The Magic of The Bee Gees You Win Again Queen's Hall Edinburgh 10th June 2023 Review
The Magic of The Bee Gees – You Win Again Tour was at The Queen’s Hall Edinburgh tonight, and this one was certainly a girls’ (of a certain age) night out as they made up by far the largest section of this audience.
This show is one of a wide range of tribute shows from producers Entertainers and every time I review one of their shows they always set out to do two basic things – capture the essence of the music and entertain their audience for the evening. Tonight as usual they did both with their “Bee Gees” - Martin Spooner as Robin, Rowan Lyle as Barry and Yvan Silva as Maurice.
The debate on tribute bands, for or against, will go on forever, but there is no denying the fact that there are some very talented performers and musicians out there doing these shows and the audiences come in to watch these shows bringing much needed revenue and customers into venues.
Pretty much any tribute show/band (there are a few exceptions) follows the format of tonight’s show, performers with a passing visual resemblance to the original artists and the ability to sound at least close to them too. Here the “You Win Again” trio ticked these boxes for this audience from their very first opening song – which of course had to be no other than “You Win Again”.
Let’s be honest here though, our trio both individually and collectively are not the Gibb Brothers and the ranges of vocals and tightness of harmonies of the originals are simply not there and it is perhaps unfair to expect them to be. Yes they are good, but the Bee Gees were uniquely talented vocalists and that is why they were at the top of their game for so long. Tonight this trio did their job of doing justice to the music of The Bee Gees whilst at the same time engaging with their audience and making sure that this was a feel good night out for everyone, and along the way many people got to turn back the hands of time and revisit some of their favourite music of yesterday.
Music in the end is what this show was about, and The Bee Gees were simply some of the best songwriters of their generation, and sometimes it is all too easy for the global success of their music on the “Saturday Night Fever” soundtrack to overshadow the many excellent songs prior to this and the many songs that they wrote for other artists. This show does correct this stereotype of the band by having this trio and a good four piece backing band cover music from throughout their career and it was good to hear early songs like “How Do You Mend A Broken Heart”, “Words” and “Massachusetts” again.
The Bee Gees wrote many songs that were either covered by, or were specially written for other artists, so it was appropriate that we were reminded of this with a few of these songs that included “Islands In The Stream” (Dolly Parton & Kenny Rogers), “Chain Reaction” (Diana Ross), “More Than A Woman” (Tavares) and “Grease” (Frankie Valli).
The music of The Bee Gees will forever be linked with two film soundtracks, “Saturday Night Fever” (1977) and “Stayin’ Alive” (1983) and over time these two seem to have merged into one in many people’s minds, and not surprisingly a lot of the music tonight came from these films – “Night Fever” (the band resisted pressure from the film producers to change the title of this song to the film title), “Tragedy”, “Stayin’ Alive”, “How Deep Is Your Love” and many more classics.
There was one non Bee Gees song on the set list tonight, “Disco Inferno” which was originally recorded by “The Trammps” (written by Trammps keyboard player Ron Kersey and Leroy Green) but I will let them away with this one as it was a good cover and the song was on the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack.
At the end of the evening, the show gave people what they came out for, good music, a good time and the chance to engage with the band on stage and sing along to songs (when invited to) that they obviously knew so well.
Review by Tom King © 2023
www.artsreviewsedinburgh.com
This show is one of a wide range of tribute shows from producers Entertainers and every time I review one of their shows they always set out to do two basic things – capture the essence of the music and entertain their audience for the evening. Tonight as usual they did both with their “Bee Gees” - Martin Spooner as Robin, Rowan Lyle as Barry and Yvan Silva as Maurice.
The debate on tribute bands, for or against, will go on forever, but there is no denying the fact that there are some very talented performers and musicians out there doing these shows and the audiences come in to watch these shows bringing much needed revenue and customers into venues.
Pretty much any tribute show/band (there are a few exceptions) follows the format of tonight’s show, performers with a passing visual resemblance to the original artists and the ability to sound at least close to them too. Here the “You Win Again” trio ticked these boxes for this audience from their very first opening song – which of course had to be no other than “You Win Again”.
Let’s be honest here though, our trio both individually and collectively are not the Gibb Brothers and the ranges of vocals and tightness of harmonies of the originals are simply not there and it is perhaps unfair to expect them to be. Yes they are good, but the Bee Gees were uniquely talented vocalists and that is why they were at the top of their game for so long. Tonight this trio did their job of doing justice to the music of The Bee Gees whilst at the same time engaging with their audience and making sure that this was a feel good night out for everyone, and along the way many people got to turn back the hands of time and revisit some of their favourite music of yesterday.
Music in the end is what this show was about, and The Bee Gees were simply some of the best songwriters of their generation, and sometimes it is all too easy for the global success of their music on the “Saturday Night Fever” soundtrack to overshadow the many excellent songs prior to this and the many songs that they wrote for other artists. This show does correct this stereotype of the band by having this trio and a good four piece backing band cover music from throughout their career and it was good to hear early songs like “How Do You Mend A Broken Heart”, “Words” and “Massachusetts” again.
The Bee Gees wrote many songs that were either covered by, or were specially written for other artists, so it was appropriate that we were reminded of this with a few of these songs that included “Islands In The Stream” (Dolly Parton & Kenny Rogers), “Chain Reaction” (Diana Ross), “More Than A Woman” (Tavares) and “Grease” (Frankie Valli).
The music of The Bee Gees will forever be linked with two film soundtracks, “Saturday Night Fever” (1977) and “Stayin’ Alive” (1983) and over time these two seem to have merged into one in many people’s minds, and not surprisingly a lot of the music tonight came from these films – “Night Fever” (the band resisted pressure from the film producers to change the title of this song to the film title), “Tragedy”, “Stayin’ Alive”, “How Deep Is Your Love” and many more classics.
There was one non Bee Gees song on the set list tonight, “Disco Inferno” which was originally recorded by “The Trammps” (written by Trammps keyboard player Ron Kersey and Leroy Green) but I will let them away with this one as it was a good cover and the song was on the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack.
At the end of the evening, the show gave people what they came out for, good music, a good time and the chance to engage with the band on stage and sing along to songs (when invited to) that they obviously knew so well.
Review by Tom King © 2023
www.artsreviewsedinburgh.com
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