Description
Offered for sale is a Japanese pressing of the double album Odessa by the Bee Gees, including the original felt cover and original obi.
About this copy: This copy of Odessa is a 1975 Japanese pressing on the RSO label of an album that was originally released in 1969.
The cover is M-. The obi is VG++ with slight fading at the top edge and a bit of foxing on the back. The insert is M-.
The discs are M- on sides one and three; sides two and four are VG+ with a couple of light scuffs, but no significant marks. The records appear to have only been played a couple of times.
A nice copy of a scarce (and pretty good) Bee Gees LP.
Background: Odessa was, and remains, the Bee Gees’ most ambitious work, a heavily-orchestrated double album that was originally planned as a concept album around the disappearance of a ship.
The album was lavishly packaged in a felt-covered cover, which was unusually prone to wear. When reissued in the mid-1970s amid the Bee Gees’ disco-flavored revival, Odessa was repackaged as a single LP with a simple printed cover.
Allmusic gave Odessa a 4 1/2 star review:
The group members may disagree for personal reasons, but Odessa is easily the best and most enduring of the Bee Gees’ albums of the 1960s. It was also their most improbable success, owing to the conflicts behind its making. The project started out as a concept album to be called “Masterpeace” and then “The American Opera,” but musical differences between Barry and Robin Gibb that would split the trio in two also forced the abandonment of the underlying concept. Instead, it became a double LP — largely at the behest of their manager and the record labels; oddly enough, given that the group didn’t plan on doing something that ambitious, Odessa is one of perhaps three double albums of the entire decade (the others being Blonde on Blonde and The Beatles) that don’t seem stretched, and it also served as the group’s most densely orchestrated album. …
The myriad sounds and textures made Odessa the most complex and challenging album in the group’s history, and if one accepts the notion of the Bee Gees as successors to the Beatles, then Odessa was arguably their Sgt. Pepper’s. The album was originally packaged in a red felt cover with gold lettering on front and back and an elaborate background painting for the gatefold interior, which made it a conversation piece.
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Country of origin: | Japan |
Size: | 12″ |
Record Label: | RSO |
Catalog Number: |
MW 9061/2 |
Year of Release: | 1975 |
Format: | Stereo |
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