"It's All Over Now, Baby Blue"

When I listened to The Byrds Play Dylan a second time recently, I noticed some small significance in a line in "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue" (the first version, recorded in June 1965).  "All your seasick sailors, they are goin' home" contains a pleonasm, and while this redundant "they" isn't necessary grammatically, it does provide a sense of amount (for "all").

I referenced the version on Ballad of Easy Rider and discovered that the line is slightly different there:  "All your seasick sailors, they are rowin' home."

"Just Like a Woman"

In the line "Ev'rybody knows that baby's got new clothes" in "Just Like a Woman," "ev'rybody" is sung to notes of all different pitches (G F# E D), providing a sense of breadth or entirety.

In the lines "But lately I've been noticing her ribbons and her bows / Are fallin' from her curls," "fallin'" is sung to a descending pair of notes (B F#), illustrating its meaning.

"It's Alright, Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)"

This is just a small point, but "the wise men and the fools" in "It's Alright, Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)" (a live recording that's on The Byrds Play Dylan and (Untitled)/(Unissued)) is a merism.

"Lay Lady Lay"

Last month, I saw a reference to Bob Dylan's "Lay Lady Lay" and started wondering whether the features I'd previously noticed in the song were also present in the Byrds' version.  Twice recently, I listened to The Byrds Play Dylan, which contains the single version and the alternate version (which I'm more familiar with since it's a bonus track on Dr. Byrds & Mr. Hyde, which I've listened to more than The Byrds Play Dylan).

As in Dylan's version, there's something of a temporal merism in the lines "I long to see you in the morning light / I long to reach for you in the night," and the bass plays a repeating chromatic phrase (C B Bb A) under the title lines ("Lay, lady, lay / Lay across my big brass bed"), emphasizing the breadth of "lay[ing] across."  (Unless I'm mistaken, though, the songs are in different keys.)

I also noticed that the alliteration in the phrase "big brass bed" lends a sense of this size (the repetition gives an indication of degree).

"You Ain't Going Nowhere"

A couple days ago, I watched this video of "You Ain't Going Nowhere" and "Truck Stop Girl" from a 1971 performance.*

I realized that the structure of "You Ain't Going Nowhere" has some significance.

There are exceptions, but for the most part, the verses have the rhyme scheme AAAB, where the last line is "You ain't goin' nowhere."  In a way, the recurring sounds of the rhymes (especially in the third verse where there's extra internal rhyme in the line "Buy me a flute and a gun that shoots") and the repetition of the title line both match this immobility.

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*I referenced Christopher Hjort's So You Want to Be a Rock 'n' Roll Star: The Byrds Day-by-Day 1965-1973, and I'm almost certain this video is from Brussels, Belgium on 18 May.  Hjort notes that the show that day was filmed and even provides a set list, in which "You Ain't Going Nowhere" and "Truck Stop Girl" are back-to-back.  The location also explains McGuinn's introduction in (bad) French.  He says, "Chantons de Bob Dylan" ("Let's sing about Bob Dylan"), but I think he means, "Chanson de Bob Dylan" ("a song by Bob Dylan").

"Hungry Planet"

The phrase "all alone" in the line "Now here I am all alone" in "Hungry Planet" alliterates, and because the two words start with the same sound, there's a sense of this singularity.

In the lines "Oh, the people kept choppin' down / All my finest trees," "down" is sung with a descending melisma (C Bb), illustrating the meaning.

"Yesterday's Train"

The phrase "dust to dust" in "Yesterday's Train" comes from the Bible, specifically from either Genesis 3:19 ("'you are dust, and to dust you shall return'") or Ecclesiastes 3:20 ("All are from the dust, and to dust all return").

In the line "Yesterday's train is rollin'," "rollin'" is sung with a melisma (G F# E), giving a sense of this movement.

"All the Things"

"See the sun, how bright it is" and "See the earth, how sweet it smells" in "All the Things" seem to borrow their structure from the Bible, specifically "'Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow'" in Matthew 6:28 (it's condensed a bit in the parallel passage in Luke 12:27:  "'Consider the lilies, how they grow'").

In the chorus ("All the things I want today / All the things I wasted on the way"), a second vocal part comes in to harmonize with the lead vocal, and because there are two voices, there's a slight sense of the entirety of these "all"s.

A few days ago, I figured out the chords and discovered some connections between the progression and the lyrics.  The first line of each verse is:

D major | C major | G major | D major

And the second line is:

D major | C major | G major

Compared to the previous line, there's a D major missing at the end of this line, and to some degree, this lack matches "no one's there" in the first verse ("See the sun, it shines right through my door, but no one's there") and "forgotten, left behind" in the third ("See this dried up broken straw, forgotten, left behind").

"Truck Stop Girl"

When I started this project, I'd listened to (Untitled) only twice.  I've become more familiar with it over the last few years, and I'm going to start writing about it, although most of my initial notes will be just small points.

In "Truck Stop Girl," "young" in the line "But he was so young" (which occurs later as "And he was so young") is sung with a melisma (Eb Bb), giving a sense of degree (for "so").

"Mind Gardens"

There are a number of instances in "Mind Gardens" where musical or poetic characteristics match the meaning of the lyrics.

The word "high" in the phrase "On a high hill" is sung to the highest pitch in the phrase (C# D E B).

The phrase "rain pourin' down" is sung to a descending melody, with "down" sung with a descending glissando (D C# B B~A).

The sequential words "safely" and "securely" alliterate and rhyme, and these repeated sounds lend a sense of that steadfastness.

"Have You Seen Her Face"

Yester-day was Roger McGuinn's birthday, so I listened to Younger than Yesterday, and I noticed a handful of small features.

In the line "A style made up to capture all she needs" in "Have You See Her Face," the phrase "all she needs" is sung to notes of all different pitches (G A F#), giving something of a sense of breadth.

The same sort of feature is present in the phrase "All the sights and sounds" in the third verse:  "sights and sounds" is sung to the notes B A# A.  That the A# is an accidental (I'm pretty sure the song is in D major) lends a further sense of this entirety.

"I Am a Pilgrim"

I wrote about a number of Biblical allusions in "I Am a Pilgrim" in my initial series of posts, but when I listened to Sweetheart of the Rodeo yester-day, I remembered an-other passage that may be related.  The first two lines of the song are "I am a pilgrim and a stranger / Travelin' through this wearisome land," and these bear some resemblance to what Moses says in Exodus 2:22:  "I have been a sojourner in a foreign land."

"Nothing Was Delivered"

Yester-day, I found an old note I'd made about the version of "Nothing Was Delivered" that's on Bob Dylan and the Band's Basement Tapes (incidentally, the album was released to-day in 1975).  I also had a handful of previous notes on the song, and when I referenced the Byrds' version, I discovered that all of the features I'd noticed are present there, too.

"Leave" in the line "The sooner you can leave" and "go" in the line "The sooner you can go" are both sung with a melisma (A G), giving a sense of movement.

"Rest" in the line "Take care of yourself; get plenty of rest" is sung with a melisma (A G in one vocal part and D B in the harmony), giving a sense of amount (for "plenty").

"Lies" in the line "Yes, for telling all those lies" is also sung with a melisma (A B), giving a sense of amount (for "all").  While Dylan sings this with a melisma, too, his articulation is different.

"John Riley"

Halfway through the line "He picked her up all in his arms" in "John Riley" (in the pause after "He picked her up"), there's an ascending phrase in the string part, musically illustrating this "picked... up."  (I think the most prominent violin plays just a whole step, though:  A to B.)

"I See You"

In the line "Under there, behind your hair, ev'rywhere" in "I See You," the three syllables of "ev'rywhere" are each sung to a different pitch (A G E), giving a sense of this breadth.

"Mr. Spaceman"

I recently got a vinyl copy of Fifth Dimension and listened to it a couple days ago.  I'd previously noticed some odd structures in the third verse of "Mr. Spaceman," but while listening to it this time, I realized that they may be significant.

Each line in the first two verses can stand by itself, but in the third verse, the meanings seem to extend beyond the line breaks.  Poetically and musically, it's structured as:

Woke up this morning; I was feelin' quite weird

Had flies in my beard; my toothpaste was smeared

Over my window; they'd written my name

Said, "So long, we'll see you again"

but, as I understand it at least, some of the semantic breaks don't follow the line breaks:

My toothpaste was smeared over my window

They'd written my name, said, "So long, we'll see you again"

"My toothpaste was smeared" seems incomplete without "over my window" to specify where it was smeared.  That the line "Over my window they'd written my name" would otherwise be inverted seems to confirm my reading.

This sort of discrepancy between the structure and the meaning, with the line breaks falling in strange places, matches the narrator's "feelin' quite weird."

Additionally, it occurred to me that there's some resemblance between "Mr. Spaceman" and Dylan's "Mr. Tambourine Man."  The titles are obviously similar, and the chorus of each has lines that start with "Hey, Mr. Spaceman/Tambourine Man."  Although the two songs are in different keys, the entirety of "Mr. Tambourine Man" and the verses of "Mr. Spaceman" have the same chords:  G major, A major, and D major, sometimes even appearing in the same order and for only one measure each.

"I Come and Stand at Every Door"

I was thinking about "I Come and Stand at Every Door" yester-day and had a small realization about the title line.  The phrase "ev'ry door" is sung to notes of all different pitches (B D# C#), giving a sense of number.

"Satisfied Mind"

I also noticed a small feature in "Satisfied Mind" when I listened to Turn! Turn! Turn! recently:  in the line "How many times have you heard someone say," "times" is sung with a melisma (C# B), giving a sense of the amount of "how many."

"The World Turns All Around Her"

I listened to Turn! Turn! Turn! recently.  I think I'd been dimly aware of this before, but I realized that part of the drum pattern in the bridge of "The World Turns All Around Her" (roughly every other pair of measures, starting with the second pair) seems to be based on that in the Beatles' "What You're Doing," particularly the introduction (which is only drums for the first four measures).

The two parts are something like this, where the bottom line is the bass drum and the top line is the snare:

(I should note that I am not a drummer, so I don't know how to notate the parts properly or even if I have these correctly identified.)

There's also a cymbal crash on the first beat of the first bar of these measures in "The World Turns All Around Here" (and on the first beat of the second bar in the third instance, at ~1:24), but the corresponding pattern in the Beatles' song doesn't have any cymbals.

There are minor differences, but the two parts are so similar that it seems more than just coincidence.