Robin Gibb, R.I.P.
One of the loveliest and strangest voices of the pop era, and part of a songwriting team that more or less carried the record industry on its back circa 1977-79, has died. Robin Gibb of the Bee Gees, dead at 62 of colon and liver cancer.
The Bee Gees were lovely and weird orch-pop, totally slammin' R & B and disco, and certainly among the most gifted melodists of the modern pop era all the way. They wrote more good songs than most of us have had good meals in our lives, most likely, and deserve way more respect than the disco backlash has gotten them.
Rolling Stone with a decent basic obit.
My essay on the meaning of the death of a Bee Gee from February 2003 after Robin's twin Maurice Gibb died, "Death Before Disco."
I wrote about Robin's freakout of a first solo LP during the Bee Gees brief early '70s breakup, Robin's Reign, in the great book Lost in the Grooves, an encyclopedia of neglected pop mastepieces.
Some of the Bee Gees' most perfect moments through the years:
At their intense weird scariest proto-indie-orch-pop madness, "Holiday" from 1967 :
"Nights" on m-f'in "Broadway". What can one say? Rare live on Midnight Special, 1975:
How many melodic hooks can one song have? A whole bunch when the Bee Gees wrote it. "Love You Inside Out," 1979:
Even at their end, 2001, they still had it. "This is Where I Came In":
