2017


Capitol started off their series of Bee Gees releases with YAGH!! Yet Another Greatest Hits. All right that is not really the title. If only it was! Ha ha. The title is Timeless, as in ‘this album could have come out any time in the past thirty years’. Maybe I should not complain. After all there should be a greatest hits set available. It’s just that fans hoped Capitol might kick off their handling of the Bee Gees legacy with something more interesting. In desperation the press release says the songs are ‘sequenced in chronological order’. They really tried to find something new about it.

Capitol are also putting out the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack album on two LPs. If you can’t play LPs, note that the Bee Gees songs are all on Timeless.

And now for something different. Led by Maurice’s daughter Samantha, children of the brothers got together under the name Gibb Collective for an album of Bee Gees songs that does include some less common titles, starting with the title track Please Don’t Turn Out the Lights.

Eight songs recorded by P P Arnold in 1969 and 1970 with Barry as producer were aged like a fine scotch and finally released in October on her album The Turning Tide. It was the first release of three Gibb songs: ‘Born’, ‘High and Windy Mountain’, and ‘Happiness’.


songs


No new songs are known.


recording sessions


No sessions are known.


selected record releases


Bee Gees : Timeless
Capitol, April 2017.

01 SPICKS AND SPECKS (1966)
02 NEW YORK MINING DISASTER 1941 (1967)
03 TO LOVE SOMEBODY (1967)
04 MASSACHUSETTS (1967)
05 WORDS (1968)
06 I’VE GOTTA GET A MESSAGE TO YOU (1968)
07 I STARTED A JOKE (1968)
08 LONELY DAYS (1970)
09 HOW CAN YOU MEND A BROKEN HEART (1971)
10 JIVE TALKIN’ (1975)
11 NIGHTS ON BROADWAY (1975)
12 FANNY (BE TENDER WITH MY LOVE) (1975)
13 YOU SHOULD BE DANCING (1976)
14 HOW DEEP IS YOUR LOVE (1977)
15 STAYIN’ ALIVE (1977)
16 NIGHT FEVER (1977)
17 MORE THAN A WOMAN (1977)
18 TOO MUCH HEAVEN (1978)
19 TRAGEDY (1979)
20 LOVE YOU INSIDE OUT (1979)
21 YOU WIN AGAIN (1987)

I suppose it’s a start if you don’t own any of this already. And you won’t need to buy Saturday Night Fever just to get the Bee Gees songs.


Gibb Collective : Please Don’t Turn Out the Lights
MEG Productionhouse, June 2017.

01 Samantha : NEW YORK MINING DISASTER 1941
02 Spencer : DON’T FALL IN LOVE WITH ME
03 Samantha and Adam : MORNING OF MY LIFE [IN THE MORNING]
04 Stephen, with Samantha : ON TIME
05 Adam and Samantha : ANGEL OF MERCY
06 Spencer, Stephen, Adam, Peta, Samantha : PLEASE DON’T TURN OUT THE LIGHTS
07 Travis and Samantha : I’VE GOTTA GET A MESSAGE TO YOU
08 Peta, with Samantha and Robin John : FOOL FOR A NIGHT
09 Berri, with Samantha and Robin John : I CAN’T SEE NOBODY
10 Robin John : I STARTED A JOKE

Identified above by first name are some of the ‘next generation’, namely Barry Gibb’s sons Stephen and Travis, Robin Gibb’s sons Spencer and Robin John (RJ), Maurice Gibb’s daughter Samantha and son Adam, Andy Gibb’s daughter Peta, and Berri Gibb Rhoades, the brothers’ ‘youngest sister’. The first song recorded was ‘New York Mining Disaster’, which inspired Samantha to start rounding up as many cousins as possible to record more songs, on many dates in many places. The collection was engineered by Lazaro Rodriguez, Samantha’s professional partner of many years.

Samantha and Spencer have written and recorded several albums each, under their own names and band names. Stephen has played lead guitar with a series of metal bands and in 2016 in Barry’s band. Adam and Travis have worked behind the scenes with Samantha and Barry respectively, and Robin John worked with Robin in his last years with co-composer credit on Titanic Requiem. This is Peta’s debut.

This is the third time Samantha recorded ‘Angel of Mercy’— the first, unreleased, was with Majandra Delfino in 1995, and the second was a duet with Maurice, recorded in 1999 and released in 2010 on Mythology. Stephen played ‘On Time’ while on tour with Barry in 2016.