And truth seems stranger than fiction. Donald Trump still seems an unlikely figure to spearhead this kind of renewal, even if we’ve gotten at least somewhat used to him occupying the Oval Office. A great many people would probably date the more recent change from July 13, 2024, when he survived an assassination attempt that came within an inch – literally – of killing him. That was followed by so many other events it could make a person dizzy: the removal of Biden and the temporary elevation of Harris, the campaign in which podcasts became tremendously important, the disgrace of Nancy Pelosi, the post-election grin of Biden, and in the Middle East exploding pagers and targeted assassinations proving that Israel knows exactly where its enemies hide and is newly determined to take them out. Now we have a government in which not only Trump, but Elon Musk and RFK Jr. and Tulsi Gabbard and Vivek Ramaswamy will have a place.

And now, world leaders seem poised on the edge of the change, too, for better or for worse – for example, in Ukraine. Jack Smith’s day in the sun may be over. Javier Milei, the change agent of Argentina, visited Trump, who called him a “MAGA person” as in “Make Argentina Great Again.” The MSM has egg on its face, and now Joe and Mika (of all people) have also come to see president-elect Trump as MSNBC’s rating have dropped precipitously.

And maybe it’s time for a little Bee Gees:

The post Do you feel the winds of change? appeared first on The New Neo.

The lyrics tell you right at the beginning:

Here the disillusionment takes a tiny bit longer. I love the biting quality Thompson puts into his voice:

And of course there are the Bee Gees, kings of the broken heart. They’re not quite as bitter, but still – when the singer wakes up, she’s gone, and he didn’t see it coming and doesn’t have a clue why. Maybe you can tell him:

This isn’t exactly about the same theme. But hey, I love it, and it’s close enough:

Back to the Bee Gees – as songwriters, anyway. The great Dionne Warwick here:

The post Love-gone-bad songs appeared first on The New Neo.

Haters will say this is AI ?? pic.twitter.com/vqWVxiYXeD

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 14, 2024

It’s especially apropos because of Trump’s survival of an assassination attempt.

Note, also, what most people often ignore – the lyrics to the song. I draw your attention to these lines in particular: “We can try to understand/The New York Times’ effect on man.”

The song was released in December of 1977, almost fifty years ago. It was written by the you-know-whos.

The post Trump and Musk as a dancing duo appeared first on The New Neo.

Time does fly.

You may find his voice grating. To me, he’s no Barry Gibb, but I’ve always very much liked The Four Seasons and they provided a major part of the soundtrack to my youth. I find it difficult to pick a favorite Four Seasons song, but this one comes to mind, although the choice is somewhat arbitrary:

There are a bunch of quite recent videos of Valli singing, but looking at a few I suspect they might be lip-synced. Oh, well, the guy is 90, so I’ll forgive him. Happy Birthday, Frankie!

And speaking of Barry Gibb, I can’t resist mentioning the song that is the intersection between the two men, because Gibb wrote it for Valli:

Jim Jacobs and Warren Casey had written a different title track for Grease for its original Chicago production, but the song was discarded when the show was picked up on Broadway. Barry Gibb was commissioned to compose a new title song for Robert Stigwood’s film of the stage musical.

… Gibb invited … Peter Frampton to play guitar on the Grease session, while also providing backing vocals himself. … Frankie Valli was approached to provide the vocals, due to his vocal range being similar to that of Barry Gibb, his being under the management of Allan Carr at the time, and his status as a popular singer from the pre-British Invasion era that Grease represented. Gibb had a long-standing respect for Valli as “one of the hallmark voices of our generation”. … When Valli recorded “Grease”, he did not have a recording contract, having been contracted to Private Stock Records which had folded earlier in 1978. After the single was released on the RSO label, which also issued the soundtrack, Valli quickly landed a deal with Warner Bros., which had Valli’s group The Four Seasons under contract at the time. …

“Grease” became a number-one single in the United States in 1978 and also reached number forty on the R&B charts in the same year. Later in 1978, Valli released a follow-up album, the title of which, Frankie Valli… Is the Word, echoes the “grease is the word” lyric contained in the chorus of “Grease”. “Grease” was Valli’s final Top 40 hit.

“Grease” never was a big favorite of mine, but Barry Gibb was a hit machine, and he certainly did right by Valli.

NOTE: I see from that Wiki entry that backing vocals on “Grease” were also provided by The Sweet Inspirations, a group I liked at the time and many of whose members were related to Dionne Warwick (an early member) and Whitney Houston. Another family loaded with musical talent.

The post Frankie Valli is 90 today: Happy Birthday! appeared first on The New Neo.

One of the most well-known and satirized songs on earth, instantly recognizable and not just by those who were alive when it first came out:

Interestingly, they didn’t really have to change the line about The New York Times’ effect on man.

The post Still Stayin’ Alive appeared first on The New Neo.

I wonder why. Maybe I like to see the physical effort. Also, the emotion on the face seems to matter to me. And, since most of the singers I like happen to be men, I can’t eliminate the element of sex appeal – which is not necessarily handsomeness in the conventional sense (although that certainly doesn’t hurt), but just some je ne sais quoi.

Singers reveal themselves when you watch them sing – tough or tender, cold or warm, schmaltzy or cool, tense or relaxed. The Gibb brothers and Mickey Thomas (in “Fooled Around and Fell in Love“, anyway) and the Beatles in their younger days seem to be having so much fun while singing. Joplin wore more than a piece of her heart on her sleeve. Dylan does little for me; he just seems so detached. Mark Knopler’s concentration is very deep and still and yet he moves me greatly, perhaps because his guitar expresses so much emotion. Leonard Cohen has a knowing air, sometimes sardonic. Richard Thompson is another favorite of mine who stands still in concert without seeming to emote very much, and yet his voice has that sob in it and there is always a bittersweet quality of experience.

Okay, so sue me – but I love love love Barry Gibb here. He was at the height of his looks and his voice, and strikes just the right regretful and poignant emotional tone (Streisand doesn’t quite do it for me emotionally, although her voice is lovely). Barry knows how to subordinate his voice when singing with someone else – after all, much of his career was based on singing with other people, in particular his brothers. And here he never loses focus on the interaction with Barbra and continues to face her for much of the song except the beginning part, when he hovers almost protectively over her. And no one – no one – can wear white like Barry:

The post I like to look at singers while they sing appeared first on The New Neo.

“Tragedy” is an odd title for a refresher. But like so many Bee Gees’ songs, the words can be sad but the tune extremely catchy and seemingly upbeat. “Tragedy” – a song from their so-called disco era – is a good example of this.

The song was written by the Bee Gees in the same afternoon as “Too Much Heaven,” another mega-hit that was more ballad-like. Not bad for a few hours’ work.

In an interview I’ve seen, one of the Bee Gees’ said that a hallmark of their music was an attempt to make the intervals between vocals at least as interesting and compelling as the singing part. I think “Tragedy” is a good example of that, and in a particular way. The instrumental portions feature a driving beat that goes on just a bit longer – or sometimes shorter, because the intervals vary – than the listener might expect. It creates a strangely pleasurable tension in the listener – at least, in this listener, and in a lot of YouTube “reactors” I’ve seen. Plus, there’s the famous “explosion” that also occurs at varied intervals, and was created by Barry sort of spitting into cupped hands in front of the microphone.

It’s one of their wholly-falsetto songs, which was common for them during that period. I happen to really really like their non-falsetto songs, but the falsetto ones are great too – such as “Tragedy,” which non-Bee Gees fans probably really detest but I love (the following video of the song has the audio of the final studio version with video of rehearsals as well as other Bee Gee footage):

The post The Bee Gees’ song “Tragedy” is about anticipation appeared first on The New Neo.

Of course, those of you who hate the Bee Gees and especially the Bee Gees’ falsetto singing mode may find listening to this the opposite of joyful. It’s a fairly obscure song by the Bee Gees I recently discovered, and I just love it. You may say “oh, neo, you are tiresomely indiscriminate about the Bee Gees; you love all their stuff.” But no, I merely like some of it – and even among the many songs I love, there are degrees of love.

This particular song may not have caught on when it was released on their 1976 album “Children of the World,” but it’s so upbeat, so expressive of the bubbly happiness a person can feel when in the grip of the first blush of love, that it never fails to put a smile on my face. That smile becomes especially broad when I hear the keyboard (synth?) that begins at around 0:16, and then Barry’s musical yelp at 0:18-0:23. And I especially like the passage from 1:33 to 1:53. Is the song disco? Is it funk? Who cares? Enjoy:

It was a somewhat bigger hit in 1978 for Melba Moore, who turned it into what I hear as a more strictly disco version with more instrumental parts, a faster tempo, and the same relentlessly happy vibe. I like this one very much, too, although the Bee Gees edge it out slightly for me, in part because that synth bit is lacking here. They each have their substantial charms, though. Do we really have to choose? Let’s just dance:

I can’t think of another song that so perfectly captures the experience of sudden love, meeting someone out of the blue and feeling that energizing rush where all’s right with the world when a minute before things seemed so wrong. I fell in love almost instantaneously with my ex-husband. I was twenty-one years old, and although I’d had quite a few serious relationships up to that time, I knew instantly this was The Real Thing. The course of my very lengthy marriage didn’t run at all smooth, and ultimately we divorced, but both of us knew and know that what we felt was very very real despite its suddenness.

I find the phrase “stepped into my life” so interesting. The unusual thing about it is that word “stepped” – the lyric doesn’t say the more conventional “came in my life.” “Stepped” gives that feeling of “suddenly, suddenly” – at one moment the stage is empty, and then the main actor comes on to applause and happy relief. And the way Barry sings “suddenly, suddenly” is just effervescent.

A lot of people think the Bee Gees’ lyrics are ho-hum, but although I think I understand why they say that, I don’t agree. They’re not deep poets like Leonard Cohen, whom I also love. They’re not Bob Dylan, whose lyrics are more obscure and complex, whom I don’t especially love. I like the Beatles but I don’t love them, and many of their early lyrics are just bubblegum stuff and many of their later ones are rather nonsensical to me. The Bee Gees’ lyrics often seem simple and mundane till you think about them more; sometimes a word such as “stepped” is very telling. “You Stepped Into My Life” is one of their more simple lyrics, except that in a way it’s brilliant. And the music isn’t simple at all, although it’s catchy as all get-out.

The post You Stepped Into My Life appeared first on The New Neo.

I’d rather do something more fun, like listen to the Bee Gees while walking outside. And commenter “Ruth” has provided us all with this link if we require justification:

Scientists have discovered that listening to ‘groovy’ music, from artists like the Bee Gees or ABBA, can actually boost brain performance.

The results of a study by the University of Tsukuba in Japan found that songs with a groove rhythm enhanced the ‘executive function’ of the listener.

Executive function is a set of mental skills that enable us to plan, focus attention, remember and multitask.

However, these results were only seen on participants who were familiar with groove music, or had good rhythm.

‘The results were surprising,’ said lead author Professor Hideaki Soya.

‘We found that groove rhythm enhanced executive function and activity in the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex only in participants who reported that the music elicited a strong groove sensation and the sensation of being clear-headed.’

Makes perfect sense to me. Some people hate the Bee Gees, but the people who like them tend to love them and be at least somewhat addicted to listening to their music. That would be me, and millions of others.

I find that certain Bee Gees songs accomplish it more than others (and I’m not much of an ABBA fan at all). But the Bee Gees songs I prefer aren’t limited to ones that demonstrate “grooviness” (I assume they mean disco? I associate the word “groovy” with an earlier era, the 60s, but I don’t think that’s what they’re talking about, when the Bee Gees’ output feature more ballads).

I haven’t quite figured out the commonality in my favorite Bee Gees songs. But the Bee Gees could sing almost anything – almost – and I’d like it, because I find their voices, particularly their non-falsetto voices, both beautiful and strangely hypnotic. Many of their fans say the same thing, and often use the words “calming” and “relaxing” as well.

For those who dislike the Bee Gees sound, that is the opposite of how they feel.

I’ve also mentioned that the Bee Gees wrote so many songs that they have enormous numbers that they never released during their time together. Quite a few of these songs are only in demo form, and many are now available either on later compilations or just on YouTube. I’ve listened to quite a few, and I find that many of them are incredibly good. There are also songs they released that never got much airplay and are known only to extreme aficionados, and many of those are excellent too.

Here’s one of that latter group that was written for the 1983 movie “Staying Alive,” the sequel to the blockbuster film “Saturday Night Fever.” It was on the 1983 movie album but that film didn’t do well and the songs for it sort of got lost in the shuffle. 1983 was also the era of the backlash to the Bee Gees, but the movie itself apparently wasn’t very good either.

This is the demo version of the song, which I somewhat prefer to the version on the record (although that one’s pretty good, too).

So here’s to enhancing your executive function this weekend:

And here’s the more polished version that was on the album:

The lyrics can be found here. I don’t think they’re exactly correct (one line says “I’ll never be the same again” but I hear it instead as “I’ll never love the same again”), but they’re close enough.

The post Listen to the Bee Gees and improve your brain power appeared first on The New Neo.

Instead, here’s something that makes me happy.

You guessed it – the Bee Gees.

Having some fun with Billy Joel in 2001:

O, tempus fugit. That was thirty-four years after this:

In 1974:

In 1989, a simple acoustic version while seated:

These were all live performances, although that 1967 one may be lip-synced, which was common at the time because of studio limitations.

The post Then and now appeared first on The New Neo.