Polydor / Pgd
1990
Tales From The Brothers Gibb
About This Album
This four-CD set is very good, but it also isn't quite all it could have been, mostly because the makers were hamstrung by the peculiar nature of the Bee Gees' audience. In the United States, their 1967-1977 output, embracing sounds from psychedelic pop to disco, is the biggest-selling part of their catalog, but those hits were already represented on three compilations; in Europe and South America, however, the group still had a huge audience for their then-current work, as of 1990. In order to come up with a release that could be marketed in every corner of the globe, the makers had to reach across 23 years of music, encompassing four distinct stylistic periods (there was apparently never any thought given to licensing any of the group's Australian-era singles) and condense it down to four CDs. The result was a box that spread itself a little too thin to totally please everybody, but it is still a uniquely enjoyable survey of their output, mostly because the songs are so good -- indeed, apart from the Beatles or the Hollies, it's difficult to imagine any other group that could match the quality of the 25 songs represented on just the first CD in this set. Disc one is an "11" on a scale of ten for sheer loveliness, outstripping any other collection of 1967-1969 Bee Gees material; though it was necessary to ignore their best album cuts, what's here is essential listening, covering the trio's first three years' worth of singles and B-sides, from "New York Mining Disaster 1941" (a song that took on serious new resonances after the World Trade Center destruction in September of 2001) to their temporary split in 1969.
Track List

Disc 1 (try tracks 2,6,12,13 and 19)

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Disc 2 (try tracks 2,4,5,7,12 and 17)

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Disc 3 (try track 5)

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Disc 4

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