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Breakneck speed we drown ten pints of bitter
Roots Manuva - Witness (12 Inch Mix)
I am low key obsessed with this song.
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Like you I have the single of this. Love it⌠great track, great lyrics. But⌠Iâve never heard another Voyager song. Never had a desire to do so. Havenât even flipped over the vinyl for a look-seeâŚ
To me, Voyager are just that one wonderful song.
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I really very badly want Beato to explain it to me so I can understand.
Thereâs just so many things going on. Itâs a bit easy-listening, the lead guitar licks are a bit proggy. The singing is very melodic, but even a little angsty in parts.
What Iâd like deciphered are the lyrics. It seems to be about a guy driving a girl overnight across some war-torn country and into the safety of another land, but having to pull into a flash hotel⌠the urgency of their situation being contrasted against the lifestyles of the hoi-polloi in said hotel. Or is it? Iâve never quite worked it out.
omgâŚthatâs not my read at all!
To me itâs about the sexual subculture of my parents generation that I haveâŚno connection or context or understanding of.
And IâŚthought the video reinforced that.
On the surface itâs just pure yacht rock. And sure I can dig the bass/guitar run, and the squealing (but ever so tasteful) guitar, and the gorgeous harmonies, but itâs the melody of the first ninety seconds (which is pretty much repeated, but fine) that spins me out.
IâŚfeel like itâs a blues progression, which is weird for what it is, but I honestly donât know.
Just the notes of the melody of that first minute and a half are freaking wild.
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Not years, butâŚa while.
I donât do rankings of singles, but this has to be top ten, until I forget about it again.
Itâs to our eternal detriment that the country in country and western became the dominant partner.
Western is epic in its outlook. Itâs a defining feature.
Country is drinking and trucks and good old boys and slashing your exâs tyres and ffsâŚ
Western is everything from Isobel to Nights In White Satin to Getting Away With It to Kingdom of Rust toâŚthis.
Country is Islands in the Stream and frigginââŚGarth Brooks.
Incredibly inviting hand extended to the dark side. And I love the way the last verse musically is frigginâ unhinged.
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Iâm not sure what substances you were taking when you came up with that conceptâŚbut it must have been a major mind altering one.
Either that, or youâve just redefined Western music as any music from the Western Hemisphere.
Epic.
Sweeping.
Understated vocally, but expansive musically.
Thereâs a horse and a far horizon.
Youâll get it one day, but for my amusement, tell me what You think that song owes its genre to.
Gee I donât knowâŚgiven that The Moody Blues were one of the early Prog Rocks bands, Iâm going to make a wild guess that it would come under that banner.
But you do youâŚIâm not up for a debate on this today.
I donât want to push you if youâre not up for it.
But early prog rock is a clue.
If you can see it as the closing song for a Western movie, when the noble hero has died, when the sun sets on a plain, itâs Western.
Damn you WimâŚyouâre just so far wrong itâs not funny:
The Meaning of âNights in White Satinâ by The Moody Blues
By
November 12, 2023 2:30 pm
Itâs a love song about the end of one affair and the beginning of another. âNights in White Satinâ barely dented the U.S. charts when it was initially released. Five years later, it was rereleased and made a much more significant impact, reaching No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100. The Moody Blues were transforming from an R&B band to a symphonic prog-rock outfit. Days of Future Passed marked a new direction for the band. âNights in White Satinâ was ahead of its time. In 1967, the pop world wasnât ready for a song that included a poem and clocked in at more than seven and a half minutes. Letâs dig into the meaning of âNights in White Satin.â
After their debut album, The Moody Blues shifted direction. Clint Warwick left the band and was replaced by Rod Clark. Shortly after, Clark and Denny Laine left the group. Manager Brian Epstein stopped representing them, and things didnât look too promising for the remaining members. Guitarist/singer Justin Hayward and bassist/singer John Lodge stepped in. The next project would be a concept album. But it didnât start that way because at the time, the band was in debt to their record label.
âThey wanted us, as a way to pay off that debt, to do a demonstration record of a rock version of Dvorak with [conductor] Peter Knight playing the real Dvorak between our pieces and an engineer mixing them together so people would say, âOh, that sounds wonderful in stereo,ââ Hayward noted on the Moody Bluesâ official site in 2012. â[Producer] Michael Barclay, whose project it was to get these demonstration records together, suggested we do it the other way around. We do our songs and then Peter Knight would orchestrate pieces in between our songs, and so thatâs what we did.â
The birth of the song happened late at night after a gig. Hayward had been given some white satin sheets. He sat on the edge of his bed, strumming a 12-string guitar that belonged to skiffle legend Lonnie Donegan (more about that later). The plan for the album was to make it about a day and a night. âDawn: Dawn is a Feelingâ was already written by keyboardist Mike Pinder, and âMorning Gloryâ had been composed by drummer Graeme Edge. So Hayward concentrated on a song about the nighttime.
Nights in white satin
Never reaching the end
Letters Iâve written
Never meaning to send
Beauty Iâd always missed
With these eyes before
Just what the truth is
I canât say anymore
âCause I love you
Yes, I love you
Oh, how I love you
In 1967, Decca Records edited the song down to 3:06, and the song reached No. 103 in America upon its initial release. In 1972, radio stations started to embrace longer songs like âHey Judeâ and âAmerican Pie.â The song was re-edited to 4:26 this time, and Decca rereleased it. âNights in White Satinâ reached No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100.
Gazing at people
Some hand in hand
Just what Iâm going through
They canât understand
Some try to tell me
Thoughts they cannot defend
Just what you want to be
You will be in the end
âIt was a very personal song, and every note, every word in it means something to me, and I found that a lot of other people have felt that very same way about it,â Hayward told Cleveland classic rock station WNCX.
The big-room sound in the studio recording is evident. The flute by Ray Thomas plays a prominent role as well. The whole sound of the band had evolved from the first album. Edge had composed the poem âLate Lament,â which was recited by keyboardist Mike Pinder. Edge also wrote the poem that appears during the morning section of the album.
The London Festival Orchestra
Conductor Knight added orchestration to the recording after the band recorded the track. It was actually a collection of studio musicians playing strings. The albumâs back cover gives equal credit to The Moody Blues with The London Festival Orchestra, but that was the credit given to anyone playing symphonic instruments on a Decca release going back to the early â50s. The mellotron played by Pinder supplied the bulk of the string sounds.
âNights in White Satinâ has been covered by many artists: Sandra, Elkie Brooks, Juliane Werding, Erwin Nyhoff, Eric Burdon, Percy Faith, Bettye LaVette, and punk band The Dickies have all recorded versions. In 1976, Giorgio Moroder recorded it as âKnights in White Satin.â In 2008, the song inspired an amusement park ride when the former Hard Rock Park in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, introduced the 3D/black light attraction, Nights in White Satin: The Trip.
Now, back to that Lonnie Donegan connection. Hayward had released some solo singles before he joined The Moody Blues. Donegan signed the 19-year-old singer/songwriter to his publishing company, Tyler Music. The deal would last eight years, ensuring the publishing money earned on The Moody Bluesâ biggest hits would belong to Tyler Music. Hayward was repairing something on the skiffle singerâs 12-string guitar, which was why it was in his possession at the time âNights in White Satinâ was written. Years later, Hayward would purchase that very guitar from Doneganâs widow.
From a set of satin sheets to an orchestrated masterpiece, âNights in White Satinâ is a psychedelic piece of a larger puzzle. Hayward shared his feelings about the end of a love affair and the beginning of another. We are still feeling it all these years later. Days of Future Passed features ballads, recitations, and orchestral interludes. Itâs hardly your standard pop music album.
Cold-hearted orb that rules the night / Removes the colors from our sight / Red is grey and yellow-white / But we decide which is right / And which is an illusion.
https://americansongwriter.com/the-meaning-of-nights-in-white-satin-by-the-moody-blues/
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SoooooâŚyouâre going to ignore Dvorakâs folk classical and attachment to landâŚ
Yes I amâŚas I have no idea what that is.
Nor do I think that it would change my mind in any way.
Youâre completely and utterly wrong and I am satisfied with the fact that I am right in this instance.
SoâŚyou may as well just give up on your ridiculous notion and find something else to debate/argue about 
I do love the youâre wrong, Iâm right stance.
Because reasons, shut up.
But listen to Isobel and listen to Nights and tell me theyâre different genres.
Itâs not about meaning. Itâs not about lyrics.
Itâs about musical style.
And I feel you think itâs an insult, which isâŚweird, because itâs definitely not.
Itâs not an insultâŚItâs just a result of your over active imagination.
In the 57+ years since itâs release, you are probably the first (and only) person to come up with such a ridiculous description of the song.
This is Gilmour vs Water magnified to the nth degree.
There is absolutley nothingâŚzilchâŚzeroâŚnadaâŚthat will in any way sway towards your view of this.
So just quit while youâre so far behind.
I meanâŚthatâs just mean.
I preferred it when you stuck with Iâm right, youâre wrong.
Iâve givenâŚseveral, diverse, legitimate arguments.
None of which youâve addressed.
You have indeed given several diverse argumentsâŚnone of which are accurate so theyâre also not legitimate.
Throw as many of your fantasy theories at me as you likeâŚin this instance youâre just wrong!
Nights in White Satin could be legitimately described as Prog Rock, just plain Rock (as in a rock ballad)âŚeven Psychedelic RockâŚbut itâs a rock song.
Now go away before I send you a David Gilmour album.