Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Today’s GOP: why go just far enough when too far is right there?

Prediction: the GOP will rethink its strategy of boycotting future committees.

Following reporting rules is only for the little people, apparently.

The GOP couldn’t organize an orgy in a whorehouse with a fist full of 50s.

Let’s finish the job.

You come for women, you’re gonna get your ass kicked.

Anyone who bans teaching American history has no right to shape America’s future.

We’ll be taking my thoughts and prayers to the ballot box.

Since when do we limit our critiques to things we could do better ourselves?

Battle won, war still ongoing.

You are so fucked. Still, I wish you the best of luck.

No Justins, No Peace

Republicans are the party of chaos and catastrophe.

fuckem (in honor of the late great efgoldman)

And we’re all out of bubblegum.

Narcissists are always shocked to discover other people have agency.

A snarling mass of vitriolic jackals

Give the craziest people you know everything they want and hope they don’t ask for more? Great plan.

Hi god, it’s us. Thanks a heap, you’re having a great week and it’s only Thursday!

He really is that stupid.

Optimism opens the door to great things.

The most dangerous place for a black man in America is in a white man’s imagination.

Putin must be throwing ketchup at the walls.

Hot air and ill-informed banter

You are here: Home / Absent Friends / RIP / RIP, Robin Gibb

Reader Interactions

138Comments

  1. 1.

    rikyrah

    went to youtube and realized that I knew all their songs too.

    don’t care.

    I bought the music. knew every word. loved it.

    yeah, I loved disco.

    RIP, Mr. Gibb.

  5. 5.

    El Tiburon

    If I was K.C., I’d get my shit in order, you know what I’m saying.

    Loved the Bee Gees – my all-time favorite: Nights on Broadway. Pre Saturday Night Fever.

  6. 6.

    cathyx

    As a 70’s girl (albeit a young one), I loved the BeeGees. How could a kid not love that music.

  7. 7.

    Polish the Guillotines

    I was entering junior high when Saturday Night Fever came out. That soundtrack ruled my life — and the world — for most of 7th and 8th grade. Frankly, the over-saturation drove me to the hard stuff (AC/DC, Van Halen, etc.), but now I can really appreciate what the Bee Gees did.

    Night Fever is by far my favorite cut from that soundtrack. The arrangement is awesome.

    A lot of talent has left the world in the last couple of months.

    Damn.

  8. 8.

    donovong

    I made out for the first time to their first album and it became the “theme music” to that relationship, well over 40 years ago. I have loved their music ever since.

    I hope Barry survives this.

  10. 10.

    James Gary

    I have no idea why 1970s “yacht rock” is described as “cheesy,”–or why people create some kind of imaginary distinction between “real” and “fake” pop music. Even as a kid in the 70s, I never had a problem with simultaneously liking not only ELO, “Brandy (You’re A Fine Girl),” and the “Saturday Night Fever” soundtrack, but also the Clash, Sex Pistols, and Black Flag.

    As Duke Ellington put it: “If it sounds good, it IS good.”

  11. 11.

    gogol's wife

    @cathyx:

    I guess Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau doesn’t qualify. But for some reason I haz the same kind of sad about this. Maybe it’s that I discovered him in the 70s too.

  13. 13.

    Villago Delenda Est

    The vile creature that is Dick Cheney continues to be animated, too.

    There is no fucking justice.

  14. 14.

    Litlebritdifrnt

    Strangely enough my next to one duty station was RNAS Culdrose where you could not walk through the corridors of the WRNS quarters without hearing “Guilty” by Babs Streisand (produced by Robin). That was another iconic album that almost defined that moment in time for me.

  16. 16.

    Litlebritdifrnt

    Hmmmm for some reason my first post went “pooof”.

    I was in basic training for the WRNS in 1978 when “Saturday Night Fever” was a box office hit. I will never forget my house Petty Officer boogying to the showers, wrapped in a towel, carrying her boom box blasting out the SNF soundtrack, she tortured us with it, and I loved it.

  19. 19.

    Litlebritdifrnt

    Okay obviously the link is the problem. I have been cooking stuff for the final High School Concert. Please clicky on my name for the link to the Battenberg cake post.

  21. 21.

    piratedan

    @cathyx: Andrea True preceded them both… but then again, I was always a new wave guy meself although I have to admit that Amii Stewart’s rendition of knock on wood and Blondie’s Heart of Glass were staples of my high school memories

  23. 23.

    jrg

    The “death to disco” crowd is having a good week. I plan on shitting my pants when they hit the ’80s, though.

  24. 24.

    burnspbesq

    You young whippersnappers seem to have forgotten that SNF was a comeback for the BeeGees. They made some pretty good pop records in the late 60s.

  25. 25.

    David Koch

    Ah, boy, it always happens in threes. First Donna, and now Robin.

    Rod Stewart must be petrified.

  27. 27.

    Randy P

    Dang, another disco icon. I remember hearing the soundtrack for “Saturday Night Fever” everywhere, but I never saw the movie until I finally got around to it maybe 10 years ago.

    My memory of this movie is wondering “How the hell did that Travolta guy go from being a minor character on Welcome Back, Kotter to some kind of singing, dancing superstar? Who decides these things?”

    As long as the Pointer Sisters are still alive and well, I guess disco is still alive for me. Can’t find my blue leisure suit though. My wife just looks innocent every time I ask her…

  28. 28.

    cathyx

    @Villago Delenda Est: They say that you pass after you have completed all that you have incarnated on earth to do. Usually meant in a positive way. But in Cheney’s case, he may live indefinitely if that were true.

  29. 29.

    Mnemosyne

    “Jive Talkin'” is my text ringtone, so I guess everyone knows where I stand.

  30. 30.

    Litlebritdifrnt

    @David Koch: I was saying to my boss that it has been a bad month for losing musicians, he then did a google search and sure enough it had been, not only for Donna but for some more obscure ones that my boss knew “damn “so and so” died?” He was devastated when whats his face from “The Band” died and he had not even heard the news.

  39. 39.

    Litlebritdifrnt

    @Raven:
    That is him, being a brit I didn’t know of him, but the boss was saying that he was one of the few drummers that was a lead singer. I point out that there was also Phil Collins and he countered with Don Henley of the Eagles.

  42. 42.

    cathyx

    That picture John posted of the Bee Gees says it all, doesn’t it? The hair, the open shiny satin shirts showing chest hair, tight pants, puka shell necklace.

  43. 43.

    eemom

    I doubt there has ever been cheesier music that still makes me smile.

    It was NOT cheesy, you dumbass. The era of SNF may have been cheesy, but the music most emphatically was NOT.

    And the BeeGees turned out great stuff long before that.

    God, you’re an ignoranimus sometimes.

  44. 44.

    satanicpanic

    @Raven: As a lead singer I have often tried to play the “lead singer card” and not help carry the drum kit. But I have been, at times, roped into it and it’s really not that heavy. Except the bag full of those metal things that you attach cymbals to. +4.

  45. 45.

    Polish the Guillotines

    @cathyx:

    That picture John posted of the Bee Gees says it all, doesn’t it? The hair, the open shiny satin shirts showing chest hair, tight pants, puka shell necklace.

    If only they were standing on a tank in the desert….

  48. 48.

    Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)

    @Randy P:

    My memory of this movie is wondering “How the hell did that Travolta guy go from being a minor character on Welcome Back, Kotter to some kind of singing, dancing superstar? Who decides these things?”

    He’d gotten good reviews touring with Grease– and then in other Broadway musicals- in the early ’70s before he went to L.A.. By the time he got the Barbarino role on Kotter, Carrie was already in the can. He got SNF based on the back of the earlier work, not on the back of Kotter.

  49. 49.

    eemom

    @cathyx:

    Rod Stewart is so not disco. How old are you?

    Do Ya Think I’m Sexy, anyone?

    Actually, neither the BeeGees nor Donna Summer nor Rod Stewart deserves to be limited to “disco.” Least of all the BeeGees.

  52. 52.

    satanicpanic

    @Polish the Guillotines: Our drummer has a duffel bag. And my greatest fear is throwing my back out before the show so I don’t even pretend to be able to lift that thing. I’m going to take your lead suggest a wheeled cart to him.

  53. 53.

    cathyx

    @Randy P: Vinnie Barbarino wasn’t a minor character. He was a huge heartthrob on that show. It only makes sense that he became a movie star after that.

  54. 54.

    eemom

    @burnspbesq:

    You young whippersnappers seem to have forgotten that SNF was a comeback for the BeeGees. They made some pretty good pop records in the late 60s.

    feh, they didn’t forget it — they never knew it.

    And they don’t know shit about shit, in general.

    [shuffles off waving cane and mumbling about lawns]

  55. 55.

    brantl

    Sorry Robin Gibbs died of cancer, but that music really, really sucked. Still sorry about Robin Gibbs, though. Apparently, he was a pretty decent guy.

  56. 56.

    Suffern ACE

    @Polish the Guillotines: I’m of the opinion that Miss You and Emotional Rescue are the pinnacle of the top of the peak of disco, so bandwagon chasers made the best disco. I only say this as I never troll and an obituary thread seems to be a good place to start.

  63. 63.

    suzanne

    It’s been a bad week for cheesy music that still makes me smile. Donna Summer, now Robin…. Who’s the third?!

  67. 67.

    NancyDarling

    May I say a word for “cheesy” music? Music doesn’t have to change the world. Sometimes it’s enough that it makes you smile and feel happy and gets you moving. “Purple People Eater”, however, never did anything for me.

  69. 69.

    Joseph Nobles

    I remember in college: a second-year music theory student got stoned as shit at a party and refused to let anyone change the tape from a Bee Gees Greatest compilation. Good times.

    RIP, Mr. Gibb.

  74. 74.

    Concerned Citizen

    @NancyDarling: I’ll second that. I remember my Dad being very proud of his Fat Boys cassette. At the time I was mortified, now I get it. It was fun.

    (Yes, I’m old)

  76. 76.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @cathyx:

    No, but Rod Stewart had his disco phase. Don’t you remember “Do Ya Think I’m Sexy”?

  79. 79.

    geg6

    Jive Talking and How Deep Is Your Love are two if the most sublime examples of pop music. I admit that, as a punk in the 70s, I was the first to bash disco. But I am now, after the untimely deaths of Donna Summer and Robin Gibb, ready to admit that I loved to dance to both and many others. For some reason, I was never embarrassed to admit my love for Earth, Wind and Fire back then but would never admit to loving all the other great pop and dance artists of my high school/college years. Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.

  84. 84.

    Cris (without an H)

    My mom is the world’s biggest Bee Gees fan, so I was listening to their albums well before SNF hit the scene. Love that Klaus Voorman cover on Idea. Mom even took us kids to see them on the “Spirits Having Flown” tour.

    If you want to spotlight Robin, you can’t miss the overwrought “I started a Joke.”

  85. 85.

    David Koch

    This is kinda wild.

    I’m in the west and we’re currently in the beginning stages of an eclipse

  87. 87.

    Suffern ACE

    @David Koch: I’m a little jealous. I’ve been waiting since I was 7 to get another chance at a total eclipse. I messed up big time with the viewer we made in school. Failed experiment! I’ve been waiting for 2024 for over 30 years. I plan to take a flight somewhere out west where the chance of cloud on that day is very low.

  88. 88.

    Raven

    @Suffern ACE:

    I had some dreams they were clouds in my coffee
    Clouds in my coffee, and…
    Well I hear you went up to Saratoga and your horse naturally won
    Then you flew your lear jet up to Nova Scotia
    To see the total eclipse of the sun

  89. 89.

    mai naem

    @Randy P: I know one of the Pointer Sisters died.
    My sister luurved the Bee Gees and I mean luurved the Bee Gees. I listened to all of Bee Gees songs a gazillion times. All of them. From NY Mining Disaster to Tragedy. They had an album, I think, in the late eighties/early nineties. She even bought that album.
    I just went to YouTube and watched a Stayin’ Alive with lyrics. I have been singing it embarrassingly wrong all these years. Stayin’ Alive was in the Best Songs of All Time list on NPR. And I agree with that.

  90. 90.

    satanicpanic

    @Raven: Heh heh, I was just trollin the boomers. But that’s a badass song, I actually didn’t know he did blues music.

  92. 92.

    Suffern ACE

    @Raven: That song will be about me! Although if I head to nova scotia, I’ll miss out on the whole thing. Plus clouds. I wonder if I can take my jet from Saratoga to Walla Walla?

  98. 98.

    S. cerevisiae

    RIP Robin.

    Clouded out of the eclipse but still got to watch it in real time thanks to the wonders of the internets.

  100. 100.

    The prophet Nostradumbass

    @Polish the Guillotines: I was checking it out a while ago as well. I tried out the shoebox viewer as well; I also saw someone on TV from the Chabot Space and Science center, who demonstrated a thing you could do with your thumbs and index fingers that would produce a shadow that would have an image of the eclipse on it.

    Also, I’m not quite sure how to describe it, but there was something about the quality of the sunlight during the peak of the eclipse that was different.

  101. 101.

    gbear

    My favorite Bee Gees song is one that I only became aware of about a year ago called In My Own Time from their very first record. It sounds like a garage band playing an amalgamation of every song off Revolver.

    I’m afraid I don’t have much love for the disco era Bee Gees. A lot of bands (mine included) got put out of business when all the clubs started switching over to recorded music. It sucked.

  102. 102.

    Polish the Guillotines

    @The prophet Nostradumbass:

    Also, I’m not quite sure how to describe it, but there was something about the quality of the sunlight during the peak of the eclipse that was different.

    Oh, yeah. Absolutely. One of the neighborhood kids described it as “really blue.”

    I wonder if there was some true filtering of the red band. Whatever the case, it’s a very unique light.

    @Mr Stagger Lee: Yes, at the time the movie came out, those were probably my favorites. “A Fifth of Beethoven.” Walter Murphy and his Big Apple Band. They also did a take on Flight of the Bumblebee: Flight ’76. And I could swear they did some take on 2001: A Space Oddessy.

  103. 103.

    Origuy

    @The prophet Nostradumbass: Yeah, I noticed that, too. Very strange. Not really darker, kind of like looking through a polarizing filter. It got cold,too. I didn’t have a viewer, but I looked at the light through a tree and saw a lot of little crescents. I’m in San Jose, so pretty far south of the maximum.

  105. 105.

    Poopyman

    @Polish the Guillotines:

    Now I need to auger a goat.

    Call Mickey Kaus. He’s out in Cali somewhere, and isn’t too busy these days.

    (Augur?)

    @The prophet Nostradumbass:

    Also, I’m not quite sure how to describe it, but there was something about the quality of the sunlight during the peak of the eclipse that was different.

    Absolutely, but afaik, it defies description in words.

    Eclipses is weird. So saeth the astronomer.

  107. 107.

    Mike G

    A teetotaling vegetarian, and he dies at 62.
    Meanwhile, hate-filled fat fucks with unhealthy lifestyles like Limbaugh and Scalia are going strong. Cancer sucks.

  108. 108.

    eemom

    @efgoldman:

    It was cheesy.

    Once again, it comes down to the definition. It ALWAYS comes down to the definition. This is why I hate being a lawyer.

    WTF do you mean by “cheesy’?

    For my money, Stayin Alive, You Should Be Dancing, and Jive Talking were songs with killer beats that endure to this day.

    The earlier tunes, How Can You Mend A Broken Heart, I Started A Joke, Holiday, et al. were beautiful, poignant melodies.

    Where’s the cheese?

  110. 110.

    gene108

    @Raven:

    I know some “death to disco” guys (late teens in that era), who nonetheless have a ton of respect for the Brothers Gibb as musicians.

    They think most disco artists were no-talent-hacks, but not the BeeGees.

  112. 112.

    Kyle

    The interesting thing about disco is that a lot of the leading artists were slightly older than the industry norm and quite accomplished musicians — there weren’t many boy bands or teenage girl singers in the genre.

    The fist disco death to hit home for me was Bernard Edwards of Chic (in 1996), one of the great bass players of the era and producer of many other acts.

  117. 117.

    master c

    Fanny be Tender, Nights on Braodway, Crazy Cool Medallions, he was so informative to my upbringing. rip. much love.

  125. 125.

    ChristianPinko

    @gbear: This is a good song, isn’t it? I first heard it on Little Steven’s Underground Garage. The Three O’Clock do a nice version of it, too.

  126. 126.

    Odie Hugh Manatee

    I am a rocker (guitarist too) and at that time I digested a steady diet of rock but I enjoyed disco too. The BeeGees spanned both with their revival in the mid-70’s. It’s sad seeing these music icons pass away as time goes on. At least they have left behind some great music and the memories that go along with listening to it while living that era.

    RIP Robin, you will be remembered well.

  127. 127.

    Viva BrisVegas

    @Suffern ACE:

    I’ve been waiting since I was 7 to get another chance at a total eclipse.

    You don’t have to wait that long, there is a perfectly good total eclipse in Cairns this November.

    I know that most of you would prefer a month in Guantanamo over a 15 hour flight, but Cairns is a very nice place and total eclipses don’t come along every day.

    The Gibb boys were local lads made good, sad to see them almost all gone now.

  129. 129.

    TuiMel

    I like the Bee Gees. Many years ago, my 5 year old niece (now 38) and three year old nephew (you can do the math) and I would have a rocking good time singing “Lonely days, lonely nights, WHERE would I be without my woman?”

    RIP Robin; I hope you’re jamming’ with Maurice and Andy somewhere…

  133. 133.

    Emma

    Truly late to the party, but… forget the music. Listen to Stayin’ Alive a capella if you ever can. The Bee Gees had the tightest vocals outside of a gospel choir.

  135. 135.

    ThresherK

    @gene108: I was thinking about the disco “worth saving” when Donna Summer passed, and now this.

    Funny thing: After the backlash, people in the industry couldn’t stop sampling and rerecording BeeGees’ songs, could they?

  136. 136.

    brendancalling

    it’s their old stuff that does it for me: “Mining Disaster”, “I Started a Joke”, “To Love Somebody”. That’s where the actions is with the Bee Gees, at least IMO.

  137. 137.

    the fugitive uterus

    in the 70’s, i was in love with the 60’s BeeGees, did not like the Saturday Night phase.

    but it’s basically background music to my childhood and early youth so I like some of it now, cheesy or not, disco was pretty cheesy anyway!

    Rest in Peace Robin. you brought us joy.

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