Whether you're a brother, or whether you're a mother, you're stayin alive stayin alive...if you're a father or if you're a sister, you're just relaxin just relaxin...Hahahaha...i'm just relaxin while I write about this groovy song groovy song.
The scene - a record store in Highland Park, IL, in winter of 1977-78.
Mom: Mark, are you sure you want to spend all your money on the Saturday Night Fever album?
Me: Yeah, Mom.
It cost $9.98 or something, and it was all the money I had, but the mystique was all over my elementary school and I had to have it. For some reason, the instrumental called 'Calypso Breakdown' really blew my 10 year old mind. ha, I still have the record. Look at Barbarino in his disco threads jumpin in the air on the disco floor. I even kinda like the movie. The part where the guy falls off the bridge is pretty traumatic. The ending is sweet, Travolta and the girl agreeing on a platonic friendship. And of course, my favorite part: the dinner scene. The blue collar American family. Tough love. He hits my hair. John Travolta's character, uh, Vinnie? Danny?, wtf is his name? Geez, Tony. How could I not remember that. Anyhow, he is actually a pretty likeable character. An underdog. A sensitive heart in that blustery white suit.
Stayin' Alive kicks off the film and soundtrack to Saturday Night Fever. It opens with an immediacy of keyboards and bass. It has a sexy mystique, a hypnotic power, a cool confidence. Maurice Gibb plays one of the most memorable bass lines of any song ever. Then there are strings soaring up to heaven, different percussion instruments popping up here and there, that constant 'chicka' hi hat, and mighty blasts of horns.
And there are the vocals...the screechy high notes sometimes make me cringe, but I love Barry's vocals on 'life goin nowhere, somebody help me.' Smooooottthhhhh.....
The Bee Gees were the gods that sat atop Mount Disco, their high-pitched harmonies crying out across the land. Then you had lil Andy Gibb hittin the charts as well. And who can forget Sesame Street Fever? What a cultural phenomenon, that disco era. I did a social studies report on prejudice against disco, in the form of the Steve Dahl Disco Demolition Night at Comiskey Park. I liked disco, I didn't really know any better, I was a kid and this stuff was on the radio. I thought the Village People were like Saturday Morning Cartoon characters.
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