Showing posts with label Bee Gees. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Bee Gees. Show all posts

Monday, May 21, 2012

1968: The psychedelic Bee Gees


From 1968 and West German television . . . the Bee Gees no one remembers today -- the psychedelic brothers Gibb.

Here now is the title track from their "Idea" LP.
Enjoy.

Robin Gibb, 1949-2012


The thing about the Bee Gees was this: Even if you were young and opinionated in the late 1970s -- a foot soldier in the "Disco Sucks" army, even -- you had to acknowledge just how damned good the brothers were.

Because you remembered this song, among others the brothers Gibb -- Robin, Barry and Maurice -- had recorded. You had loved those pop-music classics first heard through a little earphone and eight transistors, classics that lived in the grooves of the soundtrack album of your life. Soon enough, you would realize that the brothers' disco-era incarnation was part of that soundtrack, too.

And you were OK with that. Quality endures, even though the earthly body does not. Not Maurice's. And now, not Robin's.

May he rest in peace, along with all the stilled voices of my youth.

Monday, January 10, 2011

Simply '70s: The sounds of '75


Nineteen seventy-five.

That was the year the final results were tallied . . . and we didn't Whip Inflation Now. This despite getting nifty little orange-and-white buttons at the supermarket the year before.

The first full year of the Ford Administration, though, was one that saw us glued to the radio, even though the price of both glue and radios was up.

On the other hand, after the initial audio-visual investment, hanging on every funky note played by folks like Billy Preston -- once known as "The Fifth Beatle" -- was free.



1975 ALSO was the year the Bee Gees were back. Big. With a new upbeat, funkier sound. Little did we know they'd end up being royalty in this new music people were calling "disco."


THERE WAS the lovely Yvonne Elliman, too. Wasn't she the gal who did "I Don't Know How to Love Him" on the "Jesus Christ Superstar" soundtrack?

Anyway, she was on
Soundstage with the Bee Gees. Here. she's doing her killer cover of Blind Faith's "I Can't Find My Way Home."


MEANWHILE, over on "Loose Radio" (or KQ-98 . . . or WRNO . . . or WNEW . . . or . . . well, you get the picture) there was this little thing by Lynyrd Skynyrd that, soon enough, would be a battle cry -- and the song we bugged the crud out of disc jockeys requesting late at night.

This performance was from the
BBC series, The Old Grey Whistle Test.

All together now . . . FREEEEEEEEE BIIIIRRRRRRRRRD!