Rocks In The Attic #147: Bee Gees - ‘Main Course’ (1975)

I’ve always had a soft spot for The Bee Gees (I know they don’t favour the definitive article in front of their name, but it’s grammatically annoying not to slide one in there). We used to live a couple of streets away from where they grew up in Chorlton, Manchester (between them being born on the Isle Of Man and being shipped out to Australia).  They seem to offend a lot of people by their very existence, but I think their early-falsetto output between Jive Talkin’ and the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack are notable enough to ignore their other crimes against music.

I almost went to see Robin Gibb when he played in New Zealand just before he died. I was all set to buy myself a ticket until I read an interview he did to promote the show, in which he claimed that the music of The Bee Gees was more relevant than The Beatles, and had stood the test of time better. By the time I had stopped laughing, the concert had been and gone. I then felt like I’d missed out because he died not long after. In a bizarre twist of fate, newspaper articles over the last couple of weeks have all but claimed that New Zealand killed Robin Gibb - by flying over to play in New Zealand, he missed medical scans which may have prolonged his life.

I recently watched a documentary on the band, and Maurice really comes across as the most affable of the three. Barry really is the alpha lion of the pride, and Robin speaks only when he is given chance, but Maurice actually sounds like a genuinely nice bloke.

Hit: Jive Talkin’

Hidden Gem: Wind Of Change

Rocks In The Attic #100: Aerosmith - ‘Toys In The Attic’ (1975)

It only seems apt that as I covered Aerosmith’s Rocks as the 50^th entry in this series, I would need to do Toys In The Attic as the 100^th, completing the name of the blog which took inspiration from these two albums.

So the story goes that not long after I was first exposed to Aerosmith - via an Aerosmith music video weekend on MTV - I went on holiday with my parents to Cornwall. I had, by this time, bought Pump on CD - in fact, I think I bought it the following weekend after that MTV weekend, from the Our Price that used to be next to Boots on Market Street in Manchester.

These, however, were the days before CD players in cars had become commonplace. I think we travelled down to Cornwall with a taped copy of Pump playing on the car stereo. When we landed in Newquay, the first thing we did after checking in at the Bed & Breakfast, was to walk down the road and pop into the little adjoining row of shops. In that row of shops was a second-hand record store, and in the row of tapes on the counter was a second-hand copy of Toys In The Attic. I snapped it up, and alongside Pump - which I’d probably played too much on the journey down - Toys In The Attic became the soundtrack to that holiday.

To me, Toys In The Attic and Rocks are very much like Rubber Soul and Revolver - two back-to-back albums with a very high watermark, and indistinguishable enough to be double albums in their own right - hence Rocks In The Attic as the name of this blog (or I guess to take the song from Rocks, the alternative to this would be calling it Toys In The Cellar).

Of the two, I believe Rocks is the better album, but I prefer Toys In The Attic. It’s a little looser, and has a bit more light; whereas Rocks is the shadier, more serious of the two. Rocks really doesn’t let up, and you can almost hear the cocaine on it. Toys on the other hand, sounds like it was only made with the assistance of a joint or 200.

I love this album so much, I have it on CD twice - one of those being the 1994 collector’s edition gold disc version from Sony’s Mastersound 20-Bit Super Bit Mapping Series; and I also have it on LP twice - one of those being a Japanese pressing with an Obi strip. I probably still have that worn-out copy on cassette that I picked up in Cornwall too.

Hit: Walk This Way

Hidden Gem: Big Ten Inch Record

Rocks In The Attic #98: John Williams - ‘Jaws (O.S.T.)’ (1975)

One of my top five favourite films, and probably one of my top five favourite film soundtracks, I was so pleased to find this on vinyl in the soundtrack section of Real Groovy when I first came to New Zealand on holiday.

People assume that Williams is merely aping Bernard Herrman on this soundtrack, with the tuba on the soundtrack’s Main Title (Theme From Jaws) being as simple and effective as the strings in Herrman’s score for the shower scene in Psycho; but as Williams himself admits, his score is just some jaunty pirate music, bookended by a simple touch of horror music in the opening Main Title and a touch of calm in the closing End Title.

The repetitive motif that is introduced in Sea Attack Number One and opens One Barrel Chase and Preparing The Cage continually goes round and round in my head, probably more than any other piece of film soundtrack. If I start humming that theme, I will start off on one instrument and then follow this with another instrument, just like Williams’ arrangement. There’s only so many instruments I can mimic so it soon gets tired, until I start humming it again. And again. And again.

I’ve never been diving in a shark cage, but I can guarantee that when I eventually do, it won’t be the Main Title (Theme From Jaws) that will be going round in my head, it’ll be that tune that permeates through the second side of this album, and the latter half of the film.

Hit: Main Title (Theme From Jaws)

Hidden Gem: Preparing The Cage

Rocks In The Attic #36: Lynyrd Skynyrd - ‘Nuthin’ Fancy’ (1975)

You can’t beat a bit of Skynyrd. They are to southern rock what the Pope is to Catholicism. Without Skynyrd there wouldn’t be countless other bands - most notably The Black Crowes who picked up where Skynyrd left off.

Skynyrd’s first album - (Pronounced 'lĕh-'nérd 'skin-'nérd) - is very good. In fact, it’s consistently good all the way through, and a solid blueprint for 1970s southern rock. The trouble is, after that album Skynyrd just churned out the same old thing, album after album, until a plane crash took their vocalist and lead guitarist. (As a sidenote, their poor drummer survived the plane crash only to be shot in the shoulder by a local farmer whose farmhouse he had run to for help.)

There are flashes of brilliance along each of their albums until the (unfortunately named) Street Survivors, but they are few and far between. That’s not to say that the rest of the albums are filler - they’re not - but mostly they could be on any other album by any other southern rock band.

The song Made In The Shade shows an appreciation of old time music - very similar to something you might hear on an album by The Band - and confirms the band’s fondness for roots music, something continually hinted at throughout their career.

Hit: Saturday Night Special

Hidden Gem: Railroad Song