Talk:Dallas

The trivia says that this song is in the style of ELP...did the person who wrote this mean ELO (Electric Light Orchestra) instead??? I'm not familiar with ELP, if there is a band by that name. --Duke33 08:57, 16 Nov 2005 (EST)

I saw that and wondered about it too. It could be Emerson, Lake and Palmer...I'm not familiar enough with either of those groups to be sure if it's more likely one than the other. — aliste

Yes, ELP was Emerson, Lake & Palmer... easy to confuse with ELO! The song, however, seems to be in the style of Yes... the very first line seems to be an obviously intended quote of their song (whatever the name of it is) with the refrain "Tell the moondog, tell the March Hare..."

I'm certain the reference to Henry Treece is a joke... but whose?

(Re:elp.org: Now I know how many holes it takes to fill the Albert Hall!)

M. Fudd 2:55 (CST), 25 Nov 2005/03 Dec 2005

This is all I have to say--Somebody at sometime somewhere (not telling)

Yes

I was a big fan of Yes as a kid. When I listened the Dallas/Trees song, I realized it was done in the Yes style. I suppose that's Flansy's falsetto aping Jon Anderson, the mystic-minded lead singer of Yes. The song "We Have Heaven" from the album Fragile is being referenced in the Dallas/Trees lyrics -- "Tell the moon dog, tell the march hare". Also, the guitar and keyboard work in the TMBG song are dead-on imitations of Steve Howe and Rick Wakeman. Yes was one of the artiest of the art rock bands, and it's not hard to believe that it took extra effort for TMBG to "get it right". Yes was notorious for taking three to four times as long as other bands to make an album. Rick Wakeman was classically trained and Steve Howe was voted Guitar Player magazine's "Player of the Year" five years in a row. Their songs were often 10 to 20 minutes long, their sound layered and complex, and their style might be described as "heroic rock/pop" -- characteristics shared with some other 'progressive' bands like ELP and Rush. Dallas/Trees sounds like Yes in the Fragile era, a parody of (or an hommage to) songs lke "Roundabout". Actually, once they throw in the obscure lyrics and the odd stoppages, you know TMBG is on the parody hunt once again with Dallas/Trees. And it cracked me up. Nehushtan

This is very obviously a Yes parody. In my opinion it's derived from three Yes songs:

1. The song "We Have Heaven," which is the tag at the end of their song "Heart of the Sunrise." That song has the same jig-time repetition of the phrase starting with "Tell the moon [...]"
2. The song "Close to the Edge," which, in its introduction, features full-band stoppages, revealing high vocal harmony.
3. The song "A Venture," which has the same rhythm, and cadence of vocals.

-signed: Peedle-eep

Difference?

How can I tell the difference between this and the stuido version? Is there some point in the song where it's really obvious? --Riblet15 16:33, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

In the live version: a little guitar thing at 10 seconds is gone and gives way to a greater keyboard sound, Flans' falsetto is a little more present at the beginning, and the mini-mini-jam around 25 seconds is a little different. Though honestly they seem very very similar to me; I had to listen to each two or three times just now to distinguish which was which. ~ magbatz 16:47, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

Plus, more echo -- DidgeGuy (आ ज)

Trees/Treece again

Still curious about the source of the factoid that this was based on a poem by Henry Treece, since there's no evidence for it otherwise. Could it have been a joke from one of the Johns when they played Dallas? The person who created the 7/17/2004 show page first put it in the day after, so I'm wondering if it was part of the between-song chatter. --Octoflange 05:39, 2 January 2011 (UTC)