Song Of The Day 6/6/2016: The Marbles – “Only One Woman”

Waxing Gibbous – It's easy to forget 'cause of all the anti-depressants we've been prescribed, but once this kingdom was ruled in stern but fair fashion by the Brothers Gibb. Mainly this was in the late '70s when the Robert Stigwood Organization, a saucy but somewhat benevolent shadow group, amplified the Bee Gees' already sizable popularity by sticking them and/or their music in filmed entertainments about disco dancing, '60s high schools whose students looked ten years older than normal high school students and also sang, and running around bumping into things with Peter Frampton while bad Beatles facsimiles played in the distance (but not distant enough). But they also managed hits in the '60s and early '70s, with heavy ballads about working-class sulkers with chronically broken hearts whose ascensions to vague depictions of well-organized Shangri-La's were thwarted on account of them being stuck in mining accidents. All of that constitutes a recommendation, by the way. You don't know my life.

Barry Gibb was always keen behind the scenes, and either singly or in collaboration with others leant his considerable studio skills to other recording artists who shared his overall viewpoint, if not with the same tremulous falsetto or taste in gold medallions. This week I'm featuring five songs on which Gibb served as a hands-on producer, or at least co-wrote the song question. It's safe to assume that he was on call on all these recordings, and was just a short cab ride away should anybody required more hands-on directives. Unfortunately I can't present my favorite such song, Teri Desario's "Ain't Nothin' Gonna Keep Me From You," because I already featured it during Disco Doubt week. But I found five others that stormed my Mac that will do just fine.

Today's, for example, is from the Marbles, an English duo with Righteous Brotherly aspirations, singing the Bee Gees' composition "Only One Woman" featuring Barry on guitar. It's a pretty sublime song, although Marbles lead singer and flower-power cartoon character name Graham Bonnet thought it was "too simple," which'll get you disenfranchised from the Gibbs before you can say "how can you mend a..." See? That's already too long.