"Laredo Tornado"

A few years ago, I noted that in "Laredo Tornado," the arrangement becomes rather sparse for "What can you do / When your dream world is gone / And your friends and lovers, too?" and that this reflects that absence.  This morning, I was looking at the lyrics in the liner notes and had a related realization:  this is the only musically distinct section of the song*, so even structurally, there's a feeling of being alone.

---

 *The choruses are the same; musically, the verses are only slightly different from each other; and even the prominent string parts in the coda have the same basis as the recurring guitar phrase.

"Big Wheels"

In an old note I found recently, I remarked that in the first "No, not at all" in the first verse of "Big Wheels," "all" is sung with a melisma (G F), musically giving a sense of degree.  When I went to verify this and find the specific pitches, I also noticed that in the preceding line, "There's no one knows which side the coin will fall," "fall" is sung with a descending melisma (Ab G F, I think), musically giving a sense of the word's meaning.

"Standin' in the Rain"

I found some old notes about songs on Out of the Blue that I'd forgotten to write about here.

In the line "I'm waitin' all alone" in "Standin' in the Rain, the phrase "all alone" alliterates, and since the two words start with the same sound, there's a sense of the singularity of being "alone."

"Eldorado"

In the recurring line "I will be free" in "Eldorado," "free" is sung with a melisma (E F), and since the word isn't limited to a single pitch, there's a sense of its meaning.

"Boy Blue"

I listened to Eldorado yester-day and noticed a couple small features.

Like "Do Ya," a section of "Boy Blue" exhibits anaphora:

I've seen bold knights, dropping down like flies.

I've seen kings, rolling in the mire.

I've seen God, point the finger of doom to our foes.

I have fought in the holiest wars.

I have smashed some of the holiest jaw.

I've been jailed, been impaled, and been dragged through the world.

The repeated "I've (seen)" indicates the amount and variety of the narrator's experience.

"Shine a Little Love"

Recently, I learned a good deal of the bridges in "Shine a Little Love."  Here's a recording of bass, electric piano, and violin, along with the notation of what I played:

I used the Wurlitzer sound on my Nord Electro 5, along with a phasing effect, which the original recording seems to have.  For the violin part, I used the Mellotron sound.

"Baby I Apologize"

I listened to ELO II this morning and noticed a small feature in "Baby I Apologize," which is included as a bonus track.  There's a temporal merism in the line "Love her in the mornin' and the evenin', too."

"Danger Ahead"

Yester-day, ELO's social media accounts (Twitter, Instagram) posted that it was the fortieth anniversary of the release of Secret Messages.  I didn't have time to listen to the album yester-day, but I listened to it this morning and noticed a small feature in "Danger Ahead":  for most of the verses, the vocal is centered in the stereo picture, but in the second half of the third verse, starting with the line "With her entourage on either side," there are two sets of vocals, with one panned left and one panned right to portray "on either side" in a musical way.

"Kuiama"

Recently, I watched this performance of "Kuiama" on The Midnight Special on 29 June 1973:

I'm pretty sure this is the same backing track as the studio version (although edited for length) but with live vocals.

This probably isn't a very significant point, but yester-day, I realized that one of the verses exhibits anacoluthon, a rhetorical effect that's basically just an interruption in the logical flow of a sentence.  In the song, it appears in the lines "It's just that I mean - well, that is to say / That I'm trying to explain, but I'll start again."

When I watched the video again in order to embed it here, I also noticed the line "No horsemen in the night a-ridin' through your dreams and tearin' at your life" (I'm not sure where or if there should be line breaks there).  This is an allusion to the four horsemen of the apocalypse in Revelation 6:1-8.

"21st Century Man"

When I listened to Time yester-day, I also noticed the structure of this verse in "21st Century Man":

Things ain't how you thought they were

Nothing have you planned

So pick up your penny and your suitcase

You're not a 21st century man

The syntax of the second line is inverted, apparently so that "planned" will come at the end of the line in order to rhyme with "man," but this inversion also illustrates the line "Things ain't how you thought they were."  Instead of a normal word order ("you have planned nothing"), there's this unexpected inversion.

"Another Heart Breaks"

I listened to Time this morning and noticed that at ~2:34 in "Another Heart Breaks," a voice starts counting off the measures, from one to eight.  This may be yet an-other instance of the Beatles' influence; there's also a voice counting off the measures in "A Day in the Life."  According to the liner notes of Anthology 2, this is "Mal Evans, one of the Beatles' two assistants, counting out the first of two long gaps that would later be so famously filled with the orchestral crescendos."

"Telephone Line"

I noted before that the phrase "blue days, black nights" in "Telephone Line" seems to be a reference to the song "Blue Days, Black Nights," which was recorded by Buddy Holly.  Recently, I figured out some of the bass part for "Telephone Line," and as I was looking at the chords as something of a guide, I realized that "Blue Days, Black Nights" and "Telephone Line" are in the same key:  A major.  This might be an-other facet of this reference, or it might simply be a coincidence.