That's probably how they should be bought, too, but this is far from a disgrace.
GREASE ORIGINAL SOUNDTRACK VINYL.1978 MOVIE
And the updates provided for the movie by the Stigwood combine - Valli's "Grease" (written by Barry Gibb) and Travolta and Newton-John's "You're the One That I Want" - are two of 1978's better hit singles. The Casey-Jacobs stage songs are entertaining and condescending takeoffs on '50s readymades, a little too good for Manhattan Transfer. The Sha Na Na cuts document the group's deterioration from an affectionate, phonographically ineffective bunch of copycats into a repellent Vegas oldies act. So I guess pure entertainment calls for a certain suspension of disbelief, wouldn't you say? But, then again, no one ever got to see those two Thirties tots, Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire, doing the waltz from Swing Time in and out of a bread line either. Believe me, the Fifties were a lot tamer than his humorously lively, high-spirited album would lead you to believe. Grease brings all those bland, dull years back with an entertaining whoosh of excitement that was never there in reality. Looking back at that era in my personal life, all I seem to remember is that Pontiacs were designed to look a lot like poor Jayne Mansfield that there were a lot of tasteful tsk-tsks about Elvis that Sinatra began to record some of the best things he (or any other American popular singer) has ever done and that I tried greasing my hair back but the pompadour kept caving in on me, so I looked like Peter Lorre after a Channel swim. Louis, becomes a sly mockery of itself by reason of the totally uncalled-for grandiosity of the presentation. And, under the musical supervision of Bill Oakes, the whole score jumps out at you twice life-size so that something such as "Rock n' Roll Party Queen," performed by Louis St. Even if (as Simone Signoret titled her autobiography) Nostalgia Isn't What It Used To Be, there is still an enormous amount of simple-minded fun left in this hallelujah to a recent past. This frolic about and ode to one of the most boring generations in American history has been knocking them dead for several years now on Broadway, and, from what I hear on this album, I have a feeling that the film will be one of the blockbusters of the year. Louis in "Mooning" and even good old Frankie Avalon singing "Beauty School Drop-Out." On the plate surrounding them is an assortment of sugar cookies: Frankie Valli singing the title song Sha-Na-Na lumbering through "Hound Dog," "Tears on My Pillow," and several others Cindy Bullens on "Freddy My Love" and a duet with Louis St. It drips with such currently hot box-office names as John Travolta (he sounds just barely okay in such things as "Sandy" and "Greased Lightnin'," but I'm sure his fans will forgive him) and Olivia Newton-John (who adds her expected maraschino touch to such immortals as "Look at Me, I'm Sandra Dee" and "Hopelessly Devoted to You"). The same description aptly fits the new original-soundtrack recording of Grease just out on the RSO label. Someone once described that great avatar of the Fifties, Marilyn Monroe, as a great big melting banana split - in other words, a glorious, delectable mess.