[Today: Ten weeks of allowance add up to my first trip to the record store...]
I was eight years old, my allowance was 50 cents a week, and disco fever was sweeping the nation. I took out the garbage, mowed the lawn, collected the laundry, and vacuumed the carpet. Only ten weeks of saving up and I’d be able to buy an album. Of course, the only album worth buying in early 1978 was the soundtrack of the entire swingin’ 70’s dance party that I was too young to take part in – the Saturday Night Fever Soundtrack.
Even my 8 year-old self could tell that SNF was excellent but deeply flawed. Half of this double album features some of the best music of the disco era, and the Bee Gees songs, including ‘Stayin’ Alive’ ‘Night Fever’ and ‘Jive Talkin’ (all of which went to #1), remain some of the most representative tracks of those times. Kool & The Gang’s ‘Boogie Shoes’, The Trammps’ ‘Disco Inferno’, and Yvonne Elliman’s ‘If I Can’t Have You’ deserve their place alongside the Bee Gees material, but the rest of this soundtrack falls somewhere between boring and laughably bad.
Kool & The Gang’s ‘Open Sesame’ feels like it was knocked off in five minutes. Tavares’ remake of the Bee Gees ‘More Than A Woman’ (also featured on this soundtrack) is pointless. Walter Murphy’s ‘A Fifth Of Beethoven’ is one of the most absurd songs to ever reach number one on the Billboard charts. And David Shire’s three tracks feel like the film score mood cues they are, and will never inspire anyone to do anything except hit the fast forward button.
And yet it’s the hot and cold quality of this soundtrack that makes it such a perfect document of the disco era. The genre as a whole featured about the same 1:1 ratio of brilliant and boring music that’s to be found here. But for characters like John Travolta and the 8 year-old me, the real question wasn’t one of consistent quality, but whether the music could make you dance around like a fool and help you forget about the work week. And on both counts, the Saturday Night Fever Soundtrack is a huge success.
Listen: Stayin’ Alive
23 March 2008 at 4:51 pm |
from the year and your age i see your a few years younger than me (2) so i was a bit “past” the disco thing i guess at 10 i was already too cool for disco, i had an older uncle who lived with us who steered me clear of such “garbage” according to him, so around the same time you were buying this, the very 1st dd buy with his very own paperboy money was zep’s the song remains the same, which was bought under “pressure” from said uncle… Thanks Uncle Dan! it was a fine choice!
i still own the very same badly badly trashed lp too….
you still have the same SNF soundtrack lp?
cheers dk!
23 March 2008 at 4:53 pm |
Oh jeeze! I’m using the lady friends comp and she was logged in on wordpress and i posted that and it looks like she did but SHE IS NOT THAT OLD!!!! I SWEAR!!!!!!
Cheers!
dd
23 March 2008 at 5:27 pm |
Ah, that’s good! ‘The Song Remains The Same’ is a great first album. I didn’t actually get around to that one until I hit college, believe it or not.
And yes, I’ve still got my original SNF LP, even though it’s practically unplayable from scratches. My mom wrote my name in the gatefold – in case I lost it, I guess…