Bee Gees

Long before morphing into a three-headed disco machine, the Brothers Gibb recorded some of the weirdest head albums ever made. Robert Pollard of Guided By Voices ranked Bee Gees 1st among his all-time favorite albums. Imagine how many acid trips went awry with morbid advice like "Don't go talking too loud, you'll cause a landslide." The Bee Gees' following two albums, Horizontaland Idea, also had their share of morose psychedelia, nearly all delivered with orchestral backing, Mellotrons and the quavering wobble of Robin Gibb, the Bee Gees' greatest asset until Barry's Minnie Mouse falsetto took over. Also forgotten is then-lead guitarist Vince Melouney, whose gift for making the six-string sound like a beached beluga whale has never been noted in print until now.

Each album is generously annotated and lovingly packaged in a Digipak with a booklet and an accompanying disc of outtakes. That the Bee Gees had a second act that eclipses this body of work and a third act in which America ignored them so thoroughly that they had to get Dionne and Dolly and Streisand to cover their latest songs is even stranger than, well, starting a joke which started the whole world crying!