Wednesday, May 16, 2018

"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.