Action
Thursday, 21 May 2009
I bought two double CD’s today. Brandnew, for 2 euro’s each:
I don’t buy much new CD’s, but I was at my favourite supermarket, the Action, to get some painting materials, and noticed these CD-boxes. I have all the hits and more of both bands on vinyl and I would never have bought these CD-boxes if I hadn’t read this little text on the back of the Gibson Brothers box:
Usually texts like these are muffled away in a little corner of the booklet, and usually they are not as explicit as this text. It made me very curious. ??”Re-recordings by one of the original band members”??… How low can you go?
I try not to listen or watch my heroes loose their magic. Many if them do or did, and of course there is a part of me fascinated by death and destruction. But I try not to give in to that part of me. Especially KC recorded some awful songs in the seventies, and the Gibson Brothers too made better records than most people will think, based on some of their hits. I didn’t expect that there would be music on these CD’s that could compete with the seventies stuff. But like I said, what on earth can you expect of a ”re-recording by one or more of the original band members” ?
The KC CD’s contain a recording of a concert. It sounds as if it was given in the nineties, but there is no date on the CD’s to verify this. The band sounds very much like the original Sunshine Band and if the recording would have been better, it could have been an even bigger surprise than it already is. KC has lost much of his voice in the period after his hits; I am not sure, but I think he went through a pretty hard time. But he doesn’t sound like a man cashing in on his old successes: this is a musician with pride and taste.
The two CD’s of the Gibson Brothers contain 23 studio recordings. CD1 starts with four of their biggest hits,??”Cuba”??, ”Non-stop dance”, ”Que sera mi vida” and ”Come to America”. It are not the original versions, but they come close enough to legitimate this release. After all: these are the artists who created these hits. So far so good: for two euro’s this is already more than one can reasonably expect, but there are 7 more songs on CD1 and 11 on CD2.
Well, five the other seven songs on CD1 are also rerecordings, and also quite well done. And since I have not heard the original versions, I don’t mind that it are re-recordings. There are even two new songs on the CD and I wish I knew when thy were recorded. I guess in the nineties. Did you ever expect that the Gibson Brothers would still be recording new material 25 years after their hit days? And again: for 2 euro. CD2 contains only remixes, of the kind that sound like they were all made in one afternoon, so I suggest I skip this.
The question is which of the original band members of the Gibson Brothers are not on this CD. There were originally three of them, and I clearly recognise the voices of two. Two out of three, that is about the score of bands like the Rolling Stones and Queen.
Here is one of my favourite hits of the KC & The Sunshine Band. This guy was a genius, and his LP with 20 (!!!) of his biggest hits from the seventies should be part of any household :
And here is a nice song of the Gibson Brothers:
.