Oldies from boy groups

Aside from the defunct Boyzone, no other boy group in recent pop music history is more closely associated with old songs than Westlife. Their first international hit was Terry Jack’s Season in the Sun from the early ’70s. Soon after it came the practice of including at least one or two oldies in Westlife’s subsequent albums. In fact, the group’s latest single in the local hit charts is the Barbara Streisand classic Evergreen from their World of our Own album. Get a copy of that one as now is your chance to rediscover this song as a love ballad after enjoying Evergreen in S2PID LUV, the phenomenal rap take-off by local group Salbakuta.

Unfortunately, Evergreen is not one of the cuts included in the hit-packed two volume, VCD release titled Are You Ready to Dream? Neither is their excellent version of Sarah McLachlan’s Angel. But most of Westlife’s oldies are in the album, plus loads of their originals too. The album is the live recording of a truly exciting complete concert performance staged in Westlife’s hometown of Dublin in Ireland. So this is also your chance not only to listen to these guys do all their hits but also to watch the group perform live and I must admit they do put up an exciting, totally energetic show with all the works.

The oldies Westlife performs in the album are Uptown Girl, What Becomes of the Broken Hearted, Baby, I Need Your Loving, Ain’t Too Proud to Beg, Can’t Get Next to You, My Girl, Somebody Needs You and More Than Words. Then there are the tunes Westlife popularized like Swear It Again, My Love, Flying Without Wings, When You’re Looking Like That, I Lay My Love on You, If I Let You Go, I Have a Dream, Dreams Come True and many others.

Westlife was formed only four years ago when Boyzone Ronan Keating, who is also Irish, decided to turn manager after listening to the angelic voices in in the demo tapes of Shane Filan, Mark Feehillin, Kian Egan, Nicky Byrne and Bryan McFadden. The new guys started their careers as curtain-raisers for what else, Boyzone. However, they soon wowed audiences on their own and made good with their original hits. The boy band phenomenon is beginning to die down. Keating, in fact, is now a solo act but Westlife, despite rumors to the contrary, remains intact.

Come to think of it, should Westlife disband at any time soon, the VCD Are You Ready to Dream will make an excellent souvenir of the era of the boy groups.

A boy trio called B3

Still on boy bands. Here is something about one that calls itself B3. Now, I searched and I searched but there is just no info available anywhere about this boy trio called B3. The group’s album titled First is a German production but given the fact that people do live and work in any place in the world today, so I am not at all sure if these guys are from Germany or the UK or the US of A or whatever place you can think of. All that I have are the names of the three members, Rod Michael, John Steven Sutherland and Timothy Andrew Cruz.

Since almost nothing is known about B3, it also follows that the group’s album will most likely be "lost" among all the other releases in the CD racks in the local stores. First caught my attention though because it is made up entirely of oldies, which I find very strange. Because it is called First, one instantly presumes it is the group’s first album and should therefore contains the kind of songs that B3 wants to be identified with. But that is not the case. And mind you, the contents are not just some old songs. All of the 13 cuts are new covers of tunes written and popularized by The Bee Gees.

We do not know the reason for this but if you are a Bee Gees fan then you will surely find this new take on their hits most interesting. The obvious choices like To Love Somebody, Nightfever, Tragedy, How Deep is Your Love, and Stayin’ Alive are present but there are also lesser known Bee Gees tunes like You Win Again and Where I’ll Be that come off quite well.