"It's My Life"

While transcribing the lyrics from Justus, I also noticed that the lines "And I seem to remember something that I heard / Of a fire and a cave and shadows on the wall" in "It's My Life" seem to be an allusion to Plato's allegory of the cave.  I haven't read The Republic yet, but I referenced the index of my copy and found that the allegory of the cave is at the beginning of Book Seven.

"I Believe You"

Over the course of the last month, I've been copying the lyrics in the booklet from the Justus album into Google Documents so that they're more accessible.  While transcribing "I Believe You," I noticed a couple rhetorical features.

Most of the lines start with "I believe..." or "I believe you...."  This repetition is a device called anaphora.  Its function here is to indicate the completeness of the narrator's belief.

I also noticed two merisms, a device where two opposites are named in order to indicate a broad range.  "I believe you on a sunny day" (the first line of the first verse) is paired with "I believe you on a rainy night" (the first line of the second verse), and in an-other section, "I believe you warm" is paired with "I believe you cold."  Regardless of what the conditions may be, the narrator still "believe[s] you."

"It's Not Too Late"

In the line "We'll go together ev'rywhere" in "It's Not Too Late," "ev'rywhere" is sung with a melisma (A A G F), musically giving a sense of that breadth.

"Never Enough"

I recently figured out the chords for "Never Enough," and I remembered that I have a few notes about songs on the Justus album that I never got around to writing about here.

In the line "Wasted alone with these endless tears" in "Never Enough," "tears" is sung with a melisma (G# A), and since the word is extended, there's a sense of the tears' being "endless."

The narrator of the song seems to be yearning for more (repeating that it's "never enough"), and when I figured out the chords, I noticed a few musical features that mirror this yearning.  In some ways, the song is expanding past some musical boundaries.  First, there are a couple accidentals in the chords.  The song begins in A major, but there are B majors (with a D# accidental) and C# majors (with an E# accidental).  After the key change (to Bb major), there's a D major (with an F# accidental).  Near the end, there's even a Gb major (whose root is an accidental).  The key change itself is also an instance of the song's musical expansion.  Finally, at the end of the last chorus (at ~2:41), the last two chords (IV and V) each have twice the value that they did in earlier iterations of the chorus.  Before, they each lasted two measures, but at the end, they last four.

The Rainbow Room

Back in March, I saw a picture of the Monkees in "the Rainbow Room," similar to this one I found on Getty Images:

What really caught my attention was the Vox Super Continental; I didn't know the Monkees had used one.  Some quick searching didn't reveal what episode this was from (eventually, I discovered it was from the performance of "She Hangs Out" in "Card Carrying Red Shoes"), so I re-watched almost all of season two of The Monkees and made a list of what songs are performed in the Rainbow Room, what episodes they appear in, and who plays what:

• "Pleasant Valley Sunday" (in "The Picture Frame"* and "Monkee Mayor")
• Mike: guitar
• Micky: drums
• Peter: electric piano
• Davy: bass
• "Randy Scouse Git" (in "The Picture Frame" and "Art for Monkees' Sake"*)
• Mike: guitar
• Micky: timpani
• Peter: piano
• Davy: drums
• "Love Is Only Sleeping" (in "Everywhere a Sheik, Sheik"* and "I Was a 99 lb. Weakling")
• Mike: guitar
• Micky: vocal and unknown machine
• Peter: bass
• Davy: drums
• "Daydream Believer" (in "Art for Monkees' Sake" and "A Coffin Too Frequent")
• Mike: guitar
• Micky: tambourine
• Peter: piano
• Davy: vocal and some piano
• "She Hangs Out" (in "Card Carrying Red Shoes")
• Mike: guitar
• Micky: drums
• Peter: organ
• Davy: vocal
• "No Time" (in "The Devil and Peter Tork")
• Mike: guitar
• Micky: drums
• Peter: piano
• Davy: tambourine

*These performances are intercut with romps.

According to Andrew Sandoval's The Monkees: The Day-by-Day Story of the 60s TV Pop Sensation, these segments in the "Rainbow Room" were filmed on 2 August 1967 at Fred Niles Film Studios in Chicago.

"Monkees Race Again"

I watched "Monkees Race Again" a couple days ago and noticed something that's almost included in this section of the episode trivia on the DVD:  "When Micky attempts to switch on The Klutzmobile's engine, music eminates [sic] from it.  A couple of cues from that music previously appeared in Episode No. 14, 'Dance, Monkee, Dance,' in the scene where David applies for a job as a dance instructor for Renaldo's Dance Au Go-Go."  The last of these musical cues (which is not included in "Dance, Monkees, Dance") is a tune composed by Haydn and later used for the German national anthem.

"Goin' Down"

I watched "Monstrous Monkee Mash" yester-day and noticed a small feature in "Goin' Down."  In the line "Don't want no more" near the end of the third verse (the one starting with "I wish I had another drink..."), the "more" is sung with a melisma (E G), so while it's negated, there's a sense of that abundance.

"I Was a 99lb. Weaking"

Recently, I started re-watching season two of The Monkees for research for a future post.  This morning, I watched "I Was a 99lb. Weakling."  When he's trying to convince Micky to sign up for his fitness class, Shah-Ku says, "It is truly written that the coward dies a thousand deaths; the brave man only five hundred or so."  This joke also appears in The Music Man (1962).  Professor Hill tells Marian Paroo, "A coward dies a thousand deaths; a brave man only five hundred."  Apparently, both of these jokes refer to lines from Shakespeare's Julius Caesar:  "Cowards die many times before their deaths; / The valiant never taste of death but once" (II.ii.32-33).

"I'm a Believer"

It seems like there are quite a few videos about how to play the organ part in the Monkees' "I'm a Believer," and I think the electric piano solo gets a bit forgotten, so I made a short video demonstrating it.

"She Hangs Out"

I listened to the first disc of the deluxe edition of Headquarters to-day, and I noticed a small feature in "She Hangs Out," a version of which is included as a bonus track.  In this particular track and in all of the other versions on the deluxe editions of Headquarters and Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn & Jones Ltd., "every" in the phrase "every night" in the bridge is sung with three syllables, giving a sense of frequency.