Our Music Monday series was created during the lockdown of the pandemic. While we enjoyed creating it, and some of you expressed enjoying it as well, we have decided to put our efforts towards other creative endeavors within our blog. Even though the series has been archived, you may still peruse other Music Monday posts. Thank you for allowing us to create interesting content for you and hanging with us during the pandemic and beyond.
For this Music Monday post, I (Gerry) am back after taking a break, with an interesting one. The Foo Fighters taking a stab at the Bee Gees? Yes, it’s true. The Foo Fighters made a cover album, calling themselves the “Dee Gees” for this record store day release.
The five Bee Gees songs are fun to listen to and have a “meet in the middle” approach to the original 70’s era disco recordings of the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack, and the hard rock sound that the Foo Fighters ordinarily subscribe to. The Foos or the Dee Gees, start the album with “You Should Be Dancing”, from the original Saturday Night Fever soundtrack. The song doesn’t stray much from the original, but what jumps out to me is Dave Grohl singing in a falsetto voice, reminiscent of the original recording. Also, the full sounding rock guitars add just the perfect touch to give it a slightly Foo Fighters sound!
The accompanying music video is great and really takes the performance home. They follow with “Night Fever”, which is such a great song it really doesn’t matter if they’ve added anything new. The song is performed pretty straightforwardly to the original. The album veers from the original soundtrack with “Tragedy” from the Staying Alive (sequel to Saturday Night Fever) soundtrack and then the Andy Gibb solo single, “Shadow Dancing”, which was written for him by the brothers Gibb. Once again, not steering from the sound they’ve maintained throughout the record.
Drummer Taylor Hawkins takes over the lead vocals on “Tragedy” quite effectively, although not hitting the high notes quite like Grohl. The band goes back to the original soundtrack with their take on “More Than a Woman.” It is a great way to round off the set. After releasing their 10th studio album Medicine at Midnight earlier this year, they premiered their disco side project with “You Should Be Dancing” on BBC Radio 2. Apparently, Dave Grohl was inspired by last December’s HBO doc about the Bee Gees leading to the recordings. The record store release album, Hail Satin contains the five Bee Gees’ covers on side one and live versions of songs from Medicine at Midnight on side two.
As a child, 40 years ago I wore the grooves off the original Saturday Night Fever soundtrack, “shuckin’ and jivin’ across the living room floor when my parents were gone. Listening to the Dee Gees’ covers yesterday had me sliding across the floor while doing housework and took me back all those years to reminisce about those wonderful feelings. Thanks, Dave Grohl, for this Dee Gees experiment. Hail Satin!
