"Can't Get It out of My Head"

Last week, I listened to the 1976 concert at the Guildhall and noticed that under the line "Can't move" in "Can't Get It out of My Head," the bass plays a static pitch (a C), musically illustrating the lyric.  The chord there (a C major) is also held for two full measures, providing a similar effect.

When I referenced the studio version to confirm these, I also realized that the persistence mentioned in the title line is demonstrated by various repetitions in the chorus:  most of the lyrics in the first, second, and fourth lines are the same; the melody differs only slightly from line to line; and the chord progression for each line is identical (C major | G major | F major | G major).

"Can't Get It out of My Head"

Last month, I watched this video of ELO miming to "Can't Get It out of My Head" on Dutch television:

I noticed that in one of the Moog phrases (at ~1:21 in the video, but at ~2:27 in the album version), there are some trills.  Despite what it looks like in the video, I think these notes are E F E, C D C, G A G, E F E.

These descending trills may have been modeled after part of the solo in Del Shannon's "Runaway" (performed on a heavily modified clavioline).  Jeff Lynne talks about the song (starting around 39:14) in this BBC interview.  He mentions that the tape was sped up, so while it sounds higher, originally, these trills were played as E F E, D E D, C D C.  Obviously, in terms of pitch, these groups of notes are closer to each other than those in "Can't Get It out of My Head," but they do descend.

Eldorado

Backdated, archival post

[link to original on tumblr]

---&---

I finally got around to listening to Eldorado and writing up more detailed versions of my past notes.  I also found some new things.

"Boy Blue"

I'm having a lot of trouble understanding the lyrics to the early ELO songs (so my transcriptions are all over the place in terms of accuracy and completeness), but I think one of the lines in "Boy Blue" is "I've seen bald nights," which is probably a reference to Mussorgsky's Night on Bald Mountain.  I listened to Night on Bald Mountain immediately after Eldorado, and while there do seem to be similarities in mood, I didn't find anything specific that links them.

"Poorboy (the Greenwood)"

This mentions "sweet Maid Marian" who comes from the Robin Hood stories, so there's a connection between this song and the earlier "Can't Get It out of My Head," specifically the line "Robin Hood and William Tell and Ivanhoe and Lancelot."  (Incidentally, Raleigh's Ivanhoe and Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur are both on my to-read list, so once I get around to those, maybe I'll understand those allusions better.  I read Howard Pyle's The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood last summer, so that could stand re-reading at some point too.)

"Mister Kingdom"

This contains the line "Go to sleep, perchance to dream," which is a reference to and quote of Shakespeare's Hamlet - "To sleep - perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub!" (III.i.73).

"Nobody's Child"

"Nobody's Child" exhibits anaphora:  every line in the verses starts with the vocative "Painted lady."  There's also some alliteration in the line "Painted lady, don't you do these dirty deeds."

"Eldorado"

There's a recurring section that goes something like:

And I will stay
I'll not be back
Eldorado
I will be free, yeah
Of the world
Eldorado

The last one of these, however, breaks off halfway through, so that it's just "And I will stay / I'll not be back / Eldorado."  That last section is left incomplete, as if the speaker/singer indeed hasn't come back.

"Eldorado Finale"

This is also present in "Eldorado Overture" but the lines aren't successive.  In both though, there are lines that mention "The unwoken fool" who is "High on a hill in Eldorado," which might be a reference to the Beatles' "The Fool on the Hill."