Awesome Disco

It’s time to put on your best polyester suit and hit the dance floor. Van Halen meets The Miracles in this fantastic disco-rock mashup by Bill McClintock. Come for the music, stay for the outfits.

AMCLUBShop proves anything can be a disco ball if you cover it with enough mirrored tiles. Among the many sparkly things in their Etsy shop is this ridiculously awesome disco ball in the shape of a shark. The 22″ long fish is the perfect excuse to have a dance party during Shark Week, and a great piece of decor for marine biologists and choreographers alike.

Nile Rogers has written and produced some of the biggest songs and albums ever. Among his creations is the disco-funk group CHIC, who stopped by NPR Music with Rogers. The mini-concert’s six mega-hits: CHIC’s Le Freak and Good Times, Diana Ross’ I’m Coming Out, Sister Sledge’s We Are Family, Daft Punk’s Get Lucky, and David Bowie’s Let’s Dance.

While most people think of KISS as a hard rock band, they also recorded adult contemporary and even some disco tracks. Bill McClintock took full advantage of the latter to create a mashup with Boogie Wonderland, resulting in a new 1970s supergroup known as Earth, Kiss, and Fire. Listen carefully, and you might also get a little taste of Wild Cherry.

If there’s one genre of music we never thought we’d hear on a pipe organ, it’s disco. But it’s the internet, and here we are. So put on your boogie shoes, click play, and listen as organist Vincent Thévenaz plays the 1977 Bee Gees hit Stayin’ Alive on the Great Organ at Geneva, Switzerland’s Cathédrale Saint-Pierre.

The 1977 Bee Gees track Stayin’ Alive is one of the most famous songs of the disco era. Musician Charles Berthoud remembers the song a little differently than we do, with way more flourishes for the bass guitar part – and a funky prog-rock synth solo sandwiched in the middle.

An ordinary disco ball is made from hollow cardboard or plastic covered with a bunch of tiny mirrored tiles. But this unique disco ball from the Titans of CNC Machining is made entirely from a single block of aluminum. After milling the sphere, they used a unique burnishing tool to create its shiny facets.

Get yourself clean, have a good meal, and do whatever you feel. Leo Moracchioli is here to rock out a high-energy cover version of the Village People’s 1978 disco track Y.M.C.A.. The only thing better would have been if Leo had worn the original cop’s uniform.

I’ll just stay here, locked behind the door… swaying to the symphony of destruction. Bill McClintock combined the music of The Pointer Sisters’, Megadeth, Metallica, and Blue Oyster Cult into a molten-hot bouillabaisse of disco metal. If this doesn’t get you dancing at your desk, we don’t know what will.

The movies Saturday Night Fever and its sequel Staying Alive are so indelibly intertwined with the music of the Bee Gees that we can’t imagine them any other way. But the guys at Auralnauts like to subvert expectations, so they edited John Travolta’s big strut scene at the end of the movie, removing the trio’s trademark disco sound.

Cake already proved that the Gloria Gaynor track I Will Survive could do quite well with the addition of a trumpet. NYC bands Too Many Zooz, Lucky Chops, and the High & Mighty Brass Band teamed up to perform the disco classic primarily on brass instruments, and it sounds pretty stellar.

Sparkling above the Sunset Strip’s hottest dance floor is a disco ball art installation by the Ian Schrager Company for the underground club Sunset at Edition, at the West Hollywood Edition hotel. The collection of more than 400 varying-sized mirrored balls was made by America’s last disco ball maker, Yolanda Baker.

Disco and heavy metal. They go together like peanut butter and chocolate. At least that’s how we feel after listening to Bill McClintock’s unlikely mashup, which combines Donna Summer’s 1979 hit Bad Girls with Glenn Danzig’s Mother. Toot toot, hey, tell your children not to walk my way.

Dave Grohl and Greg Kurstin’s 2021 Hanukkah Sessions continue to entertain us throughout the holiday. On the third night, they performed a faithful cover version of Barry Manilow’s 1978 hit Copacabana complete with a disco ball, shimmer curtains, and a cheesy lens flare filter. (Thanks, Harriet!)

For those too young to remember, Leo Sayer was a maestro of disco-pop music in the 1970s. To make things interesting, mashup artist Bill McClintock melded the pop sounds of You Make Me Feel Like Dancing with Metallica’s Sad But True for a combination as delicious as chocolate and peanut butter.

Yes, Foo Fighters have made a Bee Gees cover album. The special-edition LP titled HAIL SATIN was made for Record Store Day 2021 and features the “Dee Gees” performing five disco tracks on one side, and five live songs from Medicine at Midnight on the other. Enjoy their excellent cover version of You Should Be Dancing.

(PG-13: Language) When the feeling’s gone and you can’t go on, it’s tragedy. Resident metalhead Leo Moracchioli presents an angry version of the Bee Gees’ 1979 disco hit Tragedy, a song which seems to be exceptionally relevant during these frustrating days when we can’t always be with our loved ones.

Musician Luca Stricagnoli takes on yet another genre and proves that it can sound great on an acoustic guitar. His fingerstyle cover version of The Bee Gees disco hit Stayin’ Alive will have you busting out your white polyester suits and busting out your best dance moves.

When I hear that disco whistle blowin’, I hang my head and cry. There I Ruined It destroys yet another classic tune. This time they transformed Johnny Cash’s Folsom Prison Blues into an awful disco tune, and in the process, they provoke a prison riot.

We love it when a musician manages to replicate the sound of a classic TV theme. One we haven’t heard in ages is the theme from CHiPs. KOSmusic knocked it out of the park with his cover of the season 2 version of the theme, which captures the disco spirit of the 1977 primetime cop drama. His Knight Rider is equally impressive.

(PG-13: Language) If Trent Reznor was making music during the 1970s, it might have sounded something like this industrial-disco smashup by editor William Maranci, who once again proves that there are no two genres that can’t be combined as Lipps, Inc’s Funkytown and Nine Inch Nails Closer become one.

If Van Halen made disco music, it might have sounded something like this crazy mashup by DJ Cummerbund that blends together the hair band’s rock hit Jump with Gloria Gaynor’s dance floor anthem I Will Survive. It’s hard to believe these songs were released just 5 years apart.

Daft Punk are true maestros, but so much of what they’ve achieved wouldn’t have been possible if it weren’t for the funk, soul, and disco songs which provided sampling material for so many of their tunes. Tuneid compares some original tracks with Daft Punk’s remixes.