Tuesday, February 23, 2021

"Draft Morning"

This is a small and probably obvious point, but I'll note it anyway:  at the end of "Draft Morning," there's a quotation of "Taps."

Tuesday, February 16, 2021

"Don't Make Waves"

One of the lines in "Don't Make Waves" (a track that the Byrds wrote for a movie of the same name and which is included as a bonus track on the CD re-issue of Younger than Yesterday) is "Malibu is calling you, her days and nights so warm."  The internal (sort of slant) rhyme of "Malibu" and "calling you" illustrates something of the allure that Malibu has.

Tuesday, February 9, 2021

"My Back Pages"

This is just a small point, but "from stern to bow" in "My Back Pages" is a merism.

Tuesday, February 2, 2021

"Mind Gardens"

The phrase "the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune" in "Mind Gardens" comes from Shakespeare's Hamlet.  The title character asks himself, "Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer / The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune / Or to take arms against a sea of troubles, / And by opposing end them." (III.i.65-68)

The particular alliteration of "killin' cold" (the hard K sound) gives a sense of the piercing nature of the cold.

The "walls all down" in "I tore the walls all down" is sung to a descending phrase (E D C#), so there's a musical representation of the walls' coming down.