"Dreaming of 4000"

I listened to On the Third Day this morning (for a few reasons: 1) I've been thinking about writing a post about "In the Hall of the Mountain King" comparing it to Grieg's original, 2) I figured out a violin part at the beginning of "Oh No Not Susan" yester-day but haven't actually listened to the song for quite some time, and 3) I think On the Third Day is the ELO album I'm least familiar with [of the ones I have, anyway]).

This might be a bit trivial, but I noticed a somewhat interesting feature in "Dreaming of 4000."  At ~2:02 (and again at ~3:43), the cellos play:

which is an example of the Alberti bass.

On the Third Day

Backdated, archival post

[link to original on tumblr]

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I'm going through the albums much more slowly than I'd anticipated, but anyway, On the Third Day (which, incidentally, I first heard a year ago to-day).

"New World Rising/Ocean Breakup Reprise"

Like I mentioned earlier, because of the "continue where 'I Am the Walrus' left off" quote, I'm more likely to see Beatle connections in things than otherwise.  In "New World Rising/Ocean Breakup Reprise" (I think during the "New World Rising" part), after "Hey good morning," there's a spoken "Morning!" sort of in the background.  It's the same type of thing that's present during the last verse of the Beatles' "Yellow Submarine."  The lines "Every one of us has all we need / Sky of blue and sea of green / In our yellow submarine" are interspersed with the same words but spoken instead of sung.

"Showdown"

Some of the lyrical phrases in this re-appear in other ELO songs.  The "all over the world" in "And it's a-rainin' all over the world" is the titular line of "All over the World."  And "Now my heart has turned to stone again" seems to have some connection with "Turn to Stone" from Out of the Blue.

During the second "Rainin' all over the world" section, there are pizzicati in the string parts to portray the rain musically.  It's a fairly common technique, but I actually didn't notice it until recently.

"Dreaming of 4000"

One of the verses starts with "Here, there, everywhere," and even though this is a common phrase, I can't help but think that there's some connection between this and the Beatles' "Here, There, and Everywhere" (incidentally both "Here, There, and Everywhere" and "Yellow Submarine" were on the Beatles' Revolver album).

"In the Hall of the Mountain King"

This is ELO's version of a piece by Edvard Grieg.  It's the fourth movement of his first Peer Gynt Suite, Op. 46.  Additionally, though, at the beginning ELO includes a bit of the first movement - "Morning Mood."