MetaChat is an informal place for MeFites to touch base and post, discuss and
chatter about topics that may not belong on MetaFilter. Questions? Check the FAQ. Please note: This is important.
I used to listen to Babe Ruth on the head phones a lot when I was on the AM side of the house inflicting crimes against humanity by playing Debbie Boone and the Bee Gees.
Hey, don't front on the Bee Gees, man. Back in the day they had their moments. "To Love Somebody," and "New York Mining Disaster," are both extremely well crafted 60's pop-rock.
SNF had it's moments. The Trammps and "Nights On Broadway," I even get a chuckle out of "Fifth Of Beethoven." The Sgt. Pepper soundtrack? Not so much. I'm not a Beatles venerator, but that was a travesty.
My bro wrote this. I find it interesting, persuasive and above all à propos:
We contrast the second and third songs on the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack, "How Deep Is Your Love" and "Night Fever." They are both perfect loops that smoothly and seamlessly move from section to section. They are effective because once you get part of the song in your head, you're trapped in it for several hours. For me, it's the phrase "makin' it mine" in "Night Fever," which gets my mind spinning.
"How Deep Is Your Love" is probably the more perfect loop, and maybe the most perfect loop in pop music. It has a falling or subtractive quality to it and it achieves its momentum as a song by cutting parts of the loop out, especially once it's gone through the loop once and you are content for it to keep going on exactly as before. It has a super smooth vocal and arrangement, to blend each section together as one.
On the other hand, "Night Fever" aggressively contrasts its sections, starting out with the mellow vamp and then going into the part with the heavy guitar. It would be a great song to cover. There is one moment (study the lyrics if you need to) on the "bright" in which the accidental is practically swallowed by the singing and it has this inscrutable, strange feeling before it goes into the "night fever, night fever" part. This loop has a propulsive or additive quality and it breaks up the forward momentum with the "prayin' for this moment to last" part, the part in which I point my arm and index finger out and "dot the beat" in the air in front of me, with the "carriage return" before the one.
What I love about these songs is there is no real "chorus" per se; each section is as hooky as the last. The danger when writing the perfect loop is inertia and stagnancy and I have tried to show how the B.G.s tried to avoid that. They are great songs. I defy anyone to come up with an album that starts as strongly as Saturday Night Fever, with those two following "Stayin' Alive."
You know at home I have a Walter Murphy song from the "Fifth Of beethoven" era called "California Strut." Nothing earthshaking, but it's nice in that you can exactly imagine it as background music at a 70's cocktail party in Scarsdale, played while they muched crab puffs and sipped gin before going off to swap spouses.
photo by splunge
photo by TheophileEscargot
photo by Kronos_to_Earth
photo by ethylene
