Saturday Night Fever: The Original Movie Sound Track

Compilations. Mix tapes. C60s and TDK90’s. God I used to love making a finely crafted collection of my favourite tunes on my hissy twin tape deck Sony stereo. You’d spend hours deliberating over song choice - taking into consideration tempos, tenuously themed song connections, genres and impress-your-mates-ability, and then finally slap it all together, painstakingly looking for that quirky minute and half track to fill the rest of side one (not as hard as it sounds for a punk fan) only to become instantly bored of the whole sorry collection the second you’d perfected it. What I really hated though - what I really hated were those people who’d feature more than one song by the same band on the same compilation, but rather than separate them throughout the mix, would bung them all together back-to-back in one homogenous blob, completely disrupting the rhythm of the mix.

This is how I feel about the Saturday Night Fever Soundtrack. Convoluted I know, and I know that the Bee Gees wrote most of it, but do we really need to start with four Bee Gees tracks in a row? And then is there any need to fool us into thinking that they’re mixing things up a bit with a Tavares track, only for said track to be a bloody cover of More Than a Woman - one of the previous four Bee Gees tracks? Come on, play by the compilation creation rules guys!

To be fair the soundtrack to the seminal 70’s disco film Saturday Night Fever, starring everyone’s second favourite deranged scientologist John Travolta, was an unrivalled success on both sides of the Atlantic, capturing the atmosphere of the Disco era and staying at the top of the charts in the UK for 18 weeks. 

Alongside the Bee Gees numbers, Walter Murphy and David Shire spice things up with a couple of classically inspired instrumental numbers, Night on Disco Mountain and A Fifth of Beethoven, but the hidden gem on this album for me (and addition to this week’s parent core play list ) has to be KC and The Sunshine Band’s funky tune Boogie Shoes.

If you’ve ever wondered what Saturday Night Fever would sound like re-imagined for the rave generation, then check out PJ’s remix below. The pilled up love child of Barry Gibb and Bez from the Happy Monday’s is probably a fair description….

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Bread - The Sound of Bread

The Sound of Bread has to be the hardest parent core review to date. So utterly offensively inoffensive are Bread that the second the record finishes playing I have absolutely no recollection of what any of it sounds like. It could literally be a record of someone banging a french baguette against a brioche bun for all I know - i just simply cannot remember either way. Mind you some baguette on brioche action probably would be more memorable than this drivel. Is it my imagination or are there brioche buns everywhere at the moment - I can’t seem to move for restaurants serving them, friends chomping on them and Tesco Metros selling them by the packet….. yeah that says a lot about the quality of this record.

Formed in California in 1969, Bread seem to redefine soft rock to such an extent that they make the Eagles sound like Entombed. In fact having just written that sentence all I want to do now is listen to Earache Unplugged (a misleading title for a metal album upon which acoustic guitars are nowhere to be seen/heard) - a cracking Earache Records compilation featuring the likes of Entombed, Carcass and the brilliantly daft rock n’roll riffsters Cathedral. A daming indictment indeed since I’m hardly a bona fide metal fan these days.

God, I guess I’d better write something about the musical content of this album at some point then. The second side is slightly more bearable than the first, although your ears will probabaly feel bunged up with dough by the time you get there. The highlight is probably Everything I own - a tribue to lead singer David Gates’ late father - although it’s not a patch on the Ken Boothe reggaefied version from 1974 (a Lady Friend childhood favourite so it tends to get the occasional outing in the parent core household). It also appears to be one of the most covered songs of all time (totally unsubstantiated claim alert), with the likes of Rod Stewart, Boy George, N-Sync, Olivia Newton-John, Shirley Bassey and everyone’s favourite self-deluded hot girlfriend role-model Nicole Scherzinger from the Pussytwat Dolls all having a stab. I guess I’ll chuck it on the parent core play list then. Take it away PJ. Give us something more memorable than Bread have managed. Please!

Mahalia Jackson - Silent Night

With album title track Silent Night opening this record it would probably have been more appropriate to cover off Mahalia Jackson during the festive period. However seeing as that honour is going to Christmas Carols Sung By The Guildford Cathedral Choir my house has had to endure some premature mid-October festivities this weekend. Mahalia “Queen of Gospel” Jackson was apparently one of the most influential gospel singers in the world and became known as the voice of the civil rights movement - travelling with Martin Luther King to the highly segregated deep south, using her music to inspire change. When she died in 1972, 50,000 people filed past her coffin in Chicago. Popular lady.

Genesis - And Then There Were Three

The Rolling Stones - Big Hits (High Tide and Green Grass)

This summer The Rolling Stones celebrate their Golden Jubilee. They shall celebrate it in an orgy of hand waving pomp floating aboard a flotilla larger than the Spanish Armada as they are serenaded by a wide-eyed Robbie Williams who will look more gurning lunatic than supposed member of boy band royalty, until Keith Richards’ age finally catches up with him and he is diagnosed with cystitis live on national TV in a humiliatingly public dissection of his bladder movements. Not really. Obviously not really, but it is pretty amazing that a band who began life in 1962 are still with us. Well, most of them are.

Big Hits High Tide and Green Grass Is the Stones’ first best-of album, released in 1966 and covering their first four years worth of material. Seeing as it’s the earliest Stones record in the parent core collection, I think it represents my folks’ belated attempt to get in to this hip new blues infused rock music that everyone’s talking about, after missing out on the band’s early years by choosing to listen to the likes of the Everly Brothers and Beatles instead. Although who knows, maybe the Stones wouldn’t exist as we know them if it hadn’t been for the Beatles? In the early 60’s Decca records turned down a chance to sign The Beatles in favour of local beat combo Brian Poole and the Tremeloes, claiming that ‘guitar music’ was on the way out.” Fortunately the same Decca record exec had the chance to atone for his blunder a few years later: when judging a talent contest with George Harrison he was advised to take a look at the Stones whom the Beatles guitarist had seen live a couple of weeks earlier. 

Classics on Big Hits, High Tide and Green Grass include Paint it Black, Have You Seen Your Mother Baby and Little Red Rooster, but I’m a bit disappointed that the UK version doesn’t include Play With Fire like the quite different US release does.

One of the tracks I am less familiar with however is Lady Jane… which upon first listen sounds like its being played out from the view point of Henry VIII as he gently breaks it to Anne Boleyn that he intends to get jiggy Tudor style with Jane Seymour. But he doesn’t mention anything about hacking her head off so I’m not entirely sure whether it is him or not. Still, it’s kind of topical with this rather tenuous Jubilee thing hey?

Although not my favourite, it’s hard not to be drawn to the eerie echoing qualities of Paint it Black - appearing on the soundtracks to both Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket and the equally harrowing Guitar Hero III. Although I don’t share Mick Jagger’s apparently compulsive desire to perform impromptu re-decoration every time I see a red door - I’d never make it back from the tube station to my house if I did - I’m chucking it on the parent core play list this week anyway. Happy birth-year Rolling Stones.

Check out PJ’s beats here:

Peter, Paul and Mary - The Best of, (Ten) Years Together

“Oh Stewball was a racehorse, and I wish he were mine.

He never drank water, he always drank wine”

Songs about wino thoroughbreds, inedible lemons and stoner dragons - that pretty much sums up Peter, Paul and Mary’s barmy approach to song writing. Well, a lot of their tunes are covers of 60’s classics and re-imaginings of classic folk songs, but the point still stands. (Ten) Years Together initially caused some disagreement in the parent core camp. While PJ claims that he felt slightly sick listening to what reminded him of the real life Mulligan and O’Hare, for me I felt like I was instantly transported to some sort whimsically mournful Wes Anderson movie as the close harmonies of Blowin’ in The Wind filled my ears while I looked on at the blank expressions surrounding me on the tube during my early morning commute. That said, I think after a few listens even PJ’s coming around now…

Part of New York’s Greenwich Village folk scene in the 60’s, Peter, Paul and Mary were created as the result of an auditioning process by Bob Dylan’s manager Albert Grossman. With these slightly manufactured origins, they are basically folk’s answer to the Sugarhill Gang. Stewball - from which the lyrics at the start of this post are quoted - is a beautiful song building up layer upon layer of vocal harmonies as it progresses. Charting the disappointment of punter who neglected to bet on the race winner after which the song takes its title (well would you bet on a horse which always drank wine?), Stewball is a worthy anthem for the EBC - the highly unsuccessful betting syndicate of which I am part (it stands for the Elite Betting Corporation since you ask). Puff The Magic Dragon has to be their most infamous classic though. Urban legends relating to its weed induced roots aside, it is actually quite a touching little tune about the loss of childhood innocence.

That said, for every classic, there are some notable low points on this album. I Dig Rock and Roll Music is a pretty awful (but admittedly playful) dig at the lack of social-conscience of a music genre that was burgeoning around them. Quite what the proto-David Bowie impression in the middle of it is all about I have no idea. The album does end on a high though. For Lovin’ Me, Don’t Think Twice It’s Alright and The Hammer Song (“If I had a hammer, I’d hammer in the morning, I’d hammer in the evening, all over this land” - behaviour that would earn you an asbo in no time in this day and age) are all stuffed full of brilliant harmonies.

Call me a softy, but the touching 23rd birthday message to my Mum from my old man on the back of the record sleeve puts (Ten) Years Together right up there in the parent core collection for me. As for this week’s addition to the parent core play list, I think it’ll have to be Stewball as a tribute to the EBC. Bets on alcoholic nags only next season boys. Actually I really like Don’t Think Twice as well - in an unprecedented move I might have to add two songs to the play list this week.

Check out PJ’s love hate relationship with Peter, Paul and Mary here: