July 27, 2015

Published July 27, 2015 by Ad-Vinylrecords with 0 comment

Bee Gees - Main Course (1975)













Artist:  Bee Gees
Title:  Main Course
Release:  1975
Format:  LP
Label:  RSO Records
Catalog#  2479139

“Main Course” is the 12th album released by the Bee Gees in 1975 for the RSO label, under its distribution deal with Robert Stigwood. This album marked a change for the Bee Gees as it was their first album to include disco influenced songs, and it created the model for their output through the rest of the 1970s. “Main Course” was the first album to feature keyboardist Blue Weaver.
The group’s earlier LPs, steeped in a dense romantic balladry, were beautifully crafted but too serious for any but hardcore fans. “Main Course” had a few ballads, such as “Songbird” and “Country Lanes,” but the writing was simpler, and the rest of it was made up of catchy dance tunes (heavily influenced by the Philadelphia-based soul music of the period), in which the beat and the texture of the voices and instruments took precedence over the words. The combination proved irresistible, and “Main Course” driven by the singles “Jive Talkin’,” “Nights on Broadway,” and “Fanny (Be Tender With My Love)” attracted millions of new listeners. It also repelled fans of the group’s earlier style, which was a bit ironic. Barry Gibb’s falsetto voice, introduced on this album, was startling at first, and became an object of ridicule in later years, but the slow break on “Nights on Broadway” and songs like “Fanny (Be Tender With My Love)” and “Baby As You Turn Away” were as exquisitely sung as “Lonely Days” or “How Can You Mend a Broken Heart,” and they had the same sense of romantic drama, leavened by a layer of sheer fun; one had less of a sense that the singer was dealing with the love of a lifetime, so much as a conquest for the evening, which was in keeping with the sexual mores of the mid-’70s. And the spirit of fun was no accident producer Arif Mardin, seeking to rescue the group’s stagnating career, had gotten the Bee Gees to turn their talents in a musical direction that they’d always loved but never embraced. Barry, Robin, and Maurice Gibb had been fascinated by R&B and soul for years. Not only didn’t they seem ridiculous, but they took to it as easily as they’d absorbed the Beatles’ harmony-based rock sounds in the late ’60s.
It was a liberating experience for the entire group Blue Weaver, newly added to the lineup with an array of electronic keyboards and ideas that ended up shaping lots of the songs here; Alan Kendall, playing in a funky guitar style; and drummer Dennis Byron, playing more complicated patterns than he’d been asked to in years, were also delighted with the new direction, and they constituted the instrumental core of the band for the next six years. Years later, “Main Course” holds up as well as anything the group ever did, and with killer album cuts like “Wind of Change” (featuring a superb Joe Farrell tenor sax solo) and “Edge of the Universe” all over it, demands as much attention as any hits compilation by the group.


Side one
1.  Nights on Broadway  (4:31)
2.  Jive Talkin’  (3:43)
3.  Wind of Change  (4:54)
4.  Songbird  (3:35)
5.  Fanny (Be Tender with My Love)  (4:02)

Side two
1.  All This Making Love  (3:03)
2.  Country Lanes  (3:29)
3.  Come On Over  (3:26)
4.  Edge of the Universe  (5:21)
5.  Baby As You Turn Away  (4:23)

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