"(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."

"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.