Following the massive success of Saturday Night Live , the Brothers Gibb stumbled through the Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band film and soundtrack before releasing Spirits Having Flown, the #1 album featuring three #1 singles in "Too Much Heaven", "Tragedy" and "Love You Inside Out". Magazine ads declared it "the record the world's been waiting for", and while that may have been true, some critics were less than impressed.
In his review for Rolling Stone Stephen Holden cautioned record buyers
"not a single composition has the ethereal propulsion of "Stayin' Alive," "Night Fever" or "More than a Woman." "Tragedy," the new record's fastest dance number, is a minimelodrama that gallops along on a bed of synthesized lava, with a chorus of bleating seraphs cleaved midway by a thunderbolt. While the gimmickry is clever and the tune irresistible, the whole thing's a bit too self-conscious to take off."
The Village Voice's Robert Christgau agreed in his review, grading the album a B-:
I admire the perverse riskiness of this music, which neglects disco bounce in favor of demented falsetto abstraction, less love-man than newborn-kitten. And I'm genuinely fond of many small moments of madness here, like the way the three separate multitracked voices echo the phrase "living together." But obsessive ornamentation can't transform a curiosity into inhabitable music, and there's not one song here that equals any on the first side of Saturday Night Fiver.
Spirits Having Flown is very much Barry Gibb's record. Consider the single "Too Much Heaven", a bit of a "How Deep is Your Love " re-tread. There are 27 vocal tracks here. Barry is by himself on 18 of them, providing triple tracked high falsetto lead vocals, triple tracked normal lead vocals and 12 harmony tracks. The brothers join in on the remaining nine tracks.
Producers agree Robin Gibb was around quite a bit but Maurice was absent from the sessions more than any other Bee Gees album. He was drinking quite a bit and dealing with severe back pains. Most of his bass parts were recorded by a session musician. Maurice wouldn't get completely sober until after he had pulled a gun on his wife and kids in 1991.
I'm not sure how a music snob can justify naming a Bee Gees smash my favorite song of the year, but "Night Fever" has topped my list. It must be something deeply buried in my cortex because it has nothing to do with the chorus ( "night fever, night fever, we know how to do it") and the wah wah guitar in the bridge. I spent most of 1978 as a long haired, too tall and too skinny 14 year old who rarely attended dances at his boarding school. When my parents played the first side of the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack and tried to get me to dance, I bolted from the room. But if I closed my eyes on a Saturday night, I could imagine astonishing my classmates with my Travolta like disco moves.
Nah, never happen.
The Big Hits
Bee Gees Night Fever
Rolling Stones Miss You
Gerry Rafferty Baker Street
Robert Palmer Every Kinda People
The Babys Isn't It Time
Disco
This was a new discovery: a disco song by art rocker Arthur Russell with guitar lines contributed by David Byrne.
Dinosaur : Kiss Me Again
Chic Le Freak
Heatwave The Groove Line
Cheryl Lynn Got To Be Real
Sylvester You Make Me Feel Mighty Real
The Jacksons Blame It on the Boogie
Power Pop + New Wave
Wings : Backwards Traveller
A 69 second McCartney throw away. But I like this half finished, pure shot of inspiration on the otherwise bland London Town.
Tom Petty + the Heartbreakers Listen to Her Heart
Cheap Trick Surrender
The Motors Airport
Chris Stamey + the dB's (I Thought) You Wanted to Know
Jules and the Polar Bears : You Just Don't Want to Know
The more I hear this one, the more I like it. Jules Shear would eventually make a name for himself on MTV and as a songwriter but this early tune is my favorite of his.
Nick Lowe I Love the Sound of Breaking Glass
NRBQ Green Lights
The Records Starry Eyes
The Cars Just What I Needed
New York City
Television : Days
Gorgeous song I've loved for decades and decades. Gah! I'm getting old.
Talking Heads Take Me To The River
Johnny Thunders (You Can't Put Your Arms Around A ) Memory
Lou Reed Street Hassle
Blondie Hanging on the Telephone
Ramones I Just Want to Have Something to Do
Bruce Springsteen Prove It All Night
UK Critical Faves
Magazine : Shot By Both Sides
DeVoto had something to prove with his first solo single since leaving the Buzzcocks, taking nothing but his awful haircut and a guitar riff the Buzzcocks would also use in "Lipstick".
The Jam Down in the Tube Station at Midnight
The Clash (White Man) in Hammersmith Palais
Siouxsie + the Banshees Hong Kong Garden
The Buzzcocks Ever Fallen in Love
Elvis Costello : I Don't Want to go to Chelsea
In which the Attractions show why they may be the best backing band in the world. They deserved songwriting credit for the way they made these songs jump out of the speakers.
Bryan Ferry Sign of the Times
Devo Gut Feeling/Slap Your Mammy
The Undertones Teenage Kicks
The Saints Know Your Product
Discovered This Year
Be Bop Deluxe : Panic in the World
From the final Be Bop Deluxe album, a catchy should-a-been hit.
Kleenex Ain't You
Radio Birdman Aloha Steve and Danno
The Wipers Better Off Dead
Ultravox Slow Motion
The B-52's : Rock Lobster (DB Records version)
I like this original version better. See! my snobbery is coming back.
Shoes Tomorrow Night (Bomp! Records version)
Embarrassed to Admit
Journey : Lights
I grew up in San Francisco so this is a sentimental favorite.
Suzi Quatro + Chris Norman Stumblin' In
Billy Joel Rosalinda's Eyes
The Doobie Brothers What a Fool Believes
Todd Rundgren Can We Still Be Friends
And then...
Rolling Stones : Shattered
To be cranked on headphones whilst walking down the avenues of NYC when your life is in tatters.
Kraftwerk The Model
Warren Zevon Lawyers Guns and Money
Bryan Ferry Carrickfergus
BONUS :
A list of the most played 1978 songs on my computer (number of plays)
Bee Gees Night Fever 19
Bryan Ferry Take Me to the River 13
Magazine Shot By Both Sides
Paul McCartney Backwards Traveler
Al Di Meola Mediterranean Sundance 12
Blondie Hanging on the Telephone 11
Ramones I Just Want to Have Something to Do
Talking Heads The Good Thing
The Saints A Minor Aversion 10
Blondie Heart of Glass 9
Bryan Ferry What Goes On
Bryan Ferry Sign of the Times
Rolling Stones Miss You
The Saints This Perfect Day
The Babys Isn't It Time 8
Bryan Ferry Carrickfergus
Devo Gut Feeling/Slap Your Mammy
Gerry Rafferty Baker Street
Kate Bush Wuthering Heights
The Only Ones Another Girl/Another Planet
Pere Ubu Non Alignment Pact
Shoes Tomorrow Night
On February 25, 1978 Barry Gibb had a very good week. His band, The Bee Gees, has the #1 song on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, "Stayin' Alive". Their last #1 hit, "How Deep Is Your Love" was still in the Top 10. Their next #1 hit, "Night Fever", was already at #8. The song Barry had written with his younger brother, Andy Gibb, "(Love is) Thicker Than Water" was one week away from hitting #1. And the song he and brother Robin Gibb had written for Samantha Sang and for which he provided backing vocals,"Emotion", was climbing the charts at #5 on its way to peaking at #3. The Saturday Night Fever soundtrack was on top of the U.S. album charts from January through July.
And Barry wasn't done. By the end of the summer Frankie Valli would take the Gibb-written "Grease" to #1 as well.
1 STAYIN’ ALIVE –•– Bee Gees (RSO)
2 (Love Is) THICKER THAN WATER –•– Andy Gibb (RSO)
3 JUST THE WAY YOU ARE –•– Billy Joel (Columbia)
4 SOMETIMES WHEN WE TOUCH –•– Dan Hill (20th Century)
5 EMOTION –•– Samantha Sang
6 DANCE, DANCE, DANCE (Yowsah, Yowsah, Yowsah) –•– Chic
7 WE ARE THE CHAMPIONS / WE WILL ROCK YOU –•– Queen
8 NIGHT FEVER –•– Bee Gees (RSO)
9 LAY DOWN SALLY –•– Eric Clapton (RSO)
10 HOW DEEP IS YOUR LOVE –•– Bee Gees (RSO)
On November 15, 1977, a full month before the movie came out in theaters, RSO Records released the soundtrack to Saturday Night Fever. The first side of the double album would be inescapable in the year that followed. I first heard the soundtrack at a dinner party given my some friends of my father and the woman who would become my second step mother. They were in the first giddy months of their affair, and she actually thought I'd want to dance in these people's living room. It was only the first time I would disappoint her and my father.
Perhaps the same scene was happening in 15 million other living rooms?
Susin Shapiro wrote the review for Rolling Stone, which still stand up to day
While the soundtrack for Saturday Night Fever is generally uninteresting, the Bee Gees are an exception. The brothers Gibb not only have the best falsettos in the business, but also the keenest sense of disco's potential for transcendence. The Bee Gees have everything going for them: lyrics that don't insult, a band that can open up and utilize each and every electric and/or acoustic possibility without sounding overproduced, great harmonies, superb dance music. Indeed, "You Should Be Dancing" comes as close to disco perfection as anything I've heard, save perhaps Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes' "Bad Luck" and Labelle's "Lady Marmalade." The Bee Gees are very busy on Saturday Night Fever. They perform six of their own songs (four new, two old) and wrote the record's only other worthwhile track, "If I Can't Have You," sung by Yvonne Elliman, who sounds authentically resonant enough to give it the necessary poignancy.
Generally, however, this double album is irritating when it's supposed to be exciting, funny when it's supposed to be dramatic. "Night on Disco Mountain," adapted by David Shire (who did most of the scoring) from Mussorgsky's Night on Bald Mountain, is but one example of high hilarity, while K.C. and the Sunshine Band, Tavares and MFSB are better represented by their own LPs. Though Saturday Night Fever is more dross than gloss, it winds up being saved by the grace of the Bee Gees. God bless 'em.
From Billboard:
An all-star lineup, spearheaded by the Bee Gees, join forces on this two-record soundtrack from the forthcoming flick starring John Travolta. The Bee Gees perform on six tunes including its fast-rising "How Deep Is Your Love" while penning five new ones, one performed by Yvonne Elliman. The other contributors are Tavares, K.C. & the Sunshine Band, the Trammps, Kool and the Gang, Walter Murphy, Ralph McDonald, M.F.S.B. and David Shire. The music contains something for everyone, from disco to soft jazzy instrumentals to out and out boogie to ballads and rockers. Singularly, the Bee Gees are the standouts and nucleus, yet collectively this album is filled with bundles of talent. Best cuts: "How Deep Is Your Love," "Staying Alive," "If I Can't Have You," "More Than A Woman," "Night Fever," "Boogie Shoes."
Our pal Robert Christgau gave the soundtrack a B+ review.
So you've seen the movie -- pretty good movie, right? -- and decided that this is the disco album that you're going to try. Well, I can't blame you. The Bee Gees side is pop music at a new peak of irresistible silliness, with the former Beatle clones singing like mechanical mice with an unnatural sense of rhythm. And the album climaxes on a par-tee even non-discoids can get into, beginning with the best of David Shire's "additional music," then switching almost imperceptibly to something tolerable by MFSB and revving into all 10:52 of the Trammps' magnificent "Disco Inferno." But I find the other two sides unlistenable, mostly because the rest of Shire's additions are real soundtrack-quality stuff -- he even discofies Moussorgsky without making a joke of it (compare Walter Murphy on side two). And there's one more problem. While you're deciding to buy this record, so is everyone you know. You're gonna get really sick of it. Maybe you should Surprise Your Friends and seek out Casablanca's Get Down and Boogie instead.
Bee Gees drummer Dennis Byron witnessed the beginning of The Helium Years during the recording of the Main Course track "Nights On Broadway". The brothers Gibb liked singing around the same mic .
Whenever they were together -- especially around a mic--it was like comedy central. They were good at impersonations and could pretty much do anybody. As they were rehearsing the vocals on "Nights on Broadway", they broke into a mad five minutes. They started singing in strange voices and making strange faces. It was hilarious; everybody in the control room was in stiches.
Suddenly Arif (Marden, producer) stopped the tape. "Barry, I have an idea. Try singing the chorus in falsetto."
Karl rewound the tape and Barry started singing in that high voice: "Blaming it all". Robin and Maurice joined in, and we all had chills. Barry was reluctant to change his style of singing at first, but Arif encouraged him. "Experiment with your voice, take it places it's never been."
When we got home that night we played the rough mix of "Nights On Broadway" into the early hours. This was a hit.
"Nights On Broadway" peaked at #7 in the US. Candi Staton's 1977 cover reached No. 6 in the UK.
1 3 JIVE TALKIN’ –•– The Bee Gees (RSO) (1 week at #1)
2 2 I’M NOT IN LOVE –•– 10 c.c. (Mercury)
3 4 PLEASE MR. PLEASE –•– Olivia Newton-John (MCA)
4 1 ONE OF THESE NIGHTS –•– The Eagles (Asylum)
5 6 SOMEONE SAVED MY LIFE TONIGHT –•– Elton John (MCA)
6 7 MIDNIGHT BLUE –•– Melissa Manchester (Arista)
7 14 RHINESTONE COWBOY –•– Glen Campbell (Capitol)
8 12 WHY CAN’T WE BE FRIENDS –•– War (United Aritsts)
9 15 HOW SWEET IT IS (To Be Loved By You) –•– James Taylor (Warner Brothers)
10 13 THE ROCKFORD FILES –•– Mike Post (MGM)
When Handlebar Mike got back from Vietnam, he enrolled in a radio broadcasting school in Los Angeles and got more than a few pointers from Hogan's Heroes star Bob Crane. On air, he sounds a bit like Gary Owens as he introduces "Under the Boardwalk" from The Drifters followed by Natalie Cole's version of "What A Diff'rence A Day Makes". Handlebar Mike is one of the volunteers at the 100 watt KXPB-FM, 89.1, a one room radio station located just around the corner from the used books for sale at the Wacky Warehouse in Pacific Beach, Washington.
Reverend Wacky outside his store
Pacific Beach is an hour's drive northwest of Kurt Cobain's hometown, Aberdeen. There's not much to it to be honest. But a mile away, there's a pre-fab beach town called Seabrook, which Sunset Magazine recently hailed as an Idea Town.
Everything in Seabrook makes you feel like you're walking on the movie set of a film set in Cape Cod, Quogue or Nag's Head.
In any case, it's nice to run into a few fellow travelers, just here for the music. My wife found her piece of paradise and I found mine.
Here's a rare opportunity to watch an entire episode of Top of the Pops forty years to the day it originally aired. 72 year old Bing Crosby performs. We meet a band we have yet to mention called Smokie. And Sparks gives us the first single off their forthcoming album Indiscreet. Here's a list of the songs played and where they stood in the charts that same week in July.
1. Sweet : Action (UK#17)
2. Typically Tropical : Barbados (UK#2)
3. The Wombles : Superwomble (eventual UK#20)
4. The Bee Gees : Jive Talkin' (UK#11)
5. Sparks : Get in the Swing (UK#46)
6. Linda Lewis It's in His Kiss (UK#13)
7. Smokie : If You Think You Know How to Love Me (UK#16)
8. Roger Whittaker : The Last Farewell (UK#47)
9 . Linda Carr and the Love Squad : Highwire (UK#50)
10. Bing Crosby : That's What Life Is All About ( eventual UK#41)
11. Pan's People : Hamilton Bohannon's Foot Stompin' Music (UK#15)
1. The Bee Gees moved into Eric Clapton's old Miami home, 461 Ocean Boulevard, as they wrote and recorded the songs on Main Course. The Kool and the Gang style chicka-chicka guitar sound was inspired by the sound the car wheels made on the Julia Tuttle Causeway: "As we crossed the bridge, the bridge went 'tickety tickety tickety tick", said Barry Gibb.
2. "We were calling it 'Jive Talkin', " said Maurice Gibb. " But being British, we thought jive was a dance, so the opening line was 'Jive Talkin', you dance with your eyes...' It was [producer] Arif Mardin who said 'Don't you know what jive talk is? He explained that it was black slang for bullshitting, so we changed the lyric to 'Jive Talkin, you're telling me lies".
3. There were two bass lines in "Jive Talkin'", the main one was played with an ARP 2500 synth. Maurice also played bass on the cut. The Bee Gees Biography author David N Meyer wrote the ascending and descending bass lines were borrowed from the Sly Stone produced "You're The One" by Little Sister.
4. By this point in their career The Bee Gees were so cold, RSO execs decided to revive a trick they used to promote "New York Mining Disaster 1941". They released the single to radio stations on a white label. DJ's wouldn't know the name of the artist until they placed the single on the turntable.
5. "Jive Talkin'" b/w "Wind of Change" hit #1 in the US on the week of August 9, 1975. The single peaked at #5 in the UK. Other singles from Main Course, "Nights on Broadway" (US#7) and "Fanny ( Be Tender With My Love)" (US#12) sealed the deal. The Bee Gees were back. Later in the year Rufus featuring Chaka Khan covered "Jive Talkin'".
On February 25, 1974 ( or so the YouTube poster would have us believe) , The Bee Gees performed their new single, "Mr Natural" on The Mike Douglas Show. ( My guess is this happened in late March at the earliest.) In any case it was our first chance to hear what the Bee Gees had been up to since the poorly received Life in a Tin Can.
The title cut may not do much for you but , believe me, the album Mr Natural is worth a listen if only for the soulful single "Dogs" and the rocking "Down the Road" which would also appear on the 1977 live album Here At Last...Bee Gees Live. Recorded in London, with Arif Mardin producing for the first time in what would be a fruitful collaboration , Mr Natural shows the Bee Gees searching for a new sound.
When we did Mr Natural we didn't have a positive direction. We were thrashing about.
-Maurice Gibb
Mr Natural only reached #179 on the Billboard album charts. But The Bee Gees search for a new sound would pay off with the following album, 1975's Main Course , and its three big hits "Jive Talkin'", "Nights on Broadway " and "Fanny ( Be Tender With My Love)".
On June 22, 1973 the Bee Gees hosted The Midnight Special for the second time that yearand performed their singles "Run To Me", "I Gotta Get a Message To You" as well as "Alexander's Ragtime Band" .When they weren't singing they clowned around on stage in an adorable way that might remind you of Beatle antics in Yellow Submarine. ( Yes! They were that animated)
Behind the scenes things weren't quite so fun. Despite going #1 in Hong Kong their single "Saw a New Morning" stalled at #94 in the US. The album Life in a Tin Can peaked at #69 stateside. It would be two years before the brothers Gibb got back on their hit making track with Main Course and "Jive Talkin".
I can't speak for the entire album, but the single "Run To Me" is one of my 5 all time favourite Bee Gees tunes. That's sibling harmony at work.( And to think I probably heard it first on my cassette copy of Here At Last...Bee Gees Live ) I 've also gained an awful lot of respect lately for the way Maurice Gibb played bass. Mo gets to work out his bass quite a bit on the album's sole rocker "Bad Bad Dreams". But I've also heard "Paper Mache, Cabbage and Kings", the fourth track on this album, and it's God awful. So you've been warned not to expect too much from To Whom It May Concern released in October of 1972.
From the 1968 album that included the hit singles "I've Gotta Get a Message to You" and "I Started a Joke" comes a song that may have seemed out of place at the height of the Vietnam War... but when, thanks to the draft, push comes to shove:
I've seen my friends and they all agree/ That it's better than joining the army or going to sea
To be honest I'm trying to figure out what to do with this music blog. I enjoy finding buried treasures from the 60's and 70's but The Rising Storm already does a superb job of that. I could offer a series of songs based on a theme but Star Maker Machine ( which I contribute to) and For The Sake of The Song are both brilliant blogs by people who know far more than I do.
So , for now, I think I will take my cue from my days at my college station where we played anything and everything.
By the way, if you like what you hear let me know. And please buy the record!!!!
