barry gibb's unreleased 1970 album is 9/10ths bad

I don't know how I got to it but apparently Barry Gibb made an album straight after the Bee Gees broke up for realz in 1970ish, which may or may not have been called The Kid's No Good. What you see above is not its cover, but someone's imagined idea of what the cover might have been if it had come out. Well, anyway, it should of been called The Album's No Good, get it?! It's so weird how Barry is always pushed as the real solid centre of the Bee Gees but (notwithstanding he was probably worn out completely by the prior five years) this album definitely suggests that he was not much at all without his brothers. Then, anyway. They weren't much without him either although I think Robin's Reign is probably a pretty great album all in all, certainly massively better than this pile of shit (yeah, it's available on youtube by the way, or a version of it is at any rate). That said I think some of the value of Robin's Reign is similarly he didn't have his brothers around insisting he polish stuff, but in that case it kind of worked. Barry's Kid's No Good has songs like 'The Victim' for which the first ten seconds are incredibly good, could be a Stereolab instrumental or something, but why does he have to sing it like he is a tetchy idiot? Ugh, don't do it. (OK I admit it's pretty good really but I don't want to flimsify my bad-tempered argument).* OMG Maurice's album from the same time, The Loner, is also on youtube. And OMG it's ten times better than Barry's fuckin' album!!! O M G! 

But still the Bee Gees' obsession with/default to country music, which was clearly for some reason something they really wanted to do, was and remains kind of sick, well, because their take on country music was usually pretty shit. Yeah, I know, 'Lonely Days', 'Islands in the Stream', I mean sure, but most of the time it was horrible.  

In other news, I went to see if I could find anything called 'Killed By Death' that I had done. I have to concede I might be wrong about this. I found these little square pages of comic strip that in my memory had included something called 'Killed by Death' and I was totally wrong about that. I suppose it doesn't matter. I did find some other things I did about thirty years ago, which I probably never did anything with, excerpts:

I don't know why I found that funny, or why I still do. 

This is a curiosity that I might have done any time in the last twenty years, it won't mean much to you but it's a character from the graphic novel I'm working on now, only I've just drawn him with some harem pants and shoes on and added this rather extraordinary name, which isn't his name, next to him. I'm such an enigma to myself. 

*Update 19/4 I've actually decided that 'Victim' is basically the best song Barry Gibb ever wrote. I'm not sure whether this means that the overall average quality of the album goes up, or the extraordinary contrast between 'Victim' and all the other tosh creates a universal vortex that sucks the entire thing into a black hole. 

throw some records away

I feel a culling might be coming. I am presently going through records (mainly 12" singles) to find things to play on RRR on New Year's Eve/New Year's Day, as Carmel Zappia and I have been entrusted with two hours either side of midnight then to entertain the masses. As usual I have no real idea what would entertain the masses but I am quite amused by extended versions of obscure releases by famous artists (so right now I am listening to 'God Tonight' by Real Life, which is their umpteenth single and was from their fourth album, way beyond their initial huge success with frankly their best records 'Catch Me I'm Falling' (and yes, yes 'Send Me an Angel' but I don't want to think about that). 'God Tonight' is a very New Order-y song and while I suppose you don't want to say things like 'anyone could do this', at least you know New Order could do this (it wouldn't be out of place in their canon) and you sort of feel, well I do, that David Sterry is actually dialling it back a bit to not-sing like whatsisname from New Order does not-sing. New Order's 'Confusion' came out in 1983, and seven years later, Real Life rolled out a sort of cod-'Confusion' to widespread yawns (OK I say that but in fact Wikipedia tells me that this record hit the 'US Dance' Top 10, which is unexpected). At least it doesn't sit on the fence like me (I don't know if I like it or not). Maybe I should just not worry. 

I am going to throw away a Barry Gibb 12" ('Shine, Shine') which I was astonished to read on Wikipedia was a top 40 hit in the US in 1984 (what were people thinking, doing, feeling then??!!) and a Blow Monkeys 12", though that's not because of its quality but because it is unplayable, a ridiculous amount of surface noise, would purchase a playable copy. Anyway I might find myself chucking out a few more things, don't worry I'll be sure to let you know.  

* 1/1/22 update - I just realised there is a very close similarity in smug expression between Barry above and my donkey rider in the picture from the last post. Btw this is not what my copy of 'Shine Shine' looks like, mine is a really dog's breakfast of a design.