Saturday Night Fever
*albums in response to the death of George Floyd*
Let's talk popularity not sales. The yardstick, or measuring device of pop music has pretty much always been Billboard, so your awards ceremony features The Beatles, The Supremes, and the Beegees. Today is my day of thoughtful meditation, so i'm a day late and a couple hundred thousand dollars short. I guess you could say i had my own Saturday Night Fever (that's a reference to the suburban child on fire on the cover of Bad Religion's Suffer). I also can't pass up the 21 Pilots joke by reminding you that i told Barry Gibb to stay in his lane after he mangled my actual favorite mash up of half finished Lennon-McCartney songs, A Day in the Life. For years i misinterpreted that song on purpose, i thought Lennon was talking about some unexplained psychic phenomenon in Lancashire where people thought they were witnessing holes in the fabric of reality. I knew he was talking about potholes in the road, but i like a good absurdist thought experiment probably more than anyone. So, let's listen to the only disco album physically preserved by the Library of Congress as a significant cultural artifact. Sometimes truth is stranger than fiction, thanks Greg!
Some history, the Beegees were a serious British band that came out of the Skiffle scene and rose to international popularity (like all the 50s british kids of that era). Their harmony and Barry's falsetto came straight out of R&B, and since they were super popular, they tried to keep up with the times and gradually morphed into disco like everyone else. They were over in France working on their next album when some movie guys interrupted them to get music for their gritty urban tribal coming of age story. They loved the stuff the Brothers Gibb had already recorded and only asked that they amp up the disco on a couple more tracks. The official Beegees statement about it is that they kind of felt like they lost an album by making that deal. They didn't even know the basic plot of the movie and said no at first. Travolta said he was dancing to Stevie Wonder and Boz Skaggs (neither of whom particularly wanted their music appearing in this film).
Do i like the Beegees? Meh, not particularly. Barry doesn't crack the top 5 of my goofy white guy falsetto list.
Are the Beegees' songs on this soundtrack phenomenal? Yes, absolutely. Say to yourself, i'm going to listen to the Beegees. Man, this is good stuff.
What about the rest of the album?
Some works, some doesn't. A Fifth of Beethoven is pretty classic, Night on Disco Mountain is borderline. The contrast of wedding reception funk and overly dramatic orchestral writing is actually perfect for the themes of the movie itself, but the innards of the pieces are clumsy and boring. Great idea, mediocre execution.
Kool & the Gang's Open Sesame might rub you the wrong way, but we're already up to our necks in potentially crocodile infested waters with what look like bizarrely buoyant bricks covered in plastic wrap floating everywhere, so maybe we just skip that one tonight. We came here to dance out our frustrations not have an actual knife fight, a la West Side Story.
As Jim Henson so aptly put it, dance your cares away, worries for another day, let the music play, clap clap, down in Fraggle Rock. We're still a decade away from whatever town made that illegal in Footloose (based on Elmore City, Oklahoma if you didn't know that useless trivia).
Context is everything. We live in a postmodern world, and that means we have to define it as part of every conversation. My context is i'm a dork in nowheresville hiding in my basement ragging on records. Much as in pains me to say it, this is a good soundtrack. I don't want to listen to it 25 more times, but it gives some much needed context to that gastrointestinal discomfort of Sgt. Pepper.
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Some history, the Beegees were a serious British band that came out of the Skiffle scene and rose to international popularity (like all the 50s british kids of that era). Their harmony and Barry's falsetto came straight out of R&B, and since they were super popular, they tried to keep up with the times and gradually morphed into disco like everyone else. They were over in France working on their next album when some movie guys interrupted them to get music for their gritty urban tribal coming of age story. They loved the stuff the Brothers Gibb had already recorded and only asked that they amp up the disco on a couple more tracks. The official Beegees statement about it is that they kind of felt like they lost an album by making that deal. They didn't even know the basic plot of the movie and said no at first. Travolta said he was dancing to Stevie Wonder and Boz Skaggs (neither of whom particularly wanted their music appearing in this film).
Do i like the Beegees? Meh, not particularly. Barry doesn't crack the top 5 of my goofy white guy falsetto list.
Are the Beegees' songs on this soundtrack phenomenal? Yes, absolutely. Say to yourself, i'm going to listen to the Beegees. Man, this is good stuff.
What about the rest of the album?
Some works, some doesn't. A Fifth of Beethoven is pretty classic, Night on Disco Mountain is borderline. The contrast of wedding reception funk and overly dramatic orchestral writing is actually perfect for the themes of the movie itself, but the innards of the pieces are clumsy and boring. Great idea, mediocre execution.
Kool & the Gang's Open Sesame might rub you the wrong way, but we're already up to our necks in potentially crocodile infested waters with what look like bizarrely buoyant bricks covered in plastic wrap floating everywhere, so maybe we just skip that one tonight. We came here to dance out our frustrations not have an actual knife fight, a la West Side Story.
As Jim Henson so aptly put it, dance your cares away, worries for another day, let the music play, clap clap, down in Fraggle Rock. We're still a decade away from whatever town made that illegal in Footloose (based on Elmore City, Oklahoma if you didn't know that useless trivia).
Context is everything. We live in a postmodern world, and that means we have to define it as part of every conversation. My context is i'm a dork in nowheresville hiding in my basement ragging on records. Much as in pains me to say it, this is a good soundtrack. I don't want to listen to it 25 more times, but it gives some much needed context to that gastrointestinal discomfort of Sgt. Pepper.
Next
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