THE BEE GEES – "Massachusetts"

Previously, “New York Mining Disaster”/”I Can’t See Nobody” had gone to #1 in about a week on WBZ in Boston – the DJs were marveling vociferously at how much the A side sounded like the Beatles (did it? I mean, it used harmonies and all, but it sounded more like… more like… THE BEE GEES) (B-side sounded like the Four Tops to my youthful ears, now it sounds more like, um, the Bee Gees in soul mode), so I decided that the song title “Massachusetts” was a way of saying Thank You and of solidifying a market. Problem is that “Massachusetts” rather blows in comparison to “New York Mining Disaster” – in comparison to anything the Bee Gees had hitherto released in the U.S., for that matter.

This recording gave me a strange epiphany of sorts at an early age, even if I didn’t know what to do with it. Hearing “Massachusetts” made me realize that what one finds “exotic” is a matter of where one is, both geographically and psychologically. I really couldn’t figure out why anyone was romanticizing Massachusetts–I still can’t, other than to say that it must have been “one place [they] have been/seen” only in passing. Was it the name that sounded intriguing to these Anglo-Aussies? But then Americans probably could wax romantically on English (or Australian) place names (Salford? A town called Alice?) because [i]they[/i] were not [i]there[/i]. Oh well, the English have traditionally exoticized the Italians, and vice-versa. How else do we account for operas with titles like [i]I Puritani[/i] or [i]Emilia di Liverpool[/i]?

But what always perplexed me was the fact that the lights DIDN’T go out in Massachusetts–they went out in NEW YORK. And what does a power outage have to do with the separated lovers in this song anyway?

But hey–the song’s (kind of) pretty, isn’t it?

hi my name is irasema and my dad is a person who like you so much and me to

\
love you gies

This is a beautiful song. It makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up.

Even after all these years, I still have never been able to work out why the Bee Gees are singing about a state and not a town or city. Indeed I have been to Massachusetts but only to Boston and Cambridge and I would not presume to tie up the rest of the state on the back of those visits. Now had them pesky Gibbs been singing about Tooting Broadway, we’d be on. The lights are always going down in that fucking toilet. Not a great record for me. I’m afraid.

The brothers have said, over the years, that they simply liked the way the word sounded. Apparently they were on their first visit to the States and were so excited that they wrote this song as a hommage of sorts, I guess. It was written either on a boat in N.Y. harbour or in a hotel in the same city, or both. It was also, vaguely, an anti flower power song about someone having left to go to San Francisco (to join up with the hippies there, I guess) and coming back to/longing for Massachusetts.

And in another backyard: http://musicsoundsbetterwithtwo.blogspot.com/2011/11/backyard-trip-traffic-hole-in-my-shoe.html Thanks for reading, everyone!

TOTPWatch: The Bee Gees performed Massachusetts on Top Of The Pops on four occasions;

28 September 1967. Also in the studio that week were; Procol Harum, The Dubliners and The Herd. Alan Freeman was the host.

5 October 1967. Also in the studio that week were; Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick & Titch, The Barron Knights and The Herd. Alan Freeman was the host.

19 October 1967. Also in the studio that week were; John Walker, The Foundations, The Herd and Val Doonican. Jimmy Savile and Tony Blackburn were the hosts.

26 December 1967. Also in the studio that Boxing Day were; Englebert Humperdinck, Long John Baldry, Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick & Titch, Lulu, Cliff Richard and Procol Harum, plus The Go Jo’s interpretation of ‘Reflections Of My Life’. Jimmy Savile, Alan Freeman and Pete Murray were the hosts.

Only the Christmas edition survives.

This is invaluable info – could you slow it down so an old person like me has time to take it in? Thanks Billy.

I’m surprised, sort of, by the lack of non-hits – does this mean TOTP had more selling power in the 60s than, say, 1976? Or just that even primetime telly couldn’t fool the people into buying Philip and Vanessa’s Two Sleepy People.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PaXzV511Huw

(is Philip inferring that he killed her father at 1.02?)

The thing is with the 1976 reruns so far, is the context offered by what else was around and the environment of presentation, to show how great something appears.

For example, you would never see Tarney and Spencer’s song on a ‘highlights’ show, or The Chanter Sisters, but here they are, being ‘not bad’ really.

When Thin Lizzy appeared, performing “The Boys are back in town”, it’s always looked like a classic. But inamongst the ‘ok-ish’ other hits of the week, you can see to what extent! That even though the song in isolation hasn’t dated at all, in the days when the top 30 rundown got represented by blurry photos of the acts (unless a photo wasn’t available), it does seem an awful long time ago.

Here Come The Bees, apparently.

(“Apparently” is not part of the title.)

Maybe the same song as on the b-side of Rolf Harris’ “Pukka Chicken”, unless there are two songs called “Here come the bees”.

*edit* Yep, one GIS later, it’s the same song. Not comedy, as such.

This song is dangerous in seemingly having locked into ancient secrets of homesickness authenticity, viz. Red River Valley. Straight away from lyrical surface you know it’s a load of overloading hokum, i.e. referring to an entire chunk of state/province instead of a smaller municipal area, a strip, house or single street even (or washing drying in the backyard, for 70s-appropriate “dreamy” photographs of memory.) BUT that’s perhaps its weapon. The apparently effective artifice, forces you to judge personal notions of rootedness and rootlessness – such huge part of the Gibb story (to the point different camps stay claiming them to their locality.) And as always, the truth couldn’t be more simple enough: Home is where one says it is, and especially so when appropriating the vocal styling of Red River Valley’s ilk – a time honored, unquestionably accepted idiom that instantly evokes the needs and mechanisms of creating one’s very myth of belonging.

As someone who’s been to both San Francisco and Massachusetts numerous times, it’s notable that one song works for me while the other does not. “San Francisco” is unsurprisingly the one that works. Perhaps it’s because I’ve heard it in conjunction with photo montages of SF or perhaps it’s because it’s further from home for my East Coast self and therefore seems more “exotic”, but “SF” conjures up images of the location (at least how I envision it being in 1967) that “Mass” does not. “Mass” isn’t a bad song per se, but the geographic title doesn’t fit.

Of course, this makes me wonder what a song about Massachusetts is supposed to sound like anyway? To compare, I just listened to Arlo Guthrie’s song about the same state and it didn’t quite work for me either. I think the problem is that some geographic locations/regions have a coherent identity that can be used in an artistic statement while others can’t. Up above someone noted the choice of using a state in a song rather than a city, but there’s been plenty of successful songs about California, Texas, etc. In the case of Mass, I think its position as New England’s most populous, diverse, and overall dominant state somewhat precludes it as being a “region” in the same way. You could successfully write a song about Boston, Cape Cod, or the Berkshires maybe but not the state as a whole. Anyway, I just find this phenomenon interesting as a geographer.

Oh and just to tie three consecutive song reviews into one: “The Last Waltz” is total crap 😛

It’s the 50th birthday of Radios One and Two today, as you may have heard … listening to Tony Blackburn re-presenting his original show I discover that this was the second record played on Radio One, the Move not making it to the top and having to settle for a little bit of broadcasting history instead. Engelbert featured early on as well; quite why anyone thought that the Kids of ’67 wanted to hear The Last Waltz is a mystery at this remove, but, maybe some of them did!

A really pleasant and sweeping track from the Gibbs. 7/10 for me.