"Of You"

I recently listened to the deluxe edition of More of the Monkees and noticed an interesting structural feature in "Of You," which is included as a bonus track.

The third verse is:

And when the skies are once more blue

I get that old longing to

To be held in the arms of you

The first two lines complement each other since they're the same number of syllables ("old" is sung with two syllables, so each line has eight) and they rhyme, but the placement of the second line break creates an interruption in the meaning.  The "to" of the infinitive "to be held" must be completed, and this need for semantic resolution mirrors the "longing" that the lyrics themselves describe.

"I've Got a Little Song Here"

I watched "I've Got a Little Song Here" this morning and noticed what might be a reference to the Beatles' A Hard Day's Night movie.  Mike thinks that Joannie Jans is going to sing the song he wrote in her new movie and goes to visit her on set.  She doesn't know what he's talking about, however, and when he asks her, "Does the name Mike Nesmith mean anything to you?" she replies, "No, it's only a rumor; we're just good friends."  In a scene with the press in A Hard Day's Night, Paul McCartney also uses this as a stock response, saying three times, "No, actually, we're just good friends."

"All the King's Horses"

Recently, I listened to the deluxe edition of The Monkees.  When I listened to the second disc yester-day, I noticed something about "All the King's Horses."  Except for the first instance and the repetitions in the coda, the chorus is sung so that as one voice finishes singing "All the king's horses and all the king's men," an-other starts singing it, and as that second voices finishes, the first starts singing "They couldn't put my broken heart back together again," and then the second likewise echoes this.  (Note that I'm using "voice" in a more generic sense here; there are actually multiple voices singing each part.)  I'm not sure if the term quite applies here, but this is at least similar to stretti in classical music.  The parts are something like this:

I think one of the voices sings, "Now all the king's horses and all the king's men," with the "now" as an eighth note pick-up (G#) in the preceding measure, but this "now" isn't consistently included.  Sometimes it's there, and sometimes it's not, so I left it out of my notation.

This may be making too much of it, but because the lines are sung like this, with one echoing the other, there's a musical sense of the fragmentation that's in the lyrics ("my broken heart").

"Success Story"

I watched "Success Story" a couple days ago.  I've been thinking about the Beatles' movie A Hard Day's Night quite a bit recently, so I may be making too much of this, but I think the film's influence on The Monkees could be evident in that it's Davy's grandfather who's one of the main characters in this episode, just as Paul's grandfather is one of the main characters in the Beatles' movie.

This may have been noted before, but it also occurred to me that the ending credits of The Monkees use the same style as those of A Hard Day's Night; both show a sequence of still photos of the band members in various poses and with various expressions.

"Your Auntie Grizelda"

Recently, I read the entry for 14 October 1966 in the 2021 version of The Monkees: The Day-by-Day Story.  The backing track for "Your Auntie Grizelda" was recorded on this day, and Jack Keller, who co-wrote the song with Diane Hildebrand*, comments:  "The truth of the matter is that it was inspired by the Rolling Stones' Mick Jagger singing '19th Nervous Breakdown.'"  I hadn't know about the connection between these two songs, but in thinking about them and figuring out some parts for both, I discovered that they do have a number of musical similarities.

The first line of each verse of "Your Auntie Grizelda" is sung to a phrase something like this:

(The first half of each of the next three lines is the same, although one is a fourth higher.)

The title line of "19th Nervous Breakdown" ("Here comes your 19th nervous breakdown") is sung to a phrase something like this:

Both phrases begin in the same way:  with a pick-up on the fourth beat of the bar and two pairs of notes of the same pitch.  Generally, both phrases descend but end with a small ascent (a half-step in "Your Auntie Grizelda" but a whole step in "19th Nervous Breakdown").  Additionally, both phrases have a flatted seventh, although they occur in different places.

I figured out the chords for both songs, and although they're in different keys ("Your Auntie Grizelda" is in D major, and "19th Nervous Breakdown" is in [a slightly flat] E major), the verses have the same structure:  eight measures of the tonic, four measures of the sub-dominant, four measures of the tonic, two measures of the dominant, two measures of the sub-dominant, and then back to the tonic (which lasts for six measures in "Your Auntie Grizelda" but which merges into the chorus in "19th Nervous Breakdown").

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*In the book, it's spelt "Hildebrand," but in the credits of the deluxe edition of More of the Monkees, it's spelt as "Hilderbrand."  I'm not sure which is correct.

"Monkee Vs. Machine"

I recently started re-watching The Monkees series.  When I started reading the re-written version of Andrew Sandoval's The Monkees: The Day-by-Day Story, I decided to watch the shows and listen to the albums after I read about their broadcast or release.  I'm also using this as an opportunity to watch the series on Bluray.  I got The Monkees: The Complete Series on Bluray years ago, but I've watched only select episodes, not all of them.

Last week, I watched "Monkee Vs. Machine" and noticed a subtle reference to Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho.  Near the end of the episode, when Mike leans out the window to throw what is essentially a boomerang, one of the buildings in the background seems to bear the name "Hotel Bates":

(This is a screenclipping from the DVD.)

The famous location in Psycho is the similarly named Bates Motel.

"Kicking Stones"

Recently, I read about "Kicking Stones" in The Monkees: The Day-by-Day Story (I'm currently in September 1966).  I know it only as a bonus track on the deluxe edition of More of the Monkees.  Last night, I figured out the chords, and while doing so, I noticed the phrase "all alone" in the line "Feelin' dejected and all alone."  I wrote about this before with "I'll Spend My Life with You," but it's applicable here, too:  because both words in "all alone" start with the same sound, there's a sense of the singularity of being alone.

"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."