This is an interesting poll. The Bee Gees were never really an albums-orientated band, with the exception of Odessa and maybe Bee Gees' 1st.
I used to really prize the 1975-79 disco era and the one-two punch of Saturday Night Fever and Spirits Having Flown. As an EP/mini-LP consisting of the Gibb-penned tunes, the former would easily rank among the best in pop history, but some of the instrumental filler on the whole set drags it down. Spirits is generally excellent, but the relentless onslaught of the mechanical falsetto makes it a hard listen IMO. These days I would not rank it as their finest album.
The baroque pop of the sixties is gorgeous when it's done right (To Love Somebody, Massachusetts, I Started a Joke, Words, Spicks & Specks, etc) and it's often counterbalanced by oddball numbers. It's oft-forgotten now, but the Bee Gees were a truly weird band, especially in their earlier days. There's this Victorian mentality in a lot of their earlier work which evokes the image of "dear old Blighty", a lost, provincial England that was rapidly fading away.(c.f. I Have Decided to Join the Airforce, House of Lords, Sir Geoffrey Saved the World) Sometimes, their portrayal of England could be even more archaic (the Cucumber Castle album/TV special, the album cover/gatefold of Trafalgar. Their musical influences were often drawn from v. old sources as well; there is a distinct Elgarian flavour in Odessa, another album whose concept was set in times long past.
It's weird to think that a band that sang about English country gentlemen and 19th century disasters at sea would go on to be the poster boys for the coked-out, American disco culture of the late 1970s. Of all the groups in the world, why this one?
Main Course was the true turning point, when they applied their considerable pop-composition skills to the R&B sound that was growing up in Miami. "Nights on Broadway", "Jive Talkin'" and "Winds of Change" are all excellent and funky songs, but you also have the weirder, older Bee Gee style not far behind. "Fanny, Be Tender with My Love" (oh what fun you could have rearranging the words in this title... did anyone still call their kids 'Fanny' in 1975?) and the oddball number "All This Making Love" are evidence of this too.
By Children of the World, the offbeat Bee Gees would mostly be phased out, so Main Course is the only album where their two distinct periods collide in such a fashion. Not to mention it's an excellent album in and of itself. I give it my vote.
I'm wondering: what was the attitude to the Bee Gees' earlier hits during the Saturday Night Fever era? Were the old singles like "To Love Somebody" and "New York Mining Disaster" played more often due to their resurgence? Were the old, commercially-dud albums brought out of the warehouses and put on sale again?
I love the thought of some coked-up disco fiend sitting down with their new copy of Odessa or To Whom It May Concern and thinking "wtf?"
My parents owned exactly two Bee Gees albums: Trafalgar and Saturday Night Fever. Made for some very confused listening on my part.
Wait, three if you count the Sgt. Pepper debacle.
― hashtag sizzler (Phil D.), Friday, 7 June 2013 01:21 (ten years ago) link
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