"Pleasant Valley Sunday"

Yester-day, I realized that the alliteration in the phrase "so serene" in the line "And Mr. Green, he's so serene; he's got a TV in ev'ry room" in "Pleasant Valley Sunday" lends a small sense of degree.  The internal rhyme (between "Green" and "serene") may contribute to this, too.

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.

"Pleasant Valley Sunday"

This morning I was thinking about "Pleasant Valley Sunday," and I realized a number of features in it.

Just in thinking about the song, I realized that the three syllables of "ev'rywhere" in the line "Charcoal burnin' ev'rywhere" are all sung to different pitches (C A G), musically giving a sense of that breadth.

When I read the lyrics, I discovered some other things.  In the first verse, the ends of the lines don't really rhyme:

The local rock group down the street is tryin' hard to learn their song
They serenade the weekend squier who just came out to mow his lawn

The slant rhyme between "song" and "lawn" illustrates that the "local rock group" hasn't learned its song well enough.  It's not quite what it's supposed to be yet.  Additionally, the use of a plural possessive ("their") in place of a singular ("its") grammatically demonstrates something of a division within the group; they're not acting as a whole.

The second verse does have line-ending rhymes, and there's also internal rhyme:

See Mrs. Gray; she's proud today because her roses are in bloom
And Mr. Green, he's so serene; he's got a TV in ev'ry room

These added rhymes give a sense of the perfection of the "pleasant valley."  Because these rhymes include characters' names, there's also a sense of how ingrained this perfection is and how essential it is for those who live there.

In referencing the recording again, I also noticed that "room" in the backing vocals is sung with a melisma (G F#), for a sense of "ev'ry."

In the last line of the bridge ("I need a change of scenery"), "scenery" is sung with a melisma (B A G# F# E), musically giving a sense of that "change."  There's also a shift in octave between the A and G#, which emphasizes this.

"Pleasant Valley Sunday"

I have an-other project with the same format as this one but focused on the Beatles.  A couple days ago, I figured out some of the piano in "I Want to Tell You," so - just for fun - I started playing the guitar phrase, which I'd figured out in January.  Yester-day morning, I discovered that the guitar phrase in "Pleasant Valley Sunday" is very similar to the guitar phrase in "I Want to Tell You."  Both are in A major, employ glissandi, alternate between an open A string and notes on the D string, and use only six pitches: A, D, E, F#, G, and A an octave higher.

In both songs, there are sections where these phrases are repeated over and over again, but here's a single instance of each (give or take a few notes) in tablature (I use tildes [~] to indicate glissandi):

"I Want to Tell You"

D|-7~5---2---5-0---4-0---|
A|-----0---0-----0-----0-|

"Pleasant Valley Sunday"

D|---7---5~4-0---2---0-4~5-0---|
A|-0---0-------0---0---------0-|

While they're obviously different, they use something of the same musical vocabulary.

According to Mark Lewisohn's The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions, "I Want to Tell You" was released on Revolver in August 1966 [on the 5th in the U.K. and on the 8th in the U.S.], and according to Andrew Sandoval's The Monkees: The Day-by-Day Story of the 60s TV Pop Sensation, "Pleasant Valley Sunday" was recorded in June 1967 [the 10th, 11th, 13th, and "possibly other dates in June"], so it's certainly possible that the guitar phrase in "I Want to Tell You" influenced the guitar phrase in "Pleasant Valley Sunday."

"Pleasant Valley Sunday"

Last Sunday, I was thinking about "Pleasant Valley Sunday," and I realized that the lines "Mothers complain about how hard life is / And the kids just don't understand" contain a grammatical ambiguity.  I'd always thought these two lines were linkt and that the mothers complained about two things: 1) how hard life is and 2) that the kids don't understand.  On Sunday, I realized that these could be two distinct statements: the mothers complain only about how hard life is, and - as a separate comment - the kids don't understand.

"Monkee Mayor"

According to Andrew Sandoval's The Monkees: The Day-by-Day Story of the 60s TV Pop Sensation, "Monkee Mayor" - the thirty-sixth episode of The Monkees series (and the fourth of the second season) - was broadcast fifty years ago to-day (2 October 1967).  It was written by Jack Winter, directed by Alex Singer, and featured the songs "No Time" and "Pleasant Valley Sunday."  Sandoval describes the plot as: "Mike runs for mayor in a bid to save the group's groovy pad."

"The Picture Frame"

According to Andrew Sandoval's The Monkees: The Day-by-Day Story of the 60s TV Pop Sensation, "The Picture Frame" - the thirty-fourth episode of The Monkees series (and the second of the second season) - was broadcast fifty years ago to-day (18 September 1967).  It was written by Jack Winter, directed by James Frawley, and featured the songs "Pleasant Valley Sunday" and "Randy Scouse Git."  Sandoval describes the plot as: "Peter labors to clear the name of his bandmates after they unwittingly rob a bank."

"Pleasant Valley Sunday" b/w "Words"

According to Andrew Sandoval's The Monkees: The Day-by-Day Story of the 60s TV Pop Sensation, "Pleasant Valley Sunday" b/w "Words" - the Monkees' fourth single (Colgems 1007) - was released in the U.S. fifty years ago this month (July 1967).  The U.K. release (RCA 1645) was in August.