Bee Gees - Cucumber Castle

The making of the Bee Gee’s Odessa was a tumultuous one for the Brothers Gibb. Working on vague sketches of a nautical concept album, the band eventually lost direction-or interest-in the theme itself, and found themselves navigating a strange sea of artistic freedom.

The journey helped them create some of their most exciting music to date as they tiptoed outside of the pop song structure. But it also created some tension within the family unit.

The stress of creating Odessa got to be so much that Robin felt slighted when he noticed that his roles as both a performer and arranger was diminished. After its release, he left his two other brothers in an attempt to become the focal point. The resulting album, Robin’s Reign, was neither the artistic or commercial success as he intended and the break nearly caused his two other brothers to consider solo efforts as well.

Ironically, it was his twin, Maurice, that convinced his older brother Barry to consider a project that manager Robert Stigwood tossed around as a last ditched effort to cast the now-duo Bee Gees in a multi-media special that called for a new album and a television special called Cucumber Castle.

If the idea of the Bee Gees as a duo sounds disheartening, then the project title should do the trick. And if you take a glance at the cover art, Barry and Maurice dressed in medieval garb looking out in the distance with some glazed look on their face that screams “What the fuck are we doing here?” you can only assume that the music spawned from this project would be quite dreadful.

Amazingly though, the Brothers Gibb manage to overcome adversity to the point where their musical chops are so professionally honed that Cucumber Castle the record not only shines as a forgotten gem in their catalog, it could easily rank in the top five releases of their impressive output.

Right out of the gate with the opener “If I Only Had My Mind On Something Else,” you can hear Barry and Maurice picking up right where they left off with Odessa. And while the attempt at conceptual continuity is gone, they continue down a path of lush orchestration and expansive arrangements, willing themselves to push forward in grandiose fashion, like the inner turmoil and drama never happened.

They weave in and out of genres with such confidence that it’s hard to believe their biggest success was at least a half-decade away. The reality was that they were already a decade into the business, but for the rest of us still catching up with the Bee Gees, Cucumber Castle demonstrates no patience for the naive.

Unfortunately, it doesn't look like the same could be said for its visual companion.

Bee Gees - Odessa

It’s hard to convince anyone at how great the Bee Gees really were because of three words: Saturday, night, and fever. But the reality is that there are two vastly different eras of the band, the Beatle-inspired early years and the band’s more famous disco period. The former made them occasional chart visitors while the latter made them superstars. For half a decade in the 70’s, there was barely a moment where you wouldn’t hear a song by or featuring the talents of the Brothers Gibb. And when it wasn’t them, their younger brother had a few chart toppers to consider.

I grew up in a time where it was socially encouraged among rock circles to despise disco, and for a while, I dutifully voiced my disdain for the genre. I’ve since come to terms with that premature dismissal, but I remember how hard it was during that time contending with my love of early Bee Gees albums.

Prior to Saturday Night Fever, I had amassed a few of those original albums and enjoyed them immensely. But when the band became fixtures for the gold medallion crowd and when the “Gibb Sound” seemed to be on every other song on the radio, I purged those initial records and for years forgot how wonderful they were. I recently began to pull some of those early Bee Gees albums back out and there’s one that stands out as the best of the lot and is prime for (re)discovery.

Spread apart two vinyl sides and packaged in soft red felt, Odessa was intended to stand alongside other definitive statements like Sgt. Pepper, Tommy, Disraeli Gears, etc., but nearly forty years later, it gets barely a mention when experts compile their lists of essential albums of that period. What’s more, Odessa can easily best many of those albums in terms of scope, execution and sheer timelessness.

Indeed, one of the first things you’ll notice about Odessa is how eloquently arranged it is. While nearly every one of the album’s seventeen tracks is layered with strings, horns, and a wide array of instrumentation, none of them is marred with period-novelties or studio techniques that immediately tie it to the year of production. While Odessa gets ready to celebrate its fortieth anniversary, it sounds like it could easily have been crafted last week.

Throughout the double record, the Gibbs incorporate elements of chamber-pop, progressive rock, psychedelia, and country-rock all woven together with their unmistakable harmonies. It’s a glorious ride, and one in which you ponder why they didn’t go on to explore similar territories with subsequent albums.

The answer lies in the reality that Odessa was the one effort that nearly broke the brothers apart. With such a large effort to undertake, there were also large egos to contend with. Barry, who became the main focal point during the band’s disco period, had yet to establish himself as the de-facto leader. In fact, it was younger brother Robin who voiced their most notable songs during this period. The power struggle that ensued during the production of Odessa caused Robin to consider a solo career (mainly instigated by management) leaving Barry and Maurice to one Bee Gees album (Cucumber Castle) without him.

A year and a half later, Robin rejoined the fold and the rest is history.

But the real history is the Bee Gees that you haven’t discovered, the period when the Bee Gees were really a band (yes, they even had a regular drummer and guitar player) and they considered their competition to be the likes of The Beatles and other luminaries.

So why didn’t Odessa propel them into higher notoriety? A lot of the reason lies on the decision to release such a lofty project so late in the game. It’s interesting to consider that as the decade was coming to a close and other artists had already logged their artistic proclamation a year or two prior, the Brothers Gibb were finally getting around to their creative statement. Perhaps we can attribute the poor timing to the initial public indifference towards Odessa.

But now that Rhino records has given it new life with a deluxe reissue, and since we’ve all had well enough time to reconsider how good some of the Bee Gees material is, there’s no reason why Odessa’s brilliance should continue to be overlooked.

This review originall appeared in Glorious Noise.

The Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band Soundtrack

I’m beginning what I’ll call the Mother-In-Law series, which is merely a handful of long-players that she brought to me because she knows that I like music.
Evidently, this is a common phenomenon; I’ve heard that my cousin’s in-laws also hand over the occasional vinyl album and my father is also a fan of the “Here’s some scratchy old albums that you beat to hell when you were little” gift.
“I remembered that you liked The Beatles,” she said as she handed over the records.
As I noticed the familiar cover of the Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band Soundtrack and chuckled a little.
It was this album that ignited a passionate hatred for the Bee Gees, Peter Frampton and Alice Cooper and it caused me to think that Aerosmith may indeed have a problem with drugs.
Understand that I liked all of them up until that album-hell, I even tolerated the shitty I’m In You for Frampton-and now he does this to me?!
The movie is awful, but the soundtrack is just as bad with Aerosmith throwing out a decent cover of “Come Together” and Earth Wind & Fire offering a nice version of “Got To Get You Into My Life.”
These have proven to be the only two good tracks on the album,
Did I mention it’s a double?
Every thing else is just awful and with George Martin’s name on the project, it’s an embarrassment.
What I don’t understand is how even at that young of an age (12) I knew this thing was going to be a bust. So how did a group of smart adults let this thing get started?
Who knows? But Robert Stigwood dropped a fortune on this thing to the tune of “bankrupt” almost immediately after people started to notice that this thing smelled like a turd.
It worked for a moment; the album reference, Aerosmith, Alice Cooper, and that wild and crazy guy Steve Martin got us all excited to see the movie. The trouble was, nobody could remember what the hell the film was about only five minutes after we left the theatre.
I wish I could say the same thing for the soundtrack.

The OCD Chronicles: Bee Gees "Idea"

Growing up, I had two Bee Gees records. It’s not what you’re thinking; this is before they struck gold with Saturday Night Fever and even before “Jive Talking.” Hell, this is before “Lonely Days” which came off 1971’s Two Years On. Dude, I was into the Bee Gees when they were still a heavy-Beatlemania pop band, fresh off the tarmac in London from that flight from Australia.
It’s not that big of deal actually, as nobody really gives a shit about the Bee Gees and the entire disco thing nearly ruined anything remotely hip about them. But for me, the fall from grace is harder because one of the albums I had featured a song that was so awesome, it was hard to forgive them when you watched them plant gold medallions in their thick, brushy chest hair.
One of the albums, Rare, Precious and Beautiful, was merely a compilation released in 1968. It was meant to capture the Brothers Gibb newfound success after “I Started A Joke” and “To Love Somebody.” It didn’t feature any of those hits, just a bunch of albums tracks meant to give people a better perspective on the band’s catalog.
But my favorite album out of the two was Idea, their third album. At this time, the band was just that: a band. Sure, the focal point was the brothers (with Robin-or the “weird looking one” as my wife likes to call him), but there was some actual consideration that the other members, namely non-related guitarist Vince Melouney and drummer Colin Peterson, were actually part of the creative process. Peterson even sued the brothers, claiming that he owned the Bee Gees name.
I guess you can understand why the entire Bee Gees “group” concept didn’t last very long.
But when it was in force, the band produced some pretty interesting stuff, complete with those sugar-sweet ‘n note perfect harmonies that brought them acclaim. And no, there’s not a falsetto to be found on this early stuff.
The “band” Bee Gees peeked and imploded with Odessa, an ambitious double disc set from ’69. But the seeds of something special were planted a year before with Idea.
Aside from a freaky looking cover that often frightened me as a child, the album featured some nice pop songs, some verging on psychedelic, others on chamber pop, and standard English pop. It’s very similar to the work of The Hollies in some places, but a bit more musically experimental.
I used to play the title track often and I recently obtained a copy of Idea where I’ve been amazing myself that I still remember the tune nearly forty years after first hearing it and almost thirty years of forgetting about it.
“Idea” starts with three verses before going right into the chorus, again, three lines long.
Try seeing if anything makes any sense:

I been thinking sitting on a pole
I'm getting sick of doing what I'm told
Just me and the mirror and my brain
But that was when I got an idea
Came like a gun and shot in my ear
Don't you think it's time you got up and stood alone?

Fifteen years I lay down on the ground
I couldn't feel any noise or hear any sound
Fifteen million years I spent down the line
But that was when I got an idea
Came like a gun and shot in my ear
Don't you think it's time you got up and stood alone?

Get up and stand alone

That's when I got an idea

I have no idea what the song is about, but I do know that every time Robin gets to the “got up and stand alone” part, the band stops for a second and then Robin breathes out real quick and forceful. It’s totally awesome.

And because it’s so awesome, it keeps playing in my head, forcing me to sing indecipherably like Robin Gibb and accentuating the end with a quick breath of “Heh!” People look at me funny, but they have no idea…

True Tales Of Nursery Rhymes

I’m not very good at nursery rhymes. My wife is: in a heartbeat she’s croonin’ “You Are My Sunshine” perfectly in key while I get the lyrics fucked up with “The Itsy-Bitsy Spider.”
So I pretty much just make up my own repertoire (you might know me as the songwriter to “Shakin’ My Buttercups” and “Sittin’ On My Daddy-Do”) or bring up the most out-of-left-field songs to try and put my little girl to sleep.
Lately, a song that’s been getting a lot of use thanks to Calli’s sickness is an old Bee Gees song called “I Started A Joke.” So yeah, imagine a four month old crying while I’m cooing
“I started a joke
That started the whole world crying
But I didn’t see
That the joke was on me”
Now imagine that aforementioned four month old getting retardedly sleepy by the time I hit the chorus.
No shit.
I don’t know what it is about my rendition of “I Started A Joke” that gets her calm, but I swear by it. And yes, I’ve tried other songs but none of them had the same results.
I decided to test something. I found out that if I try and replicate the Gibb falsetto in the song, I actually make her cry a little louder.
She only digs my version when I sing it in my natural baritone.
Check out this incredibly frightening footage of the nursery rhyme in question.