Customer Reviews

Marbles

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This reissue brings together the album & 3 singles of Australian duo of vocalists Trevor Gordon & Graham Bonnet(yes,the same Graham Bonnett who later sang with heavy metal bands "Rainbow" & "Alcatrazz").For the 3 singles,it's a good thing that the pure mono versions have been added as bonus tracks,because,though 3 of these 6 songs appear on the album,these 3 appeared in fake stereo on the album.The 3 singles(including their one major UK hit "Only One Woman") have the fingerprints of The Bee Gees all over them.The Bee Gees wrote,produced and played on these 6 songs,which have all of the trademarks of late 1960's Bee Gees arranger/conductor Bill Shepherd.They are simply Bee Gees backing tracks with somebody else singing.There have been conflicting reports about whether The 2 Marbles members were each other's cousins or whether Graham Bonnett is The Bee Gees cousin.On the other Marbles tracks(the ones without Bee Gees/Bill Shepherd involvement),the duo veers towards a Righteous Brothers-type sound,with good renditions of "A House is Not a Home","Storybook Children" & "Stay With Me Baby".I occasionally bump into Barry Gibb here in South Florida,and when I informed him that the "Marbles" album had just been released on CD in Germany,Gibb said(with slight embarrassment/amazement) "Oh Gosh!!".You see,musicians are always thinking about their latest project;they're not nostalgic like the fans are.For Barry Gibb,the 33-year old Marbles tracks were just a long-forgotten part of his distant musical past.They're musically good though,and fans of the late 1960's Bee Gees music will like the 6 singles tracks.I'd say that the two songs on the debut single("Only One Woman" & "By The Light of a Burning Candle") were too strong for the Gibbs to give away,something that they belatedly realized:They recorded their own version of "Only One Woman" in the 1970's(during the sessions for the album "Main Course")....only to unfortunately never release the recording.Maybe it will be heard someday....(Oh,and in an update to the above,despite oft-repeated publicity hype repeated in this CD's liner notes,while The Marbles may be each others cousins,neither Graham Bonnet or Trevor Gordon is related to The Bee Gees)

In 1968, Trevor Gordon and Graham Bonnet, friends of the Bee Gees, were signed with Robert Stigwood. Possessing bold voices, the duo only released one album before going their separate ways. But it is a grand album. Only three of the thirteen songs were written by the duo, with six being written by the Bee Gees. The first two singles were Gibb songs and were fairly large hits in 1968 and 1969 with "Only One Woman" becoming a classic. Even corny ballads like, "A House Is Not A Home" and "Breaking Up Is Hard To Do" are given new life with Graham Bonnet's soaring vocals. But it's the Gibb songs that bring out the vocal magic of this duo. "By The Light Of The Burning Candle" is pure Gibb confection and "To Love Somebody" will stand high among the other 250 cover versions of this composition. This collection is an important mark in time from these two talented guys.

This version contains five extra Gibb compositions (including the very early "Love You") repeated in Mono. It really doesn't add much to the set other than historical perspective.

Lovers of '60s Bee Gees and Walker Bros. music will absolutely need to hear this. They may have only recorded one album, but The Marbles made a gem of a pop album if ever there was one. They actually outdo their mentors The Bee Gees with the clever arrangements here, which are upbeat and lively. But the quiet moments are lovely, too, as the self-penned "Daytime" and "Little Laughing Girl" illustrate. And as for the other non-Bee Gees material, "A House is Not a Home" is simply the best-ever version of this often-recorded song. Even Neil Sedaka's "Breaking Up is Hard to Do" is good (it got some radio play in the US). The Marbles singing, solo or harmonizing, is absolutely incredible. Buy this.

a very young grahame bonnet singing ''ONLY ONE WOMEN' PLUS ALL THE OTHERS ON THIS REMARKABLE CD OF THEIR GREATEST TRACKS '' a must for any grahame bonnet fans..the vocals are outstanding.

I had purchased the BR music DVD compilation that contianed the video performance of "The Walls Fell Down", and was immediately interested in this duo. Graham Bonnet posesses a butt kicking set of pipes that is a cross between Tom Jones and Steve Perry, any screaming he does is quite on pitch and decidedly exciting and inspiring. Trevor Gordon also has a great lead voice that displays a masculine sensitivty which makes for a pleasant foil for Bonnet's thunder and fury. The Bee Gees covers on this album are actually the low point, being so drastically altered from the original as to have the melodies sound butchered and stilted. However, the rest of this album is PERFECTION! the production is HUGE and BOMBASTIC, equal parts early Bee Gees (Complete with harp runs) with a good shot of the massive power ballads that Johnny Franz conducted for Dusty Springfield. Most noteworthy are "A House Is Not A Home", "Stay With Me Baby", and the shared lead between Bonnet and Gordon of "Storybook Children". Anyone who loves late 60's orchestral pop such as the Bee Gees, Petula Clark, and Dusty Springfield is sure to find something to love about this set.

I can't write anything here to improve on the historical perspectives given by the other reviewers, so no point in trying. But I can offer a simple listener's reaction. As stated elsewhere, this has a definite early Bee Gees sound, and includes many tunes from the trove of Brothers Gibb. The orchestrations are perhaps even more lush than the Bee Gees treatments of the same songs. There are at least two dynamite songs, "Only One Woman" and "The Walls Fell Down," and we are blessed with two versions of each. "Only One Woman" is one of the absolute best songs of this genre you will hear anywhere, I repeat, one of the absolute best. While we can imagine how nice this would sound with Robin Gibb's unique, clotted vocals, we do not yearn for anything other than the vocals delivered here. The version of "Storybook Children" (popularized by Billy Vera) is very nicely done as well. Some of the material, such as Neil Sedaka's "Breaking Up Is Hard to Do," does comes across as quite dated, but overall this is a quality product. If you like the baroque style of this era, you should enjoy this!