Archive-name: music/beegees-faq/part3
Posting-Frequency: monthly (25th of month) Last-modified: 1998/08/25 Maintainer: David Garcia <garc@compuserve.com> See reader questions & answers on this topic! - Help others by sharing your knowledge Bee Gees Frequently Asked Questions Part Three of Four August 25, 1998 3-01. What Bee Gees on-line resources are available? Well, the information age is providing a plethora of on-line goodies to Bee Gees fans these days. Most of these are available on the internet, a few others through subscriber-based on-line services such as America On-Line and CompuServe. Here is a basic overview of what you can expect to find... NEWS: If you want to read about the lastest goings on in the lives of the brothers Gibb and their fans, here are some resources are worth considering... alt.music.bee-gees is a USENET newsgroup. Ask your internet service provider how to access newsgroups if you're not familiar with it. Like most USENET newsgroups, alt.music.bee-gees is not moderated. This means that anyone can post whatever message they wish, regardless of whether it's kind, truthful, or even remotely related to the topic of the Bee Gees and their music. The alt.music.bee-gees newsgroup has become a magnet for all sorts of MAKE MONEY FA$T pyramid schemes and such these days, and could do with more fan participation. Unfortunately, exposing your e-mail address to a newsgroup such as alt.music.bee-gees can cause you to end up with tons of bulk e-mail in your mailbox, simply because the cyber-nitwits who send out such mailings harvest e-mail addresses from USENET newsgroups. This is one of the factors that has led to the much-decried "Decline and fall of USENET" in general. All things considered, however, alt.music.bee-gees is still a pretty good newsgroup. Mailing lists are a fine alternative to spam-ridden newsgroups, and there are two dedicated to the brothers Gibb, their music, and careers (and occasionally drifting off into topics of collectible Bee Gees lunchboxes, which Bee Gee has the cutest... uhhh... "eyes," etc.) The "Words" mailing list is a free e-mail subscriber service that has over 600 dedicated fans, and a daily output of between 30-50k of subscribers posts from around the globe. To subscribe, send an e-mail message to listserver@bg.wsii.com with a blank subject line and the message: subscribe words your@address.here in the message body. Yes, that's right, where it says your@address.here substitute your e-mail address. A second mailing list, the "Spirits Having Flown" list, is also a free e-mail subscriber service, presently available only in digest form. To subscribe, send e-mail to bee-gees-on@mail-list.com with the message: subscribe your@address.here/YOUR NAME HERE And, you got it, replace your@address.here with your e-mail address, and replace YOUR NAME HERE with your real name. THE WEB: On March 9th, 1997, the day before the UK release of "Still Waters", the Bee Gees made their official debut on the World Wide Web. The long awaited Official Bee Gees Web Experience, at http://www.beegees.net is also mentioned in the liner notes of the new CD. It is still relatively new to the net, but already is coming to life with biographical info, TV appearance schedules, and the official Bee Gees e-mail address, beegees@beegees.net This web site is growing rapidly, with appearance info, links to other sites, and a few official answers to questions raised in this FAQ as well! Mind you, no one web site can subsitute for the efforts of all fans. As Joe Brennan once observed, each fan does bring his own particular perspective on the Bee Gees to his own site, and in this sense each site, official or otherwise, is well worth viewing. So it is that, in addition to the offical site mentioned above, it is well worth paying a visit to the following... http://www.cc.columbia.edu/~brennan/beegees/ This is Joe Brennan's web site, which goes into exhaustive detail on pretty much every song the Bee Gees have ever recorded. Encyclopaedic in scope, his web page makes you start to realize just how little you knew about songs that never made it to the record racks. Now it even includes a comprehensive list of songs in alphabetical order! Great going, Joe! http://www.andygibb.org/ A remarkable tribute to Andy Gibb, the only soloist to have his first three singles hit number one -- this was no mere teen idol. The Official Andy Gibb Home Page features a well-written bio, album gifs, and information on the Andy Gibb Memorial Foundation. http://mv.ru/~eddy/bee.html What IS that line in "Stayin' Alive", oh, YOU know, that thing that goes "we can try to understand, the New York .......... on man?" Look it up here, at Eddy's lyrics page. You'll be surprised to discover how many songs you've been mishearing all these years. http://users.deltanet.com/~twograys/beegees.htm Kathy Gray has a lovely pictorial site here, with nice reprints of magazine articles, pics of the Bee Gees, fans' photos, contests, a collectors' corner (we will now pause to take a breath), real audio files, up-to-date TV info, a VERY active message board... essentially, we are talking about a Bee Gees theme park in cyberspace. Visit it now, before Six Flags takes it over! http://easyweb.easynet.co.uk/~iomvc/dpage.htm Speaking of theme parks, how about a Bee Gees museum? Of course, if it were up to me, we would just take over the Guggenheim, dispense with all those needless oil paintings, and start installing karaoke bars in the rotunda. I've been told that this is impractical, for reasons that elude me presently, so perhaps a museum on the Isle of Man -- the indisputable birthplace of the Bee Gees -- would be suitable. Think so? Stop by and share your thoughts with a few Manx fellows actively pursuing the idea... http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/main_course/media.htm Every time I listen to the new Bee Gees single "Alone", I remember how Sue Thompson blessed us all by providing .wav files of audio excerpts months before the song's release in the USA. http://www.scranton.com:2222/archive/b/bee_gees/ Greg Luther first brought this site to my attention, "a web site that has a few selected Bee Gees songs for guitar." And he's right, it is. In the new_york_mining_disaster.crd file Andrew Rogers explains how to play guitar chords like Barry does. I must say, those minor chords look a tad challenging. And a barre on the 10th fret for C major? Oy! Other artists are here too, just click on "Parent Directory" once or twice to view the list. As a failed guitar player, this is just the sort of thing I've been looking for. Thanks, Greg! http://chevytrucks.org/mrphilco/beegees.html Okay, you've got the cover to "Horizontal", and there's five guys there. Now, which one is Vince Melouney, and which one is Colin Peterson? Well, you may find GIFs of album covers elsewhere, but THIS site tells you who is who, provides catalog numbers and tells you about CD availability. Very good GIFs, too! In fact, I was so impressed with this site that I decided to help Ron "Mr. Philco" Ramirez scrounge up some more album covers -- so now the site is bigger than ever. It's nice to FINALLY have a place to send people looking for Bee Gees album GIFs. Keep up the good work, Mr. Philco! http://www.polydor.com/polydor/artists/beegees/splash.html Well, we've been waiting for it, and now here it is: the Bee Gees page on the web site of Polydor, their record label. Among the features are a nice biography, although it curiously ends in 1977, tour dates (none available at the present time), and excerpts from the Bee Gees Electronic Press Kit (6.9 Megs of Quick Time Video. You may wish to go mow the lawn while downloading...). Also features a 30 second clip from the "Alone" video, and realaudio and .wav files of song excerpts from the "Still Waters" album. All in all, enough to keep the file download portion of your internet software busy for awhile. Make space on your hard drive... http://www.imperium.net/~alandail/BeeGees.html Alan Dail's site has a lot of text, and a sort of down-to-business look to it that I find appealing. There are links: links to the UK album chart, links to radio station request lines, and links to the Internet Singles Chart voting site (you HAVE voted, haven't you?). Check often for new radio info! http://www.bgwoc.org/ Diane Weidenkopf's Wind of Change site has nice newspaper and magazine articles on the Bee Gees. Other goodies too! If you're curious about Bee Gees bootlegs, for example, you can read about them here. Not BUY them, mind you, but READ about them (of course!). Great site! http://www.geocities.com/SunsetStrip/Club/7434/index.html Joan Furilla brings us Joan's Wonderful Bee Gees Page, the home of Name that Bee Gees Song, one of those things on the internet that can easily make me forget that I have responsiblities and shouldn't spend hours being so totally distracted... http://www.toptown.com/CENTRALPARK/carncom/beegees/central.htm Jan Carnell's Bee Gees Back Chat is back, after a brief absence. And due to its overwhelming popularity, it has moved to a new location. Please note the above URL in your bookmarks! One of my favorite parts about it is the .wav to the song "Just in Case", not yet released anywhere in any form, except for this composition in progress on the Keppel Road video. Nice pictures, too! http://members.aol.com/bgfan/gc/index.html Amy on America On-line has put together this web site, which provides a nice combination of Bee Gees buy/sell ads and Macintosh evangelism ("Don't give in to the dark side", she warns. Well, of COURSE not! I use OS/2...). Past offerings listed have included Bee Gees "Sgt. Pepper" bubble gum cards! Yes, right, very good web site, one that is worth checking, especially if you're still looking for that Maurice Gibb lunchbox to complete your collection! http://muellner.simplenet.com/groove/lexicon/beegees/albums.htm Mr. Udo Muellner has a Bee Gees discography on his web site. Actually, it looks a lot like my FAQ discography too, except that his is easier to read, includes a comprehensive singles discography as well and predates mine by half a year. And look at this, he subscribes to CompuServe too! Well, it's true then, great minds think alike! Other sites... Suffice it to say, you don't have to speak English to appreciate the Bee Gees. Since my capabilities in foreign languages remain somewhat limited, I will not attempt to review these, but if you speak the language, by all means stop by and have a look! Bee Gees Fan Club - Argentina [In Spanish]: http://free.websight.com/BGFC_ARG/ Bee Gees Fan Club - Japan [In Japanese]: http://village.infoweb.or.jp/~fwhw3700/bgsfcjp_index.htm Polydor - Japan [In Japanese]: http://www.polydor.co.jp/music/intl/beegees/ Note: if you want to show the Japanese sites to someone who can read Japanese, be sure to download a Japanese-enabled web browser such as Tabibito (for Windows 95), available at http://www.japancan.com Don't forget, there are many more Bee Gees sites out there. Be sure to pass the word on so that we can include them in the next FAQ. Happy net-surfing! CHAT: For those who find internet chat to be even better when the topic is the Bee Gees, consider the IRC channel #bee-gees where Gibb fans meet on the XWorld server. Open for your chatting pleasure on Sundays 7pm Eastern, Tuesdays and Thursdays 8pm Eastern. (Note to those abroad: Eastern is the same as "New York time," check your handy world clock. You DO have a handy world clock, or course?) Special thanks to chat operator Martha Irwin for this helpful info, and for also suggesting that newbies in need of killer chat apps consider mIRC shareware chat software, easily obtained on-line by visiting www.mirc.co.uk. COMMERCIAL ON-LINE SERVICES: In other words, AOL and Compu$erve. Please remember, you have to JOIN THESE SERVICES to take advantage of their propriatery resources. Unlike other internet thingies, you can't just point to your web browser here and expect it to suddenly cough up CompuServe fan club forums -- although it is rumored that CompuServe may eventually make forums available to non-subscribers on the internet as a pay-per-use feature... America On-Line: Well, alright, you've endured twenty-five consecutive busy signals, modem initialization errors and cyber-bales of junk e-mail and now you want to get up to speed on the Bee Gees. Just pay a visit to the People Connection. In the "Arts and Entertainment" area a Bee Gees channel is available for your chat- room pleasure on Wednesday nights at 9:30 PM, Eastern Standard Time (New York time). Kathy Gray also urges me to "include information on the Bee Gees bulletin boards available on AOL. To get there, use Keyword: MMC (to get to the Music Message Center), then click on 'Artists A - F,' then click on 'Bee Gees.'" Thanks, Kathy! CompuServe: Just use the CompuServe GO command to GO BEEGEES (WINCIM users, click the stoplight icon and type BEEGEES in the dialog box). This will place you in the Fan Club B forum, which has a section dedicated to the Bee Gees, including a messages area and file library. Among the items in the library are JPEGS and GIFS of album covers and promotional photos. You can also find several text files in the library, including a recent CompuServe conference with John Merchant of Middle Ear studio. In addition to the Fan Club forum, you can access other CompuServe goodies to keep you informed on Bee Gee bulletins and album info. * GO POLYGRAM takes you to the Polygram CompuServe site, which gives album release info. There was a nice site for the Bee Gees under April releases, despite the fact that nothing was released in April... * GO ALLMUSIC takes you to the All-Music Guide, where you can look up such things as the catalog numbers for albums of those Latin pop duos that Barry keeps singing with (see FAQ part 2) and all available covers of Gibb composition "Gilbert Green" (one, so far). * CompuServe's Executive News Service enables you to get press releases and other wire service articles selected for your perusal. Follow the instructions in the Executive News Service, and use as news search keywords BEE GEES, BARRY GIBB, ROBIN GIBB, MAURICE GIBB and ANDY GIBB. If you like, you can also create a second news folder with the keywords ROBERT STIGWOOD, POLYDOR, ARIF MARDIN, KARL RICHARDSON, ALBHY GALUTEN or whatever. The Executive News Service carries with it per-minute charges IN ADDITION TO CompuServe's usual exorbitant hourly rates. So read the help file on charges and usage carefully, and for crying out loud, DON'T GET UP FOR A CUP OF COFFEE while logged on to the Executive News Service! You've been warned... ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Responses to FAQ: Send responses and comments to David Garcia at garc@compuserve.com or post to the mailing lists if you are a subscriber. Special thanks to the following for their kind assistance in producing this FAQ: Renee Schreiber, Joe Brennan, Chris Mathis, Bette Hanson, Lynn Lyda, Antonette Daniar, Jill Thompson, "Imran C.", Joey Spain, Ed Vlasov, Melody Ishiwata, "Kevin M.", Doug "Doug in MO" Shannon, Jimmy Wade, Goran Gustafsson, Juan Perea, Grant Walters, "Tony","Mike", Lucas Broer, Joel K. Ashby, "Di", Marty Hogan, Rhonda J. Platania, Anne Simpson, Al Collum III, Elliott A. Jacobowitz, Sue Thompson, Kathy Gray and her friend in France, Ruth Burcaw, "BG Pixie" CBolitiski, Ann M. Richardson, Marcel Troost, Daniel Navarro, Doug "Doug in TX" Wilson, Phongsak Suppattarachai, "Marion from (today's climate here) Germany", Colin Harris, Greg Luther, Helio Takahashi, Douwe Dijkstra, Diane Weidenkopf, Robert Phan, Karen Liew, Ron Ramirez, Jay Siekierski, Alan Dail, Joan Furilla, Jan Carnell, "Amy on AOL", Udo Muellner, Park Duk-Hyeon, Joseph Yellin, Tom Fini, Martha Irvin and many others (to whom I apologize for their accidental omission) User Contributions: |
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