Jive Talkin' About The Bee Gees' Main Course cover art

Jive Talkin' About The Bee Gees' Main Course

Jive Talkin' About The Bee Gees' Main Course

Listen for free

View show details

Season's Savings | £0.99/mo for 3 months

£5.99/mo after 3 months - terms apply. Cancel monthly
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit tonyfletcher.substack.comWelcome back to the CROSSED CHANNELS podcast — the podcast in which music journalists/obsessives Dan Epstein (the “Yank”) and Tony Fletcher (the “Limey”) clash and connect over music from either side of the pond. And this 33rd episode definitely finds us clashing more that connecting.Dan returns to the podcast after last month’s unexpected absence, during which his fill-in was no less than Grasshopper from Mercury Rev. At his suggestion, we’re tackling one of the best-selling groups of all time: The Bee Gees and the 1975 album that brought them back into the mainstream: Main Course.Born on the UK’s Isle of Man, and raised in Manchester before their family emigrated to Australia in 1958, brothers Barry, Robin and Maurice Gibb began performing live together in 1957, when Barry was 11 years old and his twin younger brothers were on the verge of turning eight. After releasing their first single in 1963, the trio went on to sell hundreds of millions of records worldwide, and rack up nine #1 singles in the US — a number only surpassed by The Beatles and The Supremes.One of those chart-toppers, 1975’s “Jive Talkin’,” returned the Gibbs from commercial oblivion after several years in the wilderness. It hailed from this episode’s subject matter, Main Course, which spawned two other major US hits: “Nights On Broadway,” which peaked at #7, and “Fanny (Be Tender With My Love)” — or “Love (Be Tender With My Fanny),” as Dan prefers to call it — which reached #12.Produced at Miami’s Criteria Studios by Arif Mardin — who had recently helmed the self-titled second album by Scottish funk-soul ensemble Average White Band — and influenced by the funky sounds coming out of Miami at the time, Main Course sent the The Bee Gees in a new, dancefloor-oriented direction, one marked by Barry’s newly discovered flair for falsetto singing. The album reached #14 on the Billboard 200 (their highest-charting US LP since 1968’s Horizontal), selling over half a million copies by year’s end, and put the group on a course that would eventually lead to Saturday Night Fever’s multi-platinum success.Will Dan sufficiently make a case for the album’s enduring greatness, and convince Tony to put his Saturday Night Fever baggage aside and judge the album on its own considerable merits? Will Tony find listening to Main Course as excruciatingly painful as Dan found his forced march through the post-reunion James catalog in Episode 12? And which Bee Gees single will Tony actually cop to owning? Tune in to find out!As always, the first 10 or so minutes of this episode are free for all to hear. But to listen to this episode in its entirety, along with all of our previous complete CROSSED CHANNELS episodes, just sign up for a paid subscription to one of our Substacks — or, better yet, sign up for a paid subscription to both of them! tonyfletcher.substack.com danepstein.substack.comBy doing so, you will not only get a new episode of CROSSED CHANNELS every month in your inbox, but also receive other exclusive posts from each of us, as well as full-time access to all the good stuff in our respective archives. Plus, your monthly paid subscription will allow us to afford our monthly post-recording repast over at one of our many fine (or at least decent enough) Asian eateries!Remember — CROSSED CHANNELS, unlike most podcasts, does not take ads; we value your intelligence too highly to subject you to that sort of thing. And if you are already a paid subscriber to one or both of our Substacks, THANK YOU. We appreciate it more than you can know! (And please feel free to leave your reactions to this episode — as well as suggestions for future topics — in the comments!)Theme music in this episode is Blue Diamond Fire by Dan's music project The Corinthian Columns.
adbl_web_anon_alc_button_suppression_t1
No reviews yet