DON'T FORGET TO REMEMBER: The Official ILM Track-By-Track BEE GEES 1968-1981 Listening Thread

Track No. 41: When the Swallows Fly ("Idea", 1968)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UBMJBG8yzjA

Not one to be outdone by Robin in the soaring melodrama department, Barry decides that the best way to complement the intro's magisterial piano arpeggios (courtesy of Maurice) is by quoting Wordsworth and then moving on to deliver an impassioned vocal about an isolated, tragic protagonist that's closer to R&B and gospel that's a bit outside Robin's standard wheelhouse. Another Barry ballad that isn't hard to imagine in the hands of Otis Redding or Mavis Staples (ok maybe the lyric is a little weird for either of them but still). The backing harmonies and swelling strings are expertly deployed, ebbing and flowing with each verse right through to the ending's triumphal plagal cadence.

welcome back!

Excellent track.

More than anything, I'm impressed that the Bee Gees had the promotional budget in 1968 to make all these promo videos... somebody had to paint a lot of swallows for that clip.

Track No. 42: I Have Decided to Join the Airforce ("Idea", 1968)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mzWwtAu_J8c

In the vein of Pink Floyd's "Corporal Clegg" or the Kinks' "Tin Soldier Man", in my opinion this fairly silly military nostalgia cosplay song/character sketch achieves a little bit of added depth when it swerves into minor-key territory on the middle eight. Accompanied by a time change that switches from a stiff march to a standard 4/4, the "don't ask me why/it's my mind and it's right/don't ask me why/it's my life/it's better, it's better than being alone/alone on the ground" adds an eerie quality that undercuts the otherwise child-like arrangement and delivery. Another in a long line of Robin's misty-eyed fantasies of the bygone British empire.

These clips were shot for German TV, so I assume they were paying for it. (xp) Is that Stanley Kubrick at the start there?

Anyway, this sounds like the Beatles again. Or the Idle Race - who sound like the Beatles. It's a pity Geir's not around, this is right up his street.

I don't hear the Beatles so much in this one beyond the fact that so much of everything in 1968 sounded like the Beatles. But the Bee Gees approach to orchestration is a little different, more ornate...? The Gibbs really loved their harps and bells and whistles and trumpets just as a general all purpose approach during this period, whereas the Beatles would deploy that stuff a bit more selectively.

"Airforce" is probably my most frequently-occurring earworm since hearing Idea last month. For better or worse. I've also foisted it on others for "guess who this is!" type fun. That "better than being alone/alone on the ground" section is ridiculously affecting somehow.

Pretty blatant yellow submarine ripoff homage at 0:44 in that video.

Also, yep, that looks like Stanley Kubrick:
https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&source=images&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=2ahUKEwjgtPnZ9e7gAhWtc98KHXyJCvcQjRx6BAgBEAU&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.goldenglobes.com%2Fperson%2Fstanley-kubrick&psig=AOvVaw3aqchSbW1C4YVlhe5IQuxn&ust=1552009922317713

Huh, I guess I still have no idea how to post images/videos on this site:
https://www.goldenglobes.com/sites/default/files/styles/portrait_medium/public/people/cover_images/stanley_kubrick.jpg?itok=_cGDj1lV&c=f23a63dc960c0657d00358e974a41cbf

In the vein of Pink Floyd's "Corporal Clegg" or the Kinks' "Tin Soldier Man"...

... Bowie, "The Little Bombardier"... Idle Race, "(Don't Put Your Boys In The Army) Mrs. Ward"...

glad this thread is back, i've missed it

Track No. 43: I Started a Joke ("Idea", 1968)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oyS34v09zso
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Vo5M-CdNd8

What to say about this song? Ostensibly Robin's first real masterpiece, it's so good I had to post two videos, one from the Idea TV special and another live rendition from the same year. It's concise construction is a marvel, from the opening descending bass run and Melouney's delicate filigrees over one of the most common chord progressions in Western music through to Robin's quavering melody and the gradual introduction of orchestral elements in the bridge, which is where the song really takes off and becomes something unique. For all their Beatle-isms (and you can definitely hear echoes of McCartney in Maurice's bass part), here the band is doing something the Beatles never really bothered with: the pop song as operatic tragedy. The chamber pop trappings and Robin's vibrato are key to putting over the self-pity at the song's core, where one's personal failings and disasters are blown up into world-shattering proportions. I like to think of it as being sung from the point of view of Adolf Hitler.

I love it. Robin sings as if he construed the title as "I Am the Joke."

I passively absorbed this song during childhood (this was apparently their first number #1 single in Aus) but it took Low's cover, maybe twenty years ago, for me to reinvestigate the original and the Bee Gees generally. I barely remember that cover now but I was suddenly all "OMG, what's going on in those lyrics!?"

I still like the idea that this song is sung from Lucifer's perspective.

or yeah, Hitler works too. but the Devil is less icky

Track No. 44: Kilburn Towers ("Idea", 1968)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m8n8S4HsArI

A lovely little deep cut, and a primarily Barry-led effort that dips into a kind of breathy bossa nova territory that is maybe best described as "dreamy". The combination of Maurice's mellotron flute, Barry's multi-layered 12-string guitars, and some tasteful accompaniment from Melouney and Petersen (contributing some clean guitar lines and bongos, respectively) make this something of an outlier in their catalog to-date. Lyrically it sounds like Barry was getting drunk in his penthouse apartment and wistfully wondering what it would be like to be a pigeon or a sidewalk. In an odd way, I feel like this melody and its breathy delivery are very much of a piece with their mid-70s output - with a slightly different instrumental arrangement I can imagine it sitting nicely next to the other songs on Mr. Natural or Trafalgar.

Love "Kilburn Towers". Has no-one pointed that the narrator of "I Started a Joke", be it Adolf Hitler or whoever, actually dies in the course of the song?

wracking my brain for whether or not that's unique in their catalog - it might not be!

Song rules. I love that stretch where the lead guitar and the strings are playing the melody together.

kilburn towers is one of the few i knew before this thread started, probably tipped to it on ilx, fucking amazing song

Track No. 45: Swan Song ("Idea", 1968)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I1NrPRui87A

Actually the last song recorded for "Horizontal" and in the running for a single release but ultimately passed over in favor of "Words", which - to be honest - this bears more than a passing resemblance to. The overall structures and arrangement are similar, Barry latching onto a winding melody which then just repeats throughout with embellishments and variations from the orchestra. One of several songs with a theme of escape/things ending, possibly presaging further internal tensions with "Odessa" and the subsequent breakup. Overall I find this song just okay - the melody is serviceable - but nothing special, a bit formulaic at this point.

and that's it for "Idea"! We'll cover one more classic non-album single tomorrow before moving on to "Odessa"

Definitely see the resemblance to 'Words' now that you mention it.

I'm pretty impressed by Idea. Might be their most satifying collection of pop songs to this point, which is not really the impression I was left with when I skimmed through early deep cuts in the distant past. Hurray for deeper listening!

From here on it's almost completely alien territory for me...

Track No. 46: I've Gotta Get a Message to You (, 1968)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j17DUw20law

While there were morbid undertones aplenty in British psychedelia, I don't think anyone ventured so consistently for inspiration into the graveyard of gothic melodrama as Robin Gibb. Here a man on death row (possibly for the murder of a rival for his love's affection?) contemplates his last wishes, full of regret and longing while staring into the abyss of his welcoming grave. Barry and Robin trade off on the lead, underpinned by some Gregorian chant-like harmonies on the refrain, and the arrangement makes great use of (again) Maurice's mellotron and the super-compressed piano sound they were so enamored of. Orchestral flourishes and a key change towards the end nicely echo the narrator's growing desperation. This was their first US Top 10 hit(!) and their second UK #1, and taken together with "New York Mining Disaster 1941" and "I Started a Joke" it's clear they were carving out a bit of an ouevre in the doom pop department.

didn't realize above was a fully live version (sounds like Maurice is covering some of the orchestral bits on organ?!)
here's the studio version
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sKzF6TgiIKU

Track No. 47: Odessa ("Odessa", 1969)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_zPjBiN1GJ0

And at last we come to both the apex and terminus of the band's flowery psych period. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the album was considered both a commercial and critical failure at the time, a judgment which has of course been largely reversed in posterity. This titular opening track continues Robin's trajectory as the writer with the most consistent, fully-formed aesthetic - an aesthetic that both gets them farther away from the Beatle-isms and pushes them into relatively unique and uncharted territory. Here we get the Bee Gees version of a "pocket symphony", complete with a noisy intro, an overture, two verses interspersed with choruses that slow down the tempo, and a coda, all wrapped around a 19th century romantic tragedy maritime narrative. Lyrically the overall picture is a bit unclear but it is filled with compelling imagery - the shipwreck, the lonely surviving sailor carving an iceberg, the abandoned (and perhaps unfaithful?) wife. Geographically it's a mess and it is not at all clear what exactly connects Finland, Odessa and England in the story, but whatever. The arrangement is thick and lush, anchored by an acoustic guitar that provides the overall song structure, with Robin's voice swimming through what I can only assume is the deepest echo chamber in the UK at the time. A beautifully weird song.

This song is completely insane.

I came here just to say that.

I have to say the first time I heard this album, and this song in particular, I just did not get it. Mostly because I was expecting something else more in line with other British psych opuses of the time that tended to be more electric guitar and r&b derived. But this was just too weird and mannered and wimpy.

I came around, to say the least.

It's a weird wonder, and listening to it for the first time inspired Gibb list last year.

To its credit, it still sounds mannered and wimpy.

finally a record I actually own! will give side 1 a spin this evening

I might skip the instrumentals on this tbh. They always seem like the equivalent of side 2 of the Yellow Submarine soundtrack to me.

and I don't think any of them feature a Bee Gee except for Maurice's piano on one of them

yeah, i'd say go ahead and skip whatever you feel would be best to skip. there's always time to come back around to the missed stuff later!

the first bee gees song i got into was "every christian lion-hearted man will show you". the second was "odessa". mostly i think it's that i sort of have a thing for the mellotron...

robin's greatest, i think

The instrumentals are crucial to the album imo

since I assume we're not going to talk about it itt, just wanted to mention that something from Robin's Reign should really be used in a horror soundtrack at some point. maybe that new Ari Aster joint could make it happen.

Odessa - album that deserves a 33 1/3 book?

The picture in the gatefold...

robin's greatest, i think

"Black Diamond" coming up, though.

"Lamplight" kills, too

weird and mannered and wimpy

Ladies and gentlemen, Robin Gibb *applause*

Robin was tough, you gotta be to sing "Black Diamond" the way he does.

Track No. 48: You'll Never See My Face Again ("Odessa", 1969)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RFQ5yndB8WY

Barry delivers an uncharacteristically bitter broadside. The incongruity of the instrumentation and vocal delivery to the lyrical sentiment tends to make certain lines leap out ("it makes me laugh/you've got no friends", for example). I don't think any of the Bee Gees were particularly suited to conveying anger via song. That being said, there's lots of nice countermelodies in the orchestration, and for such a rich production the arrangement doesn't feel fussy or cluttered - just Barry, some multi-tracked 12-strings, and the orchestra, Melouney and Pedersen thankfully absent. The opening of this song always makes me mix it up with "Sinking Ships" from Horizontal.

just Barry, some multi-tracked 12-strings, and the orchestra

I like that for this era of the Bee Gees, this actually counts as "stripped down"

haha yeah

for half a second I considered making an argument that this album isn't so much their "Sgt Pepper" (as is sometimes claimed) as much as it is their White Album

double album, band is starting to seriously fray, a bunch of weird genre exercises

member quits halfway through, goofy country song, iconic sleeve design

no massive avant-garde noize jam tho