"She Makes Me Laugh"

Yester-day I listened to Good Times! again and decided to start including it in this project (I'd intentionally been avoiding writing about it for a while because I just wanted to enjoy listening to it).  I have a couple little things to write about, but I think I might wait on those for a while to see if I can find anything more substantial.

I did notice something significant about "She Makes Me Laugh," specifically this recurring guitar phrase:

(I notated it an octave higher than it's played, and that second F# is a bent note.)

This guitar phrase is extremely similar to the recurring guitar phrases in the Beatles' "It Won't Be Long."  Those phrases vary a bit, but here's the one from around 0:24:

(Again, I notated this an octave higher than it's played, and I think that that G natural note is also bent.)

The rhythms match exactly, and while the melodies aren't the same, they are extremely similar.

"Circle Sky"

This morning I listened to Justus, and I noticed a small thing about "Circle Sky."  The line "Hamilton, smiling down" descends (G E E | E C# B A), musically representing that "down."  This articulation is also present in the live version included as a bonus track on the Head soundtrack.  The studio version on the Head soundtrack is fairly similar, but I think there's an extra D note, so: G D E E | E C# B A.

A couple months ago, I read the entry for 9 December 1967 in Andrew Sandoval's The Monkees: The Day-by-Day Story of the 60s TV Pop Sensation where Mike Nesmith says, "'Hamilton smiling down,' one of the lyric lines in ["Circle Sky"], refers to the name on the music stand that I was sitting in front of."  I was surprised to discover shortly after reading this that my music stand also has "Hamilton" on it.  Because it's reflective, it was a bit difficult to get a good picture of it:

Apparently, this is the Hamilton KB400N.  I'm not sure if this is the specific type of music stand that Nesmith had, but I think it's pretty close.

"(Theme from) The Monkees"

Early this morning I was thinking about "(Theme from) The Monkees" and realized something about the shape of the melody for the chorus (except for the chorus before the instrumental section, which is a bit different).  The melody in each phrase is fairly conjunct (I think the biggest interval is a major third), and most of the phrases ascend, but at the end of the line "To put anybody down," there's a falling fourth (D to A), so that "down" is represented musically.