It’s Turntable Tuesday because life is too short not to listen to great music! Turn that TV off! Crank up your local speaker and listen to your favorite music! Summer is flying by and the new vinyl releases just keep coming! Record Store Day just dropped some additional 2021 releases a week ago and I have one that will put a smile on your face. The new one from the Foo Fighters and the “Dee Gees” “Hail Satin” is gonna’ rock Turntable Tuesday.
If you would like to listen to my companion podcast you can listen here or subscribe for free on any of the streaming services you use. My podcast is easily searchable on any streaming service where you get your podcasts by searching “Andrew Talbert.” Look for the World Wide Music Media logo. I’ll talk to you on your mobile device!
It was January of 1978. I had recently graduated from high school and was in the first year of college. As this flashback comes to me I was standing in the Radio Shack in Greenwood, Mississippi with my friend since first grade looking for a resistor to repair my audio receiver that had recently decided to stop working. I had driven over to spend the weekend with him and get a repair as well as go hang as his band played on Saturday night. As I stand there waiting for my friend to dig out the proper part from a stack of electronics parts drawers full of things from Po Sang the “Realistic” store brand speakers start spouting the “Bee Gees” Saturday Night Fever track “Stayin’ Alive.” I cringed a bit as this album was all over the radio stations and everyone was speculating that rock music was dead and disco was the next big thing. Now I was already chasing girls at the discos from Meridian to Memphis dancing to disco music but make no mistake that was only to further my social life. In terms of music I was still buying mostly rock records and listening to all the rock music which was still out there from the southern crescent of the United States to England. My take as a young lad was the Bee Gees were ok but nothing special at the time. In fact it is almost a miracle that the Bee Gees music ended up in the movie as John Travolta was dancing to Stevie Wonder and Boz Scaggs’ music during the early filming from what I read about this time. I was a fan of both of those artists then and especially now.
Now that 2021 has arrived and I have had many decades of music consumption and experiences I really do appreciate the Bee Gees music from this era. The creativity and engineering that went into this record are quite stretching. When you listen to the vocals you almost wonder how they could sing like that. I remember buying the ‘Saturday Night Fever” album about ten years ago just to go back and really listen to the tracks and explore the construction of each track. The Bee Gees popularized falsetto vocals in the United States with their unique approach on this album. Falsetto is the vocal register occupying the frequency range just above the modal voice register and overlapping with it by approximately one octave. I could go on but lets just say there is not much I can say about the original record that is not already in documentaries and books.
What I can say is I lived through the time this music was fresh and now in the month of July 2021 decades later I have a “Dee Gees” album that just puts a smile on my face. I put these tracks on in my listening room, cranked up the volume and just beamed. Wow what a job this band did bringing this music to life so many years later. They played it straight up with very little deviation. They used background singers to fill for some of the instrumentation but man it sounds good. I could not believe Dave could sing those high parts in falsetto but he did it which is not surprising as Dave can do anything he sets his mind to which is part of why I am a fan of his music. The Foo Fighters rock and Dave is one amazing artist who acts like a normal person while doing things most can’t imagine. I’ll leave it there. This album was recorded live on both sides in Dave’s Studio 606 and it sounds great. For a Foo Fighters fan you just flip the album over to get the bonus live FF live tracks. (FF yes…I am not going to say Fooies, these guys rock too hard to be called anything that ends in “ies”) Go check these tracks out as soon as you can. If you feel the urge to go buy a polyester suit just pass and open a couple of the top buttons on your shirt to get the vibe going. This album is great fun and so well done. Love it. Thank you to the Dee Gees!
Don’t forget to check out my companion podcast episode as I dig into the tracks and background for this record.
Until next time I’ll see you, down the road.