I was thinking about "Latitude 88 North" yester-day and realized that some elements in the song's structure illustrate its theme.
The rhyme scheme of the verses is AABBC, with each verse ending with the line "It's such a lonely world." Unlike the preceding pairs of lines, this final line lacks a complement, structurally mirroring this "lonel[iness]."
The rhyme scheme of the second verse differs slightly in that the first two lines exhibit a slant rhyme: "Then I knew that you were gone / It came to me: I was alone." In a way, the absence of a perfect rhyme here indicates the narrator's lack of companionship.
In December 2017, I learned the bass part and the rest of the chords for "Latitude 88 North." I think it was sometime in early summer when I finished writing out the notation for the bass part, and I intended to make a recording of it, but I kept forgetting or not having time. At least now it's winter, which is seasonally appropriate for the theme of the song.
Here's the notation of the bass part, with the guitar chords written in above the staff (as always, there's the disclaimer that I might have something wrong):
The electric guitar in my recording isn't meant to be entirely accurate. I'm pretty sure I have the solo right though; here it is in tablature (tildes [~] indicate glissandi):
I recorded the electric guitar part in one take, switching between pick-ups for the solo section, which I usually never do, and because of that, my timing is off a little bit.
Also, a bit of commentary: I don't remember when I noticed this, but coinciding with the line "Thirty-five below and fallin'" in the chorus, the bass line descends, musically giving a sense of the (metaphorically) "fallin'" temperature.
The first two lines of each verse of "Latitude 88 North" are sung to a paucity of pitches. The first line of each verse ("The ice man came to me tonight" [1], "Then I knew that you were gone" [2], and "Frozen shadows in doorways" [3]) are sung completely to B notes. There's a bit more variety in the second lines, but each is sung to only two pitches. "So very near but out of sight" (1) and "It came to me; I was alone" (2) are each sung to a string of C notes with a single G note at the end, and "They will linger there always" (3) is sung mainly to a string a C notes, rises to a single D note, and then ends with an-other C note.
While it's especially appropriate for "Frozen shadows..." articulating these lines with only one or two pitches each musically demonstrates the "frozen" conditions of Latitude 88 North. It's as if even the music can no longer move.
Yester-day, I was thinking about the solo in "Latitude 88 North." When I figured it out, I noticed that each phrase contains progressively smaller intervals of notes. The first phrase has notes that span a fifth (B to F#); the second phrase has notes that span a diminished fifth (B to F); and the third phrase has notes that span only a major third (B to D#). But yester-day I realized that those progressively smaller groups of intervals sort of represent - musically - the freezing that would take place at latitude 88 north.
But then I thought about it some more, and I realized that "Latitude 88 North" shares a theme (of sorts) with "Turn to Stone." In both, unrequited love leads to immobility. In "Latitude 88 North," the singer/speaker says, "Then I knew that you were gone / It came to me; I was alone / Now I'm left out in the cold" to freeze, as the progressively smaller intervals in the solo demonstrate. In "Turn to Stone," the singer/speaker repeatedly says, "I turn to stone / When you are gone / I turn to stone." The specific method of immobility is different (freezing in one and petrification in the other), but that unrequited love leads to the same result in both songs.
Last night I figured out some parts to "Latitude 88 North," a bonus track on the Out of the Blue CD re-issue. This is just the solo, but I also figured out the chords for the chorus (it's just a I vi IV V progression).
Last week, I learned the solo for the Beatles' "Can't Buy Me Love," and - in the first phrase at least - there's something of a resemblance. They're in different keys and rhythms, but the first five notes or so are the same intervals. If you took the first phrase in the "Can't Buy Me Love" solo and pitched it down half a step, you'd be pretty close to the first phrase in the "Latitude 88 North" solo.
