The Bee Gees - Festival Hall, Melbourne, Australia, 7-15-1971

I have some Bee Gees concerts I've been planning on posting, including a couple of BBC ones from later in their career, so here's one. Unfortunately, there's very little in the way of concert recordings from them from the 1960s. This is the very earliest concert that has truly excellent sound. That's because it was both broadcast on the radio at the time as well as shown in black and white on TV.

The Bees Gees grew up in Australia. But they left the country in 1966 to pursue bigger opportunities after having their first big hit, "Spicks and Specks." 1971 was the first time they returned to tour their home country. The tour was a big success, with sold out shows everywhere. They brought with them a small band and a 16-piece orchestra.

In case you're only familiar with the band's late 1970s disco hits like "Stayin' Alive," this is a drastically different band. But they were very commercially successful in this earlier era too. And they played just about all of their big hits. In fact, their song "How Can You Mend a Broken Heart" was a Number One hit, and Number Two in Australia, a couple of months before this concert.

This bootleg can be found in many Internet spots where bootlegs are traded. However, the encore, "Spicks and Specks" is almost always left out. So I'm glad to have it included here. It was a very appropriate song to finish on, harkening back to their time in Australia in 1966 with that hit song.

This album is exactly an hour long. It could be that some more of the concert is not included here, especially banter between songs. For instance, the last song starts with the audience already very excited.

01 New York Mining Disaster 1941 (Bee Gees)
02 To Love Somebody (Bee Gees)
03 talk (Bee Gees)
04 Really and Seriously (Bee Gees)
05 talk (Bee Gees)
06 Every Second, Every Minute (Bee Gees)
07 talk (Bee Gees)
08 Lay It on Me (Bee Gees)
09 talk (Bee Gees)
10 Jingle Jangle (Bee Gees)
11 In the Morning [Morning of My Life] (Bee Gees)
12 talk (Bee Gees)
13 Holiday (Bee Gees)
14 I Can't See Nobody (Bee Gees)
15 talk (Bee Gees)
16 Words (Bee Gees)
17 talk (Bee Gees)
18 How Can You Mend a Broken Heart (Bee Gees)
19 I Started a Joke (Bee Gees)
20 I've Gotta Get a Message to You (Bee Gees)
21 Massachusetts (Bee Gees)
22 Lonely Days (Bee Gees)
23 Spicks and Specks (Bee Gees)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15278206/TBeeGs_1971_FestivlHallMelbourneAustralia__7-15-1971_atse.zip.html

The cover photo is actually from November 1972. But I couldn't find any really good ones of them in concert in 1971. Plus, I think this is a fitting one because you can see the orchestra in the background.