"Fire on High"

I listened to Face the Music to-day, and in the early alternative mix of the introduction to "Fire on High" (included as a bonus track), I discovered a quotation of "Pop Goes the Weasel."  It's a bit off-kilter, in keeping with the feeling of the track.  It's starts at about 2:38 (panned a bit to the left), and I think it's played in the upper register of a cello.

I don't think that part of the track made it into the final version though.  Only the first minute and a half are used before there's an edit into an-other section.  Still, I felt it worth noting.

"Fire on High"

I listened to Face the Music yester-day, and the piano and bass parts in "Fire on High" sounded easy to figure out.  Both are just one measure repeated over and over.  Rather than repeat these measures for the entirety of the track, I just played eight measures: four of piano alone and then four of piano and bass:

Perhaps I should note that my primary referent for figuring out the parts was the "early alternative mix" included as a bonus track on the CD re-issue.  The piano and bass are easier to hear in that mix.

Face the Music

Backdated, archival post

[link to original on tumblr]

---&---

Initial notes on Face the Music:

"Fire on High"

It's pretty obvious, but I'll mention it anyway: the Hallelujah chorus from Handel's Messiah is one of the sounds mixed into the track.

"Evil Woman"

The second verse starts with "There's a hole in my head where the rain comes in," which seems to be a reference to the Beatles' "Fixing a Hole" from Sgt. Pepper, specifically the first verse:

I'm fixing a hole where the rain gets in
And stops my mind from wandering
Where it will go

"Fixing a Hole" doesn't specifically say that the hole is in the speaker/singer's head, but mentioning "my mind" seems to imply it.  I think the lines are too similar for this to be just a coincidence.  Both have "a hole" in the head "where the rain comes/gets in."

"Nightrider"

There’s a bit of parallelism between the first and second verses.  The first starts with "I remember…," and the second begins with "I recall…."  The full line is "I recall the situation clear," which exhibits a flat adverb ("clear" instead of "clearly").  I don't think this is for purposes of rhyme though, so maybe it's just because the full adverb would have been one syllable too many.

"Down Home Town"

The second verse starts with the line "The monkey business in this town," which might be a reference to Chuck Berry's "Too Much Monkey Business."  Even though that phrase is pretty common, ELO covered Berry's "Roll over Beethoven" and they mention him by name in "Rockaria!" so I have some confidence in that reference.

In the last "But it's no, no, no" section, the second "No, no, no" is preceded by "She loves you" in the backing vocals (which then also sing the "No, no, no" along with the lead vocals), so it's the opposite of the Beatles' "She loves you, yeah, yeah, yeah" from "She Loves You."  The lyrics and the musical phrases to which they're both set are so similar (even using the same notes that the Beatles did! - D, E, G, G, F#, E) that I don't think this is just a coincidence.  It's clearly an homage of sorts.

"One Summer Dream"

This contains one of Jeff Lynne's many uses of the word blue:  "Blue mountains high."

Before I transcribed the lyrics (although my transcription is still incomplete and probably inaccurate in places), I hadn't noticed that the first lines of the first and third verses later combine into a new free-standing couplet.  "Deep waters flow out to the sea" starts the first verse, and "Oh, summer breeze flows endlessly" starts the third.  Later, they re-form into: "Deep waters flow out to the sea / Warm summer breeze flows endlessly."

The verses also contain the three states of matter (discounting plasma).  There's liquid in "Deep waters," solid (land) in "Blue mountains high," and air in "Warm summer breeze."