I learned from the FSM board that Meco (Domenico Monardo) died in May, at 83, but his death went little noticed.
He practically invented the “disco cover of film theme” sub-genre of the late 1970s with his smash arrangement of Star Wars:
I remember as a kid taking umbrage at the cheesiness, and indeed the very concept, but with age comes a certain respectability. Noah Cross, how did you put it...?
There’s a three-part interview with Meco from 2005 on a Star Wars site. He sounds like a character—I only skimmed it, but he seems to talk about “Meco” in the third person a lot.
There’s a lot I didn’t know at his wiki page.
I quite like his version of Maurice Jarre’s love theme from Shogun:
Not sure of this though...
For a moment in time—he nailed it!