Staying Alive with Saturday Night Fever: Bosque Arts Center offers Bee Gees Now tribute band concert as part of its Big Event fundraising weekend
CLIFTON – When in come to the Bee Gees, even if you did not own one of their albums back in the 1970s and early 1980s, they got so much radio air play, each one of their top hit songs with their signature high falsetto three-part harmony sound trigger an instant reaction to listeners.
Even though you might not know the title of the song, you invariably start to sing along with each and every line, etched in the grey matter folds of your brain’s temporal lobe. Add to that the images of the quintessential disco film – the inspiration for the 2024 Bosque Arts Center's annual Big Event fundraiser theme “Saturday Night Fever” – and those songs are locked in for life.
This made the Bee Gees Now tribute band concert in the Bosque Arts Center’s Frazier Performance Hall so much fun to experience. In a nearly sold out venue, Big Event guests and the general public with concert tickets swayed, tapped, mouthed and sang along loudly to the 23-song set. The last song “Night Fever” and the band’s two encore songs “Staying Alive” and “You Should Be Dancing” took the guests back to disco times, bringing them to the dance floor to boogie along. Those three Bee Gee’s songs were all on the 1977 Saturday Night Fever sound track, along with their “How Deep is Your Love,” “More Than A Woman” and “Jive Talking.”
The tribute band, who also call themselves the Florida Bee Gees, claim “close your eyes and you will swear the real Gibb Brothers were performing!” While born in the United Kingdom, the Gibb brothers grew up in Australia. These musicians keeping their musical legacy alive come from the U.K., Canada and the U.S. and reside in Florida. They are all talented and experienced musicians and entertainers who come together to keep the Bee Gees legacy alive.
Front man of the group Dave Lafame takes on Robin Gibbs vibrato and bass guitar. Robin had the buck teeth and without the facial hair. Along with drummer Dave Radford, Lafame is a founding member of the Florida Beegees, and is also their booking agent. Lead vocalist and guitarist Aaron Solomon takes on Barry Gibbs falsetto. Just as a reminder, Barry was the handsome one with the Farah Fawcett hair. Keyboard player Billy Caloyer plays many different instruments, but in the Bee Gees Now band he takes on the vocals of Maurice and Andy. Maurice was the brother with the receding hairline. Staying in the background a bit was the band’s guitarist Donavon Christenson who took on the backing vocals.
Of the Gibb brothers, Barry was the oldest, then came the twins Robin and Maurice and finally Andy. Andy died at 30 years old in 1988. The trio founded in 1958, is the only group to have landed singles in the entire modern pop era, spanning over 40 years, covering pop, R&B, disco, and soft rock.
Enjoy this retrospective by Music Chronos of the Bee Gees' most iconic songs in chronological order (single release), from their debut on Australian television in 1960 to Barry Gibb's (the only surviving member) latest release “In the Now” from 2016.
And the Bee Gees wrote many more songs that were made famous by other high-powered singers, such as Al Green “How Can You Mend a Broken Heart,” Kenny Rogers and Dolly Parton “Islands in the Stream” and Barbra Streisand “Guilty” and “Heartbreaker” for Dionne Warwick. Besides the songs of the Saturday Night Fever movie, they wrote the title song of another John Travolta hit movie “Grease” sung by Frankie Valli.
The songs the tribute band played, encouraging the audience to sing choruses and hold up their cell phone lights, spanned the entire 40 years from the 1968 “I Started a Joke” to the 1997 “Alone.” The soulful ballad "To Love Somebody" was originally written for Otis Redding, and while it never made it to number one, it endures to this day as the Bee Gees’ most remembered song, since become a pop standard covered by many artists. It was followed by “Massachusetts,” “Words,” “Nights on Broadway” and “Tragedy” to name a few.
Only Elvis Presley, the Beatles, Michael Jackson, Garth Brooks and Paul McCartney have outsold the Bee Gees. With nine number-one hits on the Billboard Hot 100, the Bee Gees are the third-most successful band in Billboard charts history behind only the Beatles and the Supremes.
“Listening to music releases dopamine in the brain, with our dopamine levels increasing by nine percent when listening to music we enjoy, Time correspondent Nayantara Dutta reported in an April 14, 2022 article. “That’s one reason why music has become so intertwined with how we express and comfort ourselves. It seems to be because of how often we experience music, in the world or in our minds, and the joy and emotional connection it brings us. Music represents who we are and how we feel, so of course it's what we remember.”
And it became clear that the Bee Gees music was memorable to those enjoying the Bee Gees Now concert, proving that the Bee Gee legacy endures.
Photos by SIMONE WICHERS-VOSS
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Simone,
Excellent again
I wasn’t able to attend this event BUT your article had me sitting in the front row swaying with the music.
Don Spitzenberger