Saturday Night Fever [SOUNDTRACK] : Bee Gees

Review : By Pieter "Toypom"
This masterpiece has lost none of its appeal after all these years, proving the critics wrong and the BeeGees right. Part of its popularity must be due to the clever mix of fast dance numbers and lovely soaring ballads. The frenetic pace of e.g. Staying Alive and Night Fever is balanced by the serene pace of How Deep Is Your Love.

For fans of the old-style BeeGees ballads, this new direction with the edgy falsetto vocals and the nervous beat came as a shock initially, but those hits like Jive Talkin' and You Should Be Dancing soon enough swept one up in the disco fever. I love Yvonne Elliman's poignant ballad If I Can't Have You, while the tracks by Kool & The Gang, MFSB and KC & The Sunshine Band are great too.

But the real underground classic here is Disco Inferno by Trammps, nine minutes of burbling, bubbling, stomping, storming, gripping funk that is as anthemic as any great rock song by for example Bruce Springsteen. Come to think of it, most of the BeeGees tracks here can also be considered as anthems of the disco generation.

Besides serving as bridges between the classic hits, the filler tracks like A Fifth Of Beethoven and Salsation add authenticity to the overall listening experience and serve to strengthen the ambience. This album and the movie took disco out of the underground and reinvented it as a mainstream phenomenon.

While rock music was going through the convulsions of the punk and new wave revolutions, disco was having the party of the decade. And this album, along with the music of Donna Summer, Grace Jones, Chic, Giorgio Moroder, Boney M, Village People and others, provided the soundtrack to an era.

Track Listings
1. Stayin' Alive - The Bee Gees
2. How Deep Is Your Love - The Bee Gees
3. Night Fever - The Bee Gees
4. More Than a Woman - The Bee Gees
5. If I Can't Have You - Yvonne Elliman
6. A Fifth Of Beethoven - Walter Murphy
7. More Than a Woman - Tavares
8. Manhattan Skyline - David Shire
9. Calypso Breakdown - Ralph MacDonald
10. Night On Disco Mountain - David Shire
11. Open Sesame - Kool And The Gang
12. Jive Talkin' - The Bee Gees
13. You Should Be Dancing - The Bee Gees
14. Boogie Shoes - K.C. And The Sunshine Band
15. Salsation - David Shire
16. K-Jee - M.F.S.B.
17. Disco Inferno - The Trammps