Do It. Do It.

Van McCoy
Jan. 6, 1940 - July 6, 1979
For a guy who never appeared in movies, Van McCoy sure has a lot of IMDB credits. He's been dead for exactly thirty years today, yet people who don't even know who he is, know who he is.

Cause he was that guy. You know the one.

He mostly wrote songs for other artists, most notably Barbara Lewis' "Baby, I'm Yours", but he detoured into disco in the mid-1970s. And that's when things went horribly, horribly wrong. Or horribly right, depending on who you ask.

If you ask me, it wasn't good. Not good at all. What's that? You didn't ask? Consider it a freebie. You're welcome.

His most notable contribution to our culture, and a defining moment of the '70s disco movement, was a groovy disco anthem with only five words:

"Do it...do the Hustle"
Actually, it was only four words, since "do" is really the same word, but used more than once. But you get the idea.

If you were alive in 1975, you fell into one of two groups of people: people that hated "The Hustle", and people that hated "The Hustle"...yet owned it. It was a combination disco dance/infectuous mind weevil that took the nation by storm and went directly to the top of the charts. It was awful, but people couldn't get enough of it.

And years later, that song is the reason that Van McCoy, a man who has been dead for thirty years, has had sixteen TV and movie credits since he died.

It's generally used in a kitschy, ironic sense these days, but I hate that song. Irony doesn't make me want to listen to it more. I was every bit of seven years old when it was released and I hated it then. I have never not hated it.

Van McCoy suffered a sudden massive heart attack in New Jersey at the age of 39 on July 6, 1979. It's a terrible way to die...of a heart attack, and in New Jersey.

I don't hate the guy...but I hate the evil that he released into the world.

Also...nice hat.