"I'll Spend My Life with You"

Yester-day, I got the super deluxe edition of Headquarters in the mail.  I haven't listened to it yet, but while thinking about the album this morning, I realized something about "I'll Spend My Life with You."

The first half of the first verse contains opposites:

People come, and people go

Movin' fast and movin' slow

I'm in a crowd, yet I'm all alone

During the last of these lines, the pedal steel guitar plays a descending phrase and then an ascending phrase.  These opposite directions mirror the contrasts in the lyrics.

"No Time"

I know this has been noted before, but I couldn't find it quickly and had to look it up for myself.  I'm writing a short post about it mostly so that I'll be able to reference this again if I need to.  At ~0:35 in "No Time," Micky says something that sounds like "Rock on, George, for Ringo one time."  This is the same thing that Ringo says in the Beatles' "Honey Don't" (at ~2:20).

"Peter Percival Patterson's Pet Pig Porky"

I was thinking about "Peter Percival Patterson's Pet Pig Porky" recently, and I realized that there are a couple significant rhetorical effects.  Of course, there are the alliterative Ps throughout, and there are also two rhetorical catalogues ("pizza pie, pumpkin pie, pineapple pie, pizza pie, mince tarts" and "pie for breakfast, pie for lunch, pie in the afternoon, and pie before he went to bed").  Both of these features provide a sense of amount (the "so much pie" mentioned near the end).

"Sweet Young Thing"

I was thinking about "Sweet Young Thing" yester-day and realized that in the line "The seeds of doubt you planted have started to grow wild," the phrase "to grow wild" ascends (C# D E), musically giving a sense of the upward motion of that growth.

"(Theme from) The Monkees"

I was thinking about "(Theme from) The Monkees" yester-day, specifically the bass part during the first verse, which is something like:

For most of this, the bass alternates between the root and the fifth of the chords (A minor | F major | D major | G major).  Musically, this gives something of an impression of footsteps, and this matches the "walkin'" that's in the lyrics:  "Here we come / Walkin' down the street."

"I'll Spend My Life with You"

Last night, I figured out the chords for "I'll Spend My Life with You," and then I noticed a couple features.

In the line "I'm gonna turn around, head for home," "home" is sung to a C note, and at the same time, the chord progression moves to a C major.  The song is in C major, so these are the tonic note and tonic chord, respectively, and they provide a musical sense of coming home.

When I referenced my transcription of the lyrics, I also noticed the phrase "all alone" in the line "I'm in a crowd, yet I'm all alone."  Because these two words start with the same sound, there's a sense of the exclusivity of being alone.

"Daily Nightly"

This morning, I was thinking about "Daily Nightly," and I realized that the words "glitters glibly" exhibit both alliteration and assonance and that there's a balance between them because they have the same number of syllables.  (I can't decipher the first few words of the line, but the rest of it is "look down upon a world that glitters glibly.")  These features attract attention to themselves, so in a way, they act as the verbal equivalent of that "glitter[ing]."

Head

I've been re-reading Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman recently.  This morning, I ran across a line that sounded familiar.  Near the end of Act 1, Willy Loman says, "Everybody likes a kidder, but nobody lends him money."  Of course, this made me think of what Peter says in Head:  "Nobody ever lends money to a man with a sense of humor."  While there's a clear resemblance between these two, I don't know if it's intentional or coincidental.

"Ditty Diego - War Chant"

This morning, I was thinking about "Ditty Diego - War Chant" from the Head soundtrack.  Years ago, I'd read somewhere that the first and last sections are meant to be reminiscent of the theme song from the television show.  Instead of "Hey, hey, we're the Monkees," however, it's "Hey, hey, we are the Monkees."  One of the bonus tracks on the CD includes some of the recording session, and Peter brings up this difference when he asks, "This last time it says, 'Hey, hey, we're the...' wouldn't it shouldn't be 'Hey, hey, we are the...' again?"  As an answer, he receives a sort of flippant, "Yeah, do it that way," but I think it's significant that these non-contracted forms are used.  They're much less natural that "we're" (especially after hearing "we're the Monkees" in the theme song dozens of times), and this stiltedness demonstrates the same sort of artificiality mentioned in the piece itself:  "A manufactured image with no philosophies."