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

Track No. 53: Suddenly ("Odessa", 1969)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XAb6-WqmVXI

Maurice takes his first turn at lead vocalist. He sounds a lot like Barry, but with a slightly more resonant, deeper range, and he's also prone to goofy asides ("aw yeah!" + assorted chuckles), a propensity which also crops up in other songs he sings lead on later. While this track is not especially remarkable or mind-blowing I do find it charming for all sorts of reasons - the random oboe, the most PKD Bee Gees lyric ever ("How can you tell humans are real?", ref'd upthread a ways), the rolling bassline, the wordless three-part harmony chorus. Pedersen's drumming is characteristically regrettable but everything else really works. Maurice played such a pivotal if unobtrusive role in the band, I kind of think of him as the equivalent of John Paul Jones in Zeppelin - the multi-instrumentalist "secret weapon" that really glued so much of the material together.

I was gonna get to the Humpy Bong detail a little later but rusho beat me to it :)

Melouney joined Fanny Adams after ditching the Bee Gees, which is only slightly better

honestly, the 60s psych period stuff is great almost in spite of them. From here on out, the boys were able to hire a much higher caliber of sidemen.

i didn't know they lived in chorlton, manchester! - it's where i live. enjoying this thread.

Petersen and the Gibbs attended Humpybong State School in Queensland. ( https://humpybongss.eq.edu.au ) I guess it's possible that the word means something really, really cool in a local indigenous dialect. Or... not.

Aaaaah...

[Buildings from an earlier settlement] were left standing at Redcliffe and it is claimed that the local Aborigines, with a rather nice sense of irony, called the houses 'oompie bong' meaning 'dead house'. The name stuck and the Anglicised 'humpybong' was applied to the whole of the Redcliffe Peninsula.

Track No. 54: Whisper Whisper("Odessa", 1969)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CTOP5ugBiXY

Hard for me to work up much enthusiasm for this one, its apparent sole reason for existing possibly being Barry's interest in having a song that's divided between half-time and double-time sections. Unfortunately, he didn't bother to come up with any other interesting elements to make a decent song. There's no chorus, the verse is a simple melody over two chords interspersed with an instrumental middle 8, and the lyric is garden variety, sexist, "free love" drivel common to the era. The promise of the intro is presumably all Bill Shepherd's doing, creatively orchestrating what is essentially a single chord being strummed for 16 bars, but that peters out once the vocal comes in. The half-time section's drumming is terrible and vocal phrasing feels very forced, although you can hear Maurice trying to make something interesting happening with the two interlocking electric piano parts. When it ultimately shifts to double-time after a typically hamfisted drum fill the vocal melody snaps into focus, but it's still pretty boring, and when the horns come in it's like we're in bumper-music-cue-for-Laugh-In territory. Then we get one more falling-down-the-stairs drum break before the song mercifully cuts out.

that's the last track until next Wednesday fwiw

if i was their record company in 1969, that might have been their last track ever. god that's awful.

Stigwood had way worse shit than that on his label!

I'm finding this one hard to hate. There's enough going on in the arrangement to make this mildly satisfying ear candy despite ropey raw material. I should probably look into Bill Shepherd's broader career.

Wouldn't mind hearing this, tbh.

Don't the Gibb hardcore consider Odessa their best album? Or have i been misinformed?

idk about that. It’s probably their best album from their early period.

Maybe my expectations were set unreasonably low by that intro paragraph, but, lyrics aside, i found that song kinda delightful.
There a certain White Album rawness to Barry's vocal, and i could see this providing some nice variety in the context of a double album.

Track No. 55: Lamplight ("Odessa", 1969)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_7jO7wcHvHE

They only released one single from "Odessa" and much to Robin's dismay, this was not it, and the ensuing bad blood between the brothers led to the group's official (but ultimately temporary) break up. Frankly, I can't fault Robin for feeling slighted, as this tune is definitely a stunner. A few weeks ago I was listening to this in what is probably ideal circumstances, ie blasting on a huge sound system, and when the harmony vocals come in on the chorus it was just incredible, such a rich sound. Compositionally, Robin pulls out all the stop, opening with a regal fanfare and a bit of inexplicable french, then rolling into the pathos-laden verse, betrayed and lonesome once more ("Then I may end/She had things to buy/I close my eyes/Yet I don't know why/I gave her money/said she knew someone/and she said she won't be long"). The strings play counterpoint, the guitars pound underneath, and Robin's vibrato sails overhead, before dropping away for a second verse and building up to a wordless, choral third verse and the trumpets' closing triplets. The chorus, amazing as it is, only occurs twice, but always leave 'em wanting more, I suppose.

this is the best song on Odessa imho, love the almost hymnal opening vox

there is a terrible pun in my post extra points to anyone who spots it

It probably is better than "First of May". Something about the chorus and the overall grandeur brings Eurovision to mind. (Not a dis.)

Yes, there's definitely a very European feel about this song. This is really Robin at his best, a singular talent. I can see why it wasn't released as a single, but then "Eloise" by Barry Ryan reached No. 3 in the UK charts and this is a much more commercial song than that!

Lamplight has always sounded to me like the great lost Aphrodite's Child single. I can totally hear Demis Roussos singing it.

^ YES !!!!

glad we skipped the instrumentals in this, in retrospect

Really there’s just not much to say about them

Sure there is.

Track No. 56: The Sound of Love ("Odessa", 1969)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vjTofeHVQTU

Barry's fast-developing affinity for R&B balladry points the way toward a sound and style they would increasingly explore in the 70s, and this track bears more than a passing resemblance to similar material that would make it onto their post-reunion albums. Lyrically Barry takes a very Robin-esque sad-sack turn here, although he doesn't deliver much in the way of memorable lines or imagery and there's a lot of lazy rhymes. The minor key verses are fine, and the string arrangement does a lot of melodic heavy lifting on an otherwise unremarkable chorus, but where my ears really prick up is at the suspended chords and horn stabs on the coda, which doesn't feel that far from an Isaac Hayes production.

Track No. 57: Give Your Best ("Odessa", 1969)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mEL5epnH5lU

The boys take another stab at the country genre and land a little closer to the mark this time, thanks to a comfortable western swing rhythm, excellent backing from actual American bluegrass session musos (Tex Logan on fiddle and Ben Keith, again, on banjo), and a decent lead vocal melody. The ad libs on the intro are funny if incongruous given that there's no way you could square dance to this, sounds like Barry and Maurice just goofing around, which continues through the track as the boys laugh and whoop it up in the background. While Barry's singing lead the overall feel of this seems very much like Maurice may have been the driving force behind it. I don't detect Robin's presence on this track at all, unless he's there in the backing harmonies somewhere. An enjoyable little genre detour.

Looks like i'm in the minority who prefer First of May to Lamplight, Lamplight is just too Robin and overlong (although i expect there would have been a single edit). I find the voice only end of First of May spooky, is it a deathbed memory? Regardless, Melody Fair was the obvious single so discussion is weird, they made the wrong choice full stop.

also Whisper Whisper is cool but this thread has revealed that Shakes and I are not on the same page Gibbs-wise so no biggy

Fwiw I agree that Melody Fair was the obvious single choice

the instrumentals on Odessa are my favorites

Feel free to elaborate

Track No. 58: I Laugh in Your Face ("Odessa", 1969)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rJRiYmaOA3s

Recorded on the same day as "I've Gotta Get a Message to You", this less coherent but still engaging ballad draws once again on the clown and circus imagery that repeatedly pops up in both Barry and Robin's lyrics. Otherwise it feels of a piece with "You'll Never See My Face Again" in lyrical sentiment, with an uncharacteristically combative chorus. The song has a fairly simple quiet verse/loud chorus structure that is repeated throughout, bolstered once again by Shepherd's sympathetic orchestration (especially great in the song's closing bars) and thick and gooey harmonies on the choruses. Petersen sounds absolutely lost behind the drumkit, seemingly randomly thumping the bass drum during the verses, and just bashing quarter notes on the cymbals on the choruses. The song soars in spite of him, since everyone else involved is on-point. I have to say, hearing this makes me try to picture Barry Gibb actually laughing derisively in my face and it's just too funny.

https://morobinbarrystories.files.wordpress.com/2015/01/molaugh1.jpg

Track No. 59: Never Say Never Again ("Odessa", 1969)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sYs2nlbu-hg

The undercurrent of bitterness that runs throughout this album is something of an outlier in the Bee Gees catalog; nonetheless, the brothers' penchant for confusing romance with megalomania results in my favorite single line from "Odessa": "you said goodbye/I declared war on Spain". Says it all, really. Reminiscent in style and arrangement to other tracks like "Massachusetts" and "Melody Fair", we are once again treated to Barry's double-tracked 12-string, Shepherd's orchestral countermelodies, a bunch of nonsense lyrics, and the boys (or, at least, Robin and Barry) harmonizing on a serviceable chorus. The strings seem to be doing a bit more work than usual to make the song melodically interesting, and this maybe could have used a middle eight or some other sonic element to change things up, but overall a solid track that fits in well in the context of the album.

All good stuff, just rolling along. The piano intro for "I Laugh in Your Face" obviously follows directly from the end of "Seven Seas Symphony" - maybe a serendipitous sequencing possibility that came up. I also love the sequencing of "Give Your Best" into "Seven Seas."

This all gets me to thinking about alternative visions of what progressive rock could be. A progressive rock that's not oriented in instrumental virtuosity and however you might characterize progressive rock proper's tendencies in terms of song structure and rhythm.

"you said goodbye/I declared war on Spain"

honestly one of the funniest lines ever written

I don't deny that the orchestral songs do contribute to the "epic" scale of the album, they're obviously of a piece with the overall (albeit vague) concept album feel, I just don't find them interesting as songs in and of themselves.

They do leave me with the impression that the Bee Gees had no interest in or knack for something like Revolution No. 9, so when it came time to do their own White Album they just wrote a few extra "Goodnight"'s with no lyrics instead

I don't think a Bee Gees "Revolution No. 9" would have been a great idea tbh.

I think of Odessa as more their own Days of Future Passed and that they pretty much knock that out of the park.

I don't think a Bee Gees "Revolution No. 9" would have been a great idea tbh.

oh, totally. They wisely played to their strengths.

"Days of Future Passed" def not as good as "Odessa"!

xp

Mmmm...I wonder if the Gibbs would concur so readily with that. Odessa is better in sonic realization and better by virtue of its more epic length - that I wouldn't argue with.

MB guys are just inferior songwriters imo

Don't think I agree. I think the band tracks on Days of Future Passed are probably better on the whole than what the Bee Gees came up with on any of their first three albums. Odessa is where they become stronger.

I think the Gibb Brothers were pretty useful songwriters tbf.

"Days of Future Passed" just does not bring the hooks/melodies imo. To say nothing of the Gibbs' other charming idiosyncrasies (Robin's vibrato, perfect harmonies, impenetrable lyrics etc.), that is the one area where the Gibbs were head and shoulders above a lot of their competition. idk the MBs just never did anything for me, it's all well-made but their stuff just sort of drifts past me in an orchestral haze.

Can't see myself thinking "If only the Moody Blues had lyrics as charmingly idiosyncratic as 'Lemons Never Forget'..."

I'll take "bizarre but memorable" over "competent but forgettable" any day. Having just listened to the entirety of "Days of Future Passed" I have to say I can't recall a single lyric or melodic figure aside from the one I (and everybody else) already knew ("Nights in White Satin"), which I have never thought was a particularly good song, certainly not on the level of "To Love Somebody" or "I Started a Joke" or "Massachusetts" or "New York Mining Disaster" or "Every Christian Lionhearted Man".

"NYMD" is classic. Sometimes early Bee Gees veers a little into that late '60s, poetic easy listening, though.

Some people might say that's true of "Nights in White Satin" as well, I know. I'm not one of them.