Search - Impact! Songs That Changed the World - The Bee Gees: Stayin' Alive on DVD

The Bee Gees "songs that changed the world"

Terrence J. Cunningham | 12/28/2007

(1 out of 5 stars)

"Do not buy this DVD!!!! There are no songs being played. Just people making comments about the Bee Gees. This should not have been offered as a music DVD!!"

Interesting Look Back In Time

Martin A Hogan | San Francisco, CA. (Hercules) | 07/03/2010

(4 out of 5 stars)

"It's amazing that so many of the people interviewed for this story referred to `Stayin' Alive' as a disco song, when in fact, it was an R & B song. You cannot dance to the song. Regardless, this 23-minute documentary does a good job of telling the story of the late seventies and the era of disco. While disco was a common phrase for a dance club in Europe, the USA only caught on in the seventies.

That era long had dance music underground with blacks and gays, but when "Saturday Night Fever" was released, it put a fresh `acceptable', almost all-American face to disco. It also represented an era full of excesses of sex, drugs and music (less rock and roll, which was threatened). Remember Studio 54 and the outfits, the cocaine, drugs, parties and money excess? That was fueled by the dance/disco explosion, which was ready to implode. This documentary shows the footage at a Chicago baseball stadium where a mid-game event blew up thousands of disco records while the crowd chanted `disco sucks'. Leave it to history to blame the Bee Gees for the excess and debacle of the era, where they were only asked to produce their latest songs from a new studio album for the movie. In fact, of the six songs they performed on the album, only three are danceable.

There are some good insights from celebrities like Gloria Gaynor, Hall & Oates, the Hanson's and just Robin Gibb of the Bee Gees. Looking back it was a huge cultural event that has found its solid place in history. It's also ironically presented that the end of disco timed with Ronald Reagan's election as President; a so-called end to excess, whereas it was only an end to dance music social excess. This short documentary is worth a watch to realize that a British band called the Bee Gees was able to top the charts over and over in its history, but it's not a pleasant look at the history of disco.
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