Hope everyone has a great weekend.
On this day in 1977, the movie soundtrack to “Saturday Night Fever” was released (November 15)
A major critical and commercial success, “Saturday Night Fever” had a tremendous effect on popular culture of the late 1970s.
The film helped significantly to popularize disco music, dancing, and nightclubs around the world and made John Travolta, who was already well known from his role on TV's “Welcome Back, Kotter” a household name.
The “Saturday Night Fever Soundtrack” is one of the best-selling albums in history, and remains the second-biggest-selling soundtrack of all time, selling 40 million copies worldwide.
Producer Robert Stigwood commissioned the Bee Gees to create the songs for the film.
As Robin Gibb said:
“We were recording our new album in the north of France. And we'd written about and recorded about four or five songs for the new album when Stigwood rang from LA and said, 'We're putting together this little film, low budget, called Tribal Rites of a Saturday Night. Would you have any songs on hand?', and we said, 'Look, we can't, we haven't any time to sit down and write for a film'. We didn't know what it was about.”
The brothers wrote the songs "virtually in a single weekend".
Barry Gibb remembered the reaction when Stigwood and music supervisor Bill Oakes arrived and listened to the demos:
“They flipped out and said these will be great. We still had no concept of the movie, except some kind of rough script that they'd brought with them ...”
The soundtrack won the Grammy Award for Album of the Year.
It is the only disco album to do so, and one of only three soundtrack albums so honored.
In 2020, the album was ranked #163 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of "The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time".
Click on the link below to watch John Travolta’s famous dance sequence to The Bee Gees “You Should Be Dancing”:
On this day in 1976, the Led Zeppelin soundtrack album “The Song Remains the Same” went to #1 in the UK (November 13)
The live soundtrack album of the concert film of the same name was recorded 27–29 July 1973 at
Madison Square Garden, New York City during the band's 1973 North American tour.
Until the album and the film were remastered and re-released in 2007, they featured slightly different track lists, and some of the recordings featured on the album were actually of different performances from those in the film.
In addition to topping the charts in the UK, it also went to #2 in the US, #6 in New Zealand and Japan, 8 in Australia and Canada, #13 in Italy, #19 in the Netherlands, and #20 in Germany.
Despite its chart success though, the band members themselves haven’t always been that complimentary in their assessments of the double album.
Consequently, the surviving band members oversaw the remixing and remastering of the original release, and “The Song Remains the Same” soundtrack album was reissued on CD on 20 November 2007, including six songs that were not on the original album release.
The album cover shows a dilapidated movie house on Old Street film studios in London, where the group rehearsed for their 1973 tour.
Click on the link below to watch “Over the Hills and Far Away”:
On this day in 1982, the Steve Winwood single “Valerie” debuted on the US Billboard charts at #79 (November 13)
This original release from the LP “Talking Back to the Night” only progressed to #70 on the US charts, and performed modestly elsewhere, peaking at #34 in Canada, #51 in the UK, and #98 in Australia.
The remix version in 1987 performed much better, peaking at #9 in the US, #17 in Canada and Australia, and #19 in the UK and Ireland.
Eric Prydz later sampled "Valerie" in 2004 for a house music track and presented it to Winwood, who was so impressed with what Prydz had done, he re-recorded the vocals to better fit the track.
It was released as "Call on Me" that same year.
Click the link below to see the clip of the original:
On this day in 1971, the Cher single “Gypsys, Tramps & Thieves” spent its final week at #1 on the US Billboard charts (November 13)
Lyrically, the song describes the life of a girl who was "born in the wagon of a traveling show", and it contains themes of racism, teenage pregnancy and prostitution.
Critically, "Gypsys, Tramps & Thieves" has been met with appreciation ever since its release. It earned Cher her first Grammy Award nomination in the Best Female Pop Vocal Performance category.
Commercially, it became her first solo #1 single on the US Billboard Hot 100 and on the Canadian Singles Chart, while reaching the Top 5 in Australia, Ireland, New Zealand and the UK.
It was the first single by a solo artist to rank number one on the US Billboard Hot 100 chart at the same time as on the Canadian Singles Chart.
Click the link below to see a young Cher’s iconic clip of the song:
On this day in 1965, The Rolling Stones were in the second week of a two week run at #1 on the US Billboard Hot 100 with the single “Get Off of My Cloud” (November 13)
The follow-up single to the successful "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction" was another from the prolific Jagger/Richards songwriting partnership.
The Stones have said that the song is a reaction to their sudden huge popularity, and deals with their dislike of people's expectations of them after the success of "Satisfaction".
Keith Richards commented: "'Get Off of My Cloud' was basically a response to people knocking on our door asking us for the follow-up to 'Satisfaction' ... We thought 'At last. We can sit back and maybe think about events'.
Suddenly there's the knock at the door and of course what came out of that was 'Get Off of My Cloud'".
In addition to topping the charts in the US, it also reached #1 in the UK, Canada, Germany and South Africa, and #2 in Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, Sweden, Norway, Finland and the Netherlands.
Click on the link below to watch:
The Clash and Public Image Limited co-founder Keith Levene has passed away, aged 65 (11 November 2022)
London-born Levene was always into music, and worked as a roadie for Yes on their “Close to the Edge” tour when he was just 15.
Levene was responsible for helping to persuade Joe Strummer to leave the 101ers and join the Clash, and was just 18 when they played their first ever gig as a support to the Sex Pistols at the Black Swan in Sheffield, England on July 4, 1976.
Although he left The Clash before they began recording, he co-wrote "What's My Name", featured on their first album.
After the demise of the Sex Pistols, Levene founded experimental post-punk band Public Image Ltd with Pistols frontman John Lydon in 1978.
Levene left PiL in 1983 over creative differences concerning what would eventually become the band's fourth album, “This Is What You Want... This Is What You Get”, which contained one of Levene’s co-written hits “This Is Not A Love Song”.
Red Hot Chili Peppers guitarist John Frusciante was a fan, and once described Levene’s playing style as “spectacular”, saying “he explored the possibilities of what you can do with the guitar”.
Levene enjoyed building guitars and had been working on a book about PiL…
He had been suffering from liver cancer prior to his passing.
R.I.P.
On this day in 1976, the Rod Stewart single “Tonight’s The Night (Gonna Be Alright)” went to #1 on the US Billboard charts (November 13)
The song from his “A Night on the Town”, controversial at the time of release, proved to be a massive commercial success and became his second US chart topper on the US Billboard Hot 100.
It made its debut at #81 on 2 October 1976 and rose quickly, climbing from #8 to the top of the chart on 13 November, and remained on top for eight consecutive weeks until 8 January 1977.
It was the longest stay of any song during 1976, the longest run at the top for a single in the US in over eight years (since the Beatles’ "Hey Jude" in November 1968), and the longest stay at #1 for Rod Stewart in his entire recording career, and the final #1 of the US Bicentennial year.
The song also peaked at #5 in the UK, #1 for six weeks in Canada, #3 in Australia and charted well in other parts of the world.
It was the #1 song on both Billboard's 1977 year-end chart and the year-end Canadian singles chart.
It became the best-selling single of 1977 in the United States.
As of 2018, it is the nineteenth most popular song in the history of the chart…
Click here to see the popular film clip of the single:
On this day in 1977, the Rose Tattoo single “Bad Boy For Love” debuted on the Australian charts at #76 (November 14)
It was Rose Tattoo’s debut single after forming in 1976, but songwriter and bass player Ian Rilen had already left the band before the single was released in October.
The Vanda & Young produced track went on to peak at #19 on the Australian charts, and was later included on their debut self-titled LP.
Definitely a classic of 70s Oz pub rock, with the Tatts in full hard rockin’ slide guitar mode.
Here’s Rose Tattoo in action live at the BBC performing the song:
On this day in 1983, the Mi-Sex single “Only Thinking” debuted on the Australian charts (November 14)
Another great track in a long line of excellent songs cranked out by this Kiwi combo.
The lead single from their fourth studio album, “Where Do They Go?” was in my opinion one of their best, but only went on to peak at #48.
Click on the link below to watch this underrated track from one of the best trans-Tasman bands of the day (the clip’s from Hey Hey it’s Saturday):
On this day in 1977, the Dragon LP “Running Free” debuted on the Australian charts (November 14)
Dragon’s fourth studio album stayed in the charts for 26 weeks, eventually peaking in the #6 spot in Australia, and #16 in New Zealand.
“Running Free” is significant in the Dragon discography for spawning the #2 hit single “April Sun in Cuba” which went on to become an enduring pub rock classic…
Click on the link below to watch it on Countdown:
On this day in 1977, the movie soundtrack to “Saturday Night Fever” was released (November 15)
A major critical and commercial success, “Saturday Night Fever” had a tremendous effect on popular culture of the late 1970s.
The film helped significantly to popularize disco music, dancing, and nightclubs around the world and made John Travolta, who was already well known from his role on TV's “Welcome Back, Kotter” a household name.
The “Saturday Night Fever Soundtrack” is one of the best-selling albums in history, and remains the second-biggest-selling soundtrack of all time, selling 40 million copies worldwide.
Producer Robert Stigwood commissioned the Bee Gees to create the songs for the film.
As Robin Gibb said:
“We were recording our new album in the north of France. And we'd written about and recorded about four or five songs for the new album when Stigwood rang from LA and said, 'We're putting together this little film, low budget, called Tribal Rites of a Saturday Night. Would you have any songs on hand?', and we said, 'Look, we can't, we haven't any time to sit down and write for a film'. We didn't know what it was about.”
The brothers wrote the songs "virtually in a single weekend".
Barry Gibb remembered the reaction when Stigwood and music supervisor Bill Oakes arrived and listened to the demos:
“They flipped out and said these will be great. We still had no concept of the movie, except some kind of rough script that they'd brought with them ...”
The soundtrack won the Grammy Award for Album of the Year.
It is the only disco album to do so, and one of only three soundtrack albums so honored.
In 2020, the album was ranked #163 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of "The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time".
Click on the link below to watch John Travolta’s famous dance sequence to The Bee Gees “You Should Be Dancing”:
On this day in 1976, the Led Zeppelin soundtrack album “The Song Remains the Same” went to #1 in the UK (November 13)
The live soundtrack album of the concert film of the same name was recorded 27–29 July 1973 at
Madison Square Garden, New York City during the band's 1973 North American tour.
Until the album and the film were remastered and re-released in 2007, they featured slightly different track lists, and some of the recordings featured on the album were actually of different performances from those in the film.
In addition to topping the charts in the UK, it also went to #2 in the US, #6 in New Zealand and Japan, 8 in Australia and Canada, #13 in Italy, #19 in the Netherlands, and #20 in Germany.
Despite its chart success though, the band members themselves haven’t always been that complimentary in their assessments of the double album.
Consequently, the surviving band members oversaw the remixing and remastering of the original release, and “The Song Remains the Same” soundtrack album was reissued on CD on 20 November 2007, including six songs that were not on the original album release.
The album cover shows a dilapidated movie house on Old Street film studios in London, where the group rehearsed for their 1973 tour.
Click on the link below to watch “Over the Hills and Far Away”:
On this day in 1982, the Steve Winwood single “Valerie” debuted on the US Billboard charts at #79 (November 13)
This original release from the LP “Talking Back to the Night” only progressed to #70 on the US charts, and performed modestly elsewhere, peaking at #34 in Canada, #51 in the UK, and #98 in Australia.
The remix version in 1987 performed much better, peaking at #9 in the US, #17 in Canada and Australia, and #19 in the UK and Ireland.
Eric Prydz later sampled "Valerie" in 2004 for a house music track and presented it to Winwood, who was so impressed with what Prydz had done, he re-recorded the vocals to better fit the track.
It was released as "Call on Me" that same year.
Click the link below to see the clip of the original:
On this day in 1971, the Cher single “Gypsys, Tramps & Thieves” spent its final week at #1 on the US Billboard charts (November 13)
Lyrically, the song describes the life of a girl who was "born in the wagon of a traveling show", and it contains themes of racism, teenage pregnancy and prostitution.
Critically, "Gypsys, Tramps & Thieves" has been met with appreciation ever since its release. It earned Cher her first Grammy Award nomination in the Best Female Pop Vocal Performance category.
Commercially, it became her first solo #1 single on the US Billboard Hot 100 and on the Canadian Singles Chart, while reaching the Top 5 in Australia, Ireland, New Zealand and the UK.
It was the first single by a solo artist to rank number one on the US Billboard Hot 100 chart at the same time as on the Canadian Singles Chart.
Click the link below to see a young Cher’s iconic clip of the song:
On this day in 1965, The Rolling Stones were in the second week of a two week run at #1 on the US Billboard Hot 100 with the single “Get Off of My Cloud” (November 13)
The follow-up single to the successful "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction" was another from the prolific Jagger/Richards songwriting partnership.
The Stones have said that the song is a reaction to their sudden huge popularity, and deals with their dislike of people's expectations of them after the success of "Satisfaction".
Keith Richards commented: "'Get Off of My Cloud' was basically a response to people knocking on our door asking us for the follow-up to 'Satisfaction' ... We thought 'At last. We can sit back and maybe think about events'.
Suddenly there's the knock at the door and of course what came out of that was 'Get Off of My Cloud'".
In addition to topping the charts in the US, it also reached #1 in the UK, Canada, Germany and South Africa, and #2 in Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, Sweden, Norway, Finland and the Netherlands.
Click on the link below to watch:
The Clash and Public Image Limited co-founder Keith Levene has passed away, aged 65 (11 November 2022)
London-born Levene was always into music, and worked as a roadie for Yes on their “Close to the Edge” tour when he was just 15.
Levene was responsible for helping to persuade Joe Strummer to leave the 101ers and join the Clash, and was just 18 when they played their first ever gig as a support to the Sex Pistols at the Black Swan in Sheffield, England on July 4, 1976.
Although he left The Clash before they began recording, he co-wrote "What's My Name", featured on their first album.
After the demise of the Sex Pistols, Levene founded experimental post-punk band Public Image Ltd with Pistols frontman John Lydon in 1978.
Levene left PiL in 1983 over creative differences concerning what would eventually become the band's fourth album, “This Is What You Want... This Is What You Get”, which contained one of Levene’s co-written hits “This Is Not A Love Song”.
Red Hot Chili Peppers guitarist John Frusciante was a fan, and once described Levene’s playing style as “spectacular”, saying “he explored the possibilities of what you can do with the guitar”.
Levene enjoyed building guitars and had been working on a book about PiL…
He had been suffering from liver cancer prior to his passing.
R.I.P.
On this day in 1976, the Rod Stewart single “Tonight’s The Night (Gonna Be Alright)” went to #1 on the US Billboard charts (November 13)
The song from his “A Night on the Town”, controversial at the time of release, proved to be a massive commercial success and became his second US chart topper on the US Billboard Hot 100.
It made its debut at #81 on 2 October 1976 and rose quickly, climbing from #8 to the top of the chart on 13 November, and remained on top for eight consecutive weeks until 8 January 1977.
It was the longest stay of any song during 1976, the longest run at the top for a single in the US in over eight years (since the Beatles’ "Hey Jude" in November 1968), and the longest stay at #1 for Rod Stewart in his entire recording career, and the final #1 of the US Bicentennial year.
The song also peaked at #5 in the UK, #1 for six weeks in Canada, #3 in Australia and charted well in other parts of the world.
It was the #1 song on both Billboard's 1977 year-end chart and the year-end Canadian singles chart.
It became the best-selling single of 1977 in the United States.
As of 2018, it is the nineteenth most popular song in the history of the chart…
Click here to see the popular film clip of the single:
On this day in 1977, the Rose Tattoo single “Bad Boy For Love” debuted on the Australian charts at #76 (November 14)
It was Rose Tattoo’s debut single after forming in 1976, but songwriter and bass player Ian Rilen had already left the band before the single was released in October.
The Vanda & Young produced track went on to peak at #19 on the Australian charts, and was later included on their debut self-titled LP.
Definitely a classic of 70s Oz pub rock, with the Tatts in full hard rockin’ slide guitar mode.
Here’s Rose Tattoo in action live at the BBC performing the song:
On this day in 1983, the Mi-Sex single “Only Thinking” debuted on the Australian charts (November 14)
Another great track in a long line of excellent songs cranked out by this Kiwi combo.
The lead single from their fourth studio album, “Where Do They Go?” was in my opinion one of their best, but only went on to peak at #48.
Click on the link below to watch this underrated track from one of the best trans-Tasman bands of the day (the clip’s from Hey Hey it’s Saturday):
On this day in 1977, the Dragon LP “Running Free” debuted on the Australian charts (November 14)
Dragon’s fourth studio album stayed in the charts for 26 weeks, eventually peaking in the #6 spot in Australia, and #16 in New Zealand.
“Running Free” is significant in the Dragon discography for spawning the #2 hit single “April Sun in Cuba” which went on to become an enduring pub rock classic…
Click on the link below to watch it on Countdown:
