, but I think I'll still do it occasionally.

I should mention that I notated this an octave lower than it's played (otherwise, there would have been ledger lines all over the place):

(click the image to view a larger size)

The chords are very simple too.  Under the riff and the verses, the progression is |: C major / G major / F major / G major :|.  The choruses alternate between that and the same progression where an A minor is substituted for the first G major, so:

C major / G major / F major / G major
C major / A minor / F major / G major
C major / G major / F major / G major
C major / A minor / F major / G major

At the end of the song, the |: C major / G major / F major / G major :| progression resolves to C major, and after the riff I have notated above, there's a shorter version, ending with G and C notes:

(click the image to view a larger size)

Stealers Wheel's "Stuck in the Middle with You"

A couple months ago, I happened to hear Stealers Wheel's "Stuck in the Middle with You" on the radio, and I thought I noticed something.  I listened to it recently for my Collection Audit project, and I confirmed what I thought I heard back then.  Every occurrence of the titular "stuck in the middle with you" line has a vocal harmony part.  There are two voices there to musically represent both the singer/speaker and the "you" he's stuck with.

Manufactured Monkees

Last year I started four projects in which my aim is to try to learn every part to every song by a particular band (with some stipulations).  I'd already been doing this with the Zombies since 2012, and while I knew that actually learning every part to every song is next to impossible, my experience with the Zombies' music showed me that even learning a few parts gave me a new appreciation of the music.  As I learned more parts, I started analyzing things from a musicological point of view, which gave me a deeper understanding of the songs.  So while the end goal of each of these projects is probably unattainable, it's still an enlightening journey.

I knew the Monkees started releasing records and broadcasting television episodes in 1966 (fifty years ago), so on 1 January, I started reading Andrew Sandoval's The Monkees: The Day-by-Day Story of the 60s TV Pop Sensation, and I planned (and still plan) to watch each episode on the 50th anniversary of its original broadcast and listen to each album on the 50th anniversary of its release (although for some album, Sandoval provides only the months they were released, not the exact days).

Between reading the book and listening to some of the albums for my Collection Audit project, I experienced a recrudescence in my interest in the Monkees.  I first got interested in them in about 2008, when I saw re-runs of the television series (the first episode I saw was actually the second episode of the series, which was a pretty good place to start).  Seeing Peter Tork playing bass on television was one of my main motivations to be a musician rather than just someone who listens to music (however, at the time, it was easier to get a guitar; I didn't get a bass until the end of 2010).  Even now, I still wear my belt bucket one belt loop over, just like he did (apparently to avoid scratching the back of his bass).

So reading about the Monkees and listening to their music sparked this renewed interest, and I found myself figuring out a few parts to their songs (the guitar part to the demo of "She'll Be There" [because it sounded brilliant], the bass part to "Sweet Young Thing" [because it sounded easy], and most of the parts to "She" [because it sounded interesting]).  After getting the chords to a couple more songs, I realized that I'd sort of stumbled into doing yet an-other of my cover projects.  The only purpose this post serves is to announce that I'm officially adding the Monkees to my roster of bands whose entire catalogue I'm trying to learn.  However, I'm going to restrict myself to the original albums by the quartet (even of those, I have only the first four and the soundtrack to Head).

Once I had the idea to do this, I had to come up with a name for the project.  I eventually decided on Manufactured Monkees.  Most of the inspiration behind this is a stanza in "Ditty Diego" – "You say we're manufactured / To that we all agree / So make your choice, and we'll rejoice / In never being free."  However, since I'm also interested in languages, I liked the etymological reference to hands in manufactured.  The "manu-" part comes from manus, the Latin word for hand, so there's something of a very subtle allusion to "magic fingers," which is in "Papa Gene's Blues" ("Play, magic fingers!") and which is Micky's moniker in the episode "Monkees on the Wheel" (which is one of my favorite episodes).  And also, obviously, hands are important in playing instruments.

Like my other cover projects, I've started a separate tumblr for this, and I'll be uploading rough (and possibly erroneous) versions of what I know of the songs.  Like I mentioned earlier, I'm doing my Collection Audit project this year (where I attempt to listen to the entirety of my music collection), so I don't have as much time to devote to this project as I would otherwise, but at least this is a start.

Buddy Holly's "Fool's Paradise"

I think I underestimated how much work writing out notation every week would be, and I'm going to have to adjust my schedule.  This week, in lieu of notation, I have the chords to Buddy Holly's "Fool's Paradise," which I wrote about recently for my Collection Audit project.

Verses:
F major / Bb major / C major
F major / C major / F major

Bridge:
Bb major / F major / G major / C major

For what it's worth, Don McLean's version is a half-step lower.

The Spencer Davis Group's "Gimme Some Lovin'"

The notation I have this week (which I was going to do last week but completely forgot about until it was late at night) is a little different from what I've done previously.  Because most of the bass part for the Spencer Davis Group's "Gimme Some Lovin'" is just the same measure of G notes (with the last note in a different octave) over and over again, I didn't write out the notation in full.  I have one line of that repeated measure; I skipped the second line (although I still have bar lines because I insert bar lines into a couple pages of blank notation at once and then use them for various projects later); and the third line is the only different part (for "And I'm so glad we made it..."), which transitions back to that repeated measure with a glissando.  That same measure of G notes is repeated to the fade out at the end.

(click here for a larger image)

Because that measure with G notes is so prevalent, I think the song is in G major, although there are also Bb and Eb notes, so I'm not positive on the key.  I should mention that I figured this out about four years ago, and I'm assuming that what I have is accurate.

The Lumineers' "Stubborn Love"

Elie Wiesel died a few weeks ago, and a day or two afterwards, I happened to see one of his quotes, which - in full - runs:  "The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference.  The opposite of beauty is not ugliness, it's indifference.  The opposite of faith is not heresy, it's indifference.  And the opposite of life is not death, but indifference between life and death."  The first line of this sounded familiar to me because it's also a line in the Lumineers' "Stubborn Love."  In the second verse, it appears as "The opposite of love's indifference."  I haven't seen anything that confirms this influence, but the lines are so similar that it seems unlikely to be just coincidence.

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.

The Dave Clark Five's "Don't Let Me Down"

About a month ago, I listened to The History of the Dave Clark Five, and I became interested in the bass part of "Don't Let Me Down."  It follows a paradigm that - with some variation - I've noticed in a lot of rock and roll songs from the '50s with a I IV I V IV I progression.  For the first three chords (I IV I), the bass part arpeggiates the chords with a root, third, fifth, sixth, minor seventh figure (which is then played backwards to return to the root).  For the next two (V and IV), there are arpeggiations of pure triads (root, third, fifth, third), and then the last chord (I) goes back to the root, third, fifth, sixth, minor seventh figure.

It wasn't until notating "Don't Let Me Down" that I realized that it diverges from that at one point.  Near the end of the piano solo there's a D (the fifth scale degree) instead of an F natural (the minor seventh scale degree).  In the notation, this is the first note of the fourth measure in the fourth line.

(click here for a larger image)

I have a few extra comments (I can't really say "notes") about my notation.  First, I can't for the life of me draw a good-looking quarter rest.  Second, I think there may be some glissandi that I didn't indicate.  I wasn't sure if what I was hearing was part of the bass line or the saxophone, but since I couldn't figure out a good way of playing those glissandi, I didn't include them in my notation.

The Kinks' "Something Better Beginning"

For my Collection Audit project, I recently listened to the deluxe edition of Kinda Kinks.  The opening guitar figure in "Something Better Beginning" (which also recurs later in the song) sounded interesting to me, so I figured out how to play it.  I was wondering if it involved an interval of a fourth or a fifth, but it's actually just a second.  Simplified, it's a modulation from D major to Dsus2.  Specifically, it's this:

E|---2-0-
B|---3---
G|---2---
D|---0---
A|-0-----
E|-------

Once I had that, I started figuring out the rest of the chords and eventually got the whole chord progression:

|: D major / Dsus2 :|
D major / C major
E minor / A major / E minor / A major / D major

D major / D7 / G major
G major / D major / A major / G major
G major / D major / A major
|: D major / Dsus2 :|

Bb major / D major / Bb major / D major
F major / C major / Bb major / A major

D major / C major
E minor / A major / E minor / A major / D major

D major / D7 / G major
G major / D major / A major / G major
G major / D major / A major
|: D major / Dsus2 :|

Where I have "|: D major / Dsus2 :|" in the chord progression, it's more accurately the tab I have written out above.

Once I had the chords, I started thinking about the lyrics, and I found a couple instances where the tonality of the chords emphasizes the lyrics.

While the song's in D major (two sharps), the bridge is (with some accidentals) in F major (one flat).  The first two lines in the bridge mirror this unexpected tonality with unexpected love:  "I never thought I'd love like this until I met you / I found something I thought I'd never have."

The song ends with that D major to Dsus2 transition, so it doesn't really resolve.  Similarly, the singer/speaker's question ("Is this the start of another heartbreaker / Or something better beginning") is left open.  There isn't an answer.

The Searchers' "What Have They Done to the Rain"

When I started this project of posting notation every week, I failed to realize that 50/90 takes up a lot of time.  Because of 50/90 (and other projects) I don't have notation this week.  Instead, here are the chords to the Searchers' "What Have They Done to the Rain."  I was really into the Searchers in college (even though the only album I had was a two-disc compilation, which is still the only Searchers album I have), and I figured out how to play a lot of their songs.  At one point, I knew more songs by the Searchers than any other band, so for the next few weeks, if I don't have notation, I'll probably have the chords to a Searchers song.

Anyway, the chords for "What Have They Done to the Rain":

Verse 1
E major / F# minor / B major / E major
C# minor / B major / A major / B major

Verse 2
E major / F# minor / B major / E major
C# minor / B major / A major / E major
A major / B major

Verse 3
same as verse 1

Verse 4
E major / F# minor / B major / E major
C# minor / B major / A major / E major
A major / B major / A major / B major

Ending tag
E major / D major / E major

Spoon's Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga

I recently watched a video from The Art Assignment, an art show produced in association with PBS.  The video itself is about art around Los Angeles, and they briefly show this picture, labelled "Lee Bontecou in Her Wooster Street Studio":

I had to double-check, but I quickly confirmed that this picture lookt familiar to me because it's used as the cover for Spoon's album Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga: