STEWART COPELAND

Not a good week for disco. Rest In Peace, my friend.

I was not a big disco fan in the 70s; I actually wrote a term paper regarding the bad aspects of the disco lifestyle in my college freshman composition class. But Saturday Night Fever was actually a huge part of my teen years. We did a SNF halftime show in marching band that featured Night on Disco Mountain, K-Jee, Salsation, Manhattan Skyline, and How Deep Is Your Love, so those songs are ingrained in my consciousness. If I Can't Have You is another Gibb production that I really like, among others. I remember seeing Donna Summer on American Bandstand in her I Feel Love days and it was pretty cool. I really like the drumming on The Hustle by Van McCoy; the drummer really whacks the bell on his ride cymbal and slams those low-pitched single-headed toms on the fills. I guess I actually liked some of the music as opposed to the coke-sniffing Studio 54 aspects of it.

Donna , and Robin,.... so bad

Woke to this sad news this morning.

He seemed to be putting up the most incredible fight too.

RIP

this is all sad news and even if i never really listen to disco it is still sad to hear of donna summer and robin gibbs.

See you later in Heaven,Robin!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sqsM-rhF8Ns

drummike wrote:I was not a big disco fan in the 70s; I actually wrote a term paper regarding the bad aspects of the disco lifestyle in my college freshman composition class. But Saturday Night Fever was actually a huge part of my teen years. We did a SNF halftime show in marching band that featured Night on Disco Mountain, K-Jee, Salsation, Manhattan Skyline, and How Deep Is Your Love, so those songs are ingrained in my consciousness. If I Can't Have You is another Gibb production that I really like, among others. I remember seeing Donna Summer on American Bandstand in her I Feel Love days and it was pretty cool. I really like the drumming on The Hustle by Van McCoy; the drummer really whacks the bell on his ride cymbal and slams those low-pitched single-headed toms on the fills. I guess I actually liked some of the music as opposed to the coke-sniffing Studio 54 aspects of it.

Agreed! All those session cats on many of those tunes were simply top notch, including all those Gibb tunes. And I betcha' Zildjian made a killing on New Beat hi hats. Used to love listening to Walter Murphy's A Fifth of Beethoven - killer drums on that one. Back in the day, I'd listen to anything that was shoved in my ears. Now that I'm a cranky old man, I'm a bit more selective.

...and Ludwig made a killing on Quadra-Plus drumsets with the four low-pitched concert toms, available in various colors, including the clear Vistalites...groovy!

drummike wrote:...and Ludwig made a killing on Quadra-Plus drumsets with the four low-pitched concert toms, available in various colors, including the clear Vistalites...groovy!

If Sonor (or Tama) didn't exist, I'd probably be a Ludwig guy. I used to drool over the catalogs as a kid.

Disco was cool for a while, then bands like the Pistols, the Clash, and Police came along and blew all that stuff away. Record companies lost tons of money on disco after Saturday Night Fever, unable to repeat that kind of success, and that made low-budget punk bands look like a great investment. Punk and New Wave drastically altered the music industry, but it might not have happened the way it did if the record companies hadn't lost so much on disco. Plus MTV came along right then and suddenly all the British new wave bands were getting tons of exposure that they normally wouldn't have had in the US. Record companies started to recoup their losses on the new music acts, and dropped a lot of acts that weren't selling. The Gibbs got rich on SNF, but they apparently didn't consider themselves part of the disco scene and started doing other things. I loved the late 70s and early 80s; there was tons of great music, and I got to see the tremendous changes in the music scene during that time.

Same here! That's my "Happy Place". I go there when the real world becomes too burdensome.