This is going to be a piece to hopefully save you some time trudging through the mire of Bee Gees sites currently on the ‘net.
At the time of writing googling “Bee Gees” will spew out over 14 million hits! So how do sort the wheat from the chaff; The good from the bad; the … well you get where I’m going with this! The truthful answer is “It’s a bit hit-and-miss!”.
Over the years I’ve searched the internet trying to find the more interesting sites. You’ve probably done it yourself: most of the hits will be from lyric sites, YouTube (I’ll deal with those in another post), as well as thousands of hits from newspaper/magazine sites; unfortunately most of them have little (or no) real information for the discerning fan. In fact, many of them – especially the magazine and newspaper sites – only serve to fuel to Bee Gees “hate” fire!
There are very few, what I call “proper” fan sites so I’ve put a list up on the right hand-side of the best-of-the-best. These are the sites that I visit regularly, and you could do worse than to check those out first. I will of course add more as I find them, but like I said most of them are pretty poor.
The first thing you may notice is that the official Bee Gees website is missing. There’s a good reason for this and it’s purely that, despite being official, I always found it lacking! It was never updated with any kind of regularity to be useful, even when the brothers were still three and still a band. In fact if you visit the site now there’s hardly anything on it!
The two other official sites are growing – Barry’s is interesting because of all those little video clips. Both are kept up-to-date, particularly Robin’s since he’s still actively playing concerts.
Lyric Sites
If it’s lyrics you’re looking for there are two sites to look at: the first is beegees.lyrics.info, which has a simple layout with all the tracks shown under their respective albums. It’s by no means complete, but there are none of those annoying ads or pop-ups you get from other lyrics sites.
However, for the most complete set of lyrics there is only one place you need to go to and that’s Edward Vlasov’s Lyric Site. This has been going for years and I have provided lyrics for the site – indeed, my name is immortalised on the front page (4th name down on the left!).
News / information Sites
Gibb Service International). This is a fan-run site that has the most up-to-date news that I’ve found. The official Bee Gees site should take notes!! It is made up of articles from fans all over the world, and it’s probably the best fan site out there. They even have an online version of Barry’s Poetry Book, containing the words to some of his earlier songs. Updated regularly and with all kinds of information that would take too long to go into here – go and take a look for yourselves. You won’t be disappointed.
I want to take a minute to lament the loss of another great site “Bee Gees World”. It’s disappeared entirely from the web and, to my eyes, is a sad loss to us fans. It had possibly the most complete lyrics page (even better than Eddie’s – sorry Eddie!). I realise it’s no use to anyone who never saw it but I had to mention it because someone put a hell of a lot of work into it.
Other sites out there that I used to visit regularly seem to have gone by the wayside: the only one worth mentioning – Immortality – appears to have been neglected since 2 May 2003 and the layout is somewhat hard on the eyes.
Other Sites
If you’re interested in the rare and unreleased catalogue the place to find out what’s around if you know where to look is The Bee Gees Rarity Site. Updated regularly with new stuff, mostly demos, but also includes fan-recordings of live sets as well as the official releases – you’ll be surprised what you can get hold of! I thought I had a decent Bee Gees collection until I saw this site for the first time a few years back. If I end up getting hold of half the stuff on here, I die a happy man!
The aptly-named BeeGeepedia project on Wikia is a new one to me – it seems to be Wikipedia with adverts! All the info is on the Bee Gees Wikipedia entry. Both sites are similar in that articles can be written / edited by anyone interested. The Wikipedia, being the earlier, is the most complete and easier to navigate – plus there’s no annoying adverts distracting you from reading the articles.
Finally, I can’t do a piece on the Bee Gees online without mentioning Gibb Songs. What Joe Brennan doesn’t know about the history of the recording career of the Gibb brothers, probably ain’t worth knowing! There is so much information contained within the pages of Gibb Songs that you get a true sense of the work that these guys have produced over their 50 plus years in the business. I don’t know of any other band that has produced so many original songs. Many of them have never seen the light of day, while some never even made it onto any form of demo – no matter what the history of a song may be, you’ll find details there. It is truly an impressive work.
As I said at the start, there are so many sites out there and most of the won’t be worth wasting your time over. Those I’ve mentioned above are the ones that I think contribute the most to the overall Bee Gees experience and I really wouldn’t go anywhere else, unless you have a spare hour or two! But I am only human, so if there’s a site I haven’t mentioned and you think it’s worth a look – let me know.
A Kick In The Head... 