Stayin' Alive

So I got the IPod that I wanted for my birthday. As I frequently do with things that I like, I have gotten rather obsessed with it. But this post is about what I found when I first turned the thing on.

Basically, I think that The Muse loaded some songs on it so there would be something on it to start. And one of these songs was Stayin' Alive by the Bee Gees.

Now this song was a joke when I was a teenager. Stayin' Alive was right up there with YMCA for evoking sarcastic laughter during the mid- to late 80's. Basically, it was a way to rip on the prior generation, who, by definition in teenagers' minds, is always uncool. I remember, one time when I was about 15 or 16, I was humming the base line from Stayin' Alive and one of my friends looked at me with a withering glare and said, "God, why are you singing that?"

When I got my IPod, though, as soon as I figured out how to turn the writing from Chinese to English (it's hard to find and use the settings menu when you can't make out the language that the menus are in), I played Stayin' Alive. For I have come to realize what a great song it is.

Part of this is me fondly remembering my childhood. Saturday Night Fever was everywhere when I was about 8. Given that I wasn't allowed to see it, I obviously didn't get into it in the quasi-religious way that I got into Star Wars (I say "quasi" only because I know that some people have developed their own actual religions based on Star Wars), but it was everywhere. The songs were on the radio all the time. The lady who cut my hair used to ask me if I wanted a "John Travolta haircut."

And Stayin' Alive was the biggest song. It wasn't until I saw the movie all the way through (which took a long time, for some reason, although I made sure that I watched the R-rated version) that I quite understood just why Stayin' Alive was the big song. That opening sequence with John Travolta just walking down the street with the paint can swinging on the beat is pretty awesome.

I can't really think of a song that has ever quite caught the zeitgeist like Stayin' Alive. Maybe I Want To Hold Your Hand, but I wasn't around for that, so I don't really know. Smells Like Teen Spirit hit like a bomb, but it didn't come with the hottest movie too. Hey Ya? Maybe I'm too old to really know about that one. Amazing as it is to think now, Michael Jackson was undoubtedly the undisputed coolest guy alive in 1983, but Thriller spit out so many hits ("I want to love you, PYT, pretty young thing, you need some lovin'" Little different connotation now, unfortunately) that no one of them really was THE ONE (although Beat It and Billie Jean were THE TWO, I suppose).

But the song is damn good. You don't get too many songs with not one, but two, big, fat, awesome base lines. Stayin' Alive has got the big drumbeat (which has to be a drum machine or a loop, but oh well), but that classic bass guitar line too (duh-da, duh, duh, duh-duh-da, duh, duh). I'm kind of amazed that no rapper or hip hop artist has ever stripped that baseline out and mixed it into something else. (Maybe Puffy has made a song that uses all of the same music and just changes the words. That kind of seems to be his MO.) It could be pretty darn great.

The Bees Gees' vocals then add just the right fragance of fromage. Good Lord, what did the parents of those guys to do them that allowed them to sing like that? I guess that I don't really want to know. But, man, it's kind of hilarious to hear guys singing about they're rough ladies' men in voices that dogs can barely hear.

The whole thing, though, is such a great mash-up of good music, good cheese and good nostalgia. It makes me want to wear a white suit.