The Dukes of Stratosphear - The Roots of...

Old thread, but did anyone think of the Beatles' "Think For Yourself" for "Your Gold Dress"? That's the one that comes immediately to mind to me, for the fuzz (bass?) riff. It's a little early, late 1965.

 

That eerie 'dry, Baptist organ' sound on 'Pale & Precious' has a very Smiley Smile feel.

 

Vanishing Girl is such an obvious Hollies copy.............I'm pretty sure one of them even admitted it.
I'd say it's a cross between Look Through Any Window and On a Carousel

 

For me, this one always calls to mind Their Satanic Majesties Request. The chorus, in particular, evokes "She's A Rainbow".

 

Funny, I'd say the most obvious lift in this song is the high Moody Blues backing vocals, a la "Time to Get Away".

 

No better day to re-start this project than the anniversary of Sgt. Pepper!

 

Reading this very old thread with delight. A few additions:

Vanishing Girl has a lot of Bus Stop in it - the middle eights specifically share the same phrasing. But then, you could say the Hollies made a career out of copying Things We Said Today!

You're A Good Man Albert Brown has been openly stated by Andy to be a mixture of predominantly Small Faces (which you've got) and the Bonzos (which you haven't). For a start, the tuba bass is directly lifted off I'm The Urban Spaceman, and the oompah feel generally. The cymbal sound is very Bonzos as well. More than anything though I'm surprised All Together Now hasn't been mentioned - I doubt there's a LP more borrowed for the Dukes than the first side of Yellow Submarine!

Also not mentioned are the linking sections of Psonic which conceptually owe a lot to Odgen's Nut Gone Flake.

Another thing not considered - there are out-of-chronology influences as well. Collideascope, especially the mix, the vocal reverb, and lolloping bass drum, has a lot of Plastic Ono Band and Imagine to it. Technically the Surf's Up influence on Pale And Precious qualifies here too, as Andy hadn't heard the actual SMiLE bootlegs by this point.

Nicely Nicely Jane seems to owe, in feel, plot and Christian name, to Timon's The Bitter Thoughts Of Little Jane, which I've never seen mentioned in connection with it.

I'm not sure Open A Can Of Human Beans and Tin Toy Clockwork Train are as analysable given that they were originally written and recorded for The Bubblegum Album and polished off as 21st century Dukes numbers. But It's Snowing Angels - a parody of the Lovin' Spoonful's Mellow Yellow - and the demo of Then She Appeared both count, as does the Arthur Brown pastiche Black-Jewelled Serpent Of Sound.

 

For "Pale and Precious", I would add the first section is the Smiley Smile version of "Wonderful", with it's low-key organ and high, sweet singing. Andy's even said that he's doing his best to emulate Carl, and the songs do have very similar subject matter. I'm not too sure about the other songs mentioned as influences, excepting "Help Me, Rhonda" and "Good Vibrations" for the middle 8. The bridge being a very clear ode to the former and the theremin (?) definitely pointing towards the latter.

 

I need to play these soon.

On the "to play" pile they go.

 

I recently heard Herman's Hermits' "Sleepy Joe" for the first time (awesome single!), and I have to reevaluate DoS's "Collideascope" DNA. I still maintain there's more than a bit of John Lennon channeling the Move's "Blackberry Way", but there's definitely some HH lurking in there as well (especially the "Wakey Wakey" refrain).

 

Another possible reference for 'Bike Ride To The Moon' ........ Traffic's 'House For Everyone'.

Also I'm trying to find some Donovan in the Dukes but still trying......

 

Lot of Mellow Yellow in It's Snowing Angels I'd say. I bizarrely mixed my refs up in the earlier post and said MY was a Lovin' Spoonful song. I was tired, to be fair. There's Spoonful in there as well so I wasn't a complete dolt at least!

 

Perhaps I've missed it but I don't believe anyone's brought up how similar the verses of Vanishing Girl are to The Association's Windy.

 

It's impressive, how decently The Dukes interpolated the feel of Smile without being able to hear it. A little from before, and a little from after, and there you have it, the missing inbetween. The second section, starting at :31, is instrumentally quite similar, by smart luck, to some of the early Smile "Wind Chimes" sessions. The percussive ideas come from Pet Sounds but they are applied differently.

However, Pale and Precious is has a much more complex chord progression than most of the Smile songs (save "Wonderful" and "Surf's Up"). It's a lot more like Pet Sounds in that regard.

 

Yes, Andy said so in an interview for the magazine Big Takeover.

 

Wasn't "It's Snowing Angels" considered part of the "Zither Records" comp./project?