The syncopation in the drums and guitars on this recording, along with its brisk tempo make it a dance track. This is reinforced by the rhythmic contrast between verse and chorus, with the Latin-clave-like syncopated snare of the verses giving way to urgent clapping on every beat in the chorus. The rhythm arrangement mirrors the underlying imperative of the quest narrative structure, which creates a peak of excitement through each chorus's excursion away from the home territory. Though the vocal sits atop the sound-mass—as is the case with virtually all pop and rock recordings up to 1966-it functions more as party-maker ('I know.' 'C’mon,' baby, the goodwill of the songs title) than Costello's combination of image and emotion. Though the feeling is more participatory than in the Costello track, the quest narrative form navigates us through the peaks and troughs of intensity.
In their brevity, the sketches above ignore some important musical phenomena. Instrumentation, arrangement and timbre are taken into account, but more concentration on these aspects might yield very differently nuanced results. Also, instrumentation, harmony and musical gesture go a long way towards defining musical style. We might describe the Costello track as country rock, and the Kinks track as beat-group rock 'n' roll. Entirely different analytical threads might be pursued along these lines that are beyond the scope of this paper.
Three categories of non-narrative rock song structure
Judy Lochhead calls upon unpublished writings of Leo Trietler for a general definition of form:
In a chapter titled "The Shape of Time", he defines form as "the organization of periods of time with change and the effect of change," (Trietler 1976). Form, then, concerns the organizational relations of parts to other parts and of parts to whole, such relationships obtaining among units of a relatively moderate to long duration. (Lochhead 1992: 133)
Helpfully broad, applicable not only to music but to any form which is time-based, the emphasis on 'change and the effect of change' reminds us of the inescapability of the experience of time-based forms as linear. In response to this, and what she terms the 'Aristotelian principles of tragedy: specifically, a temporal form should have a beginning, middle, and end,' Lochhead suggests that 'discussions of form in general and analyses of specific formal instances often do not account for the "building-up" of a whole by the accumulation of parts' (Lochhead 1992: 135). She calls this 'forming,' or
PORTAL, vol. 8, no. 1, January
