I’ll never forget my teenage sister, Gayle, and her best friend, Debbie, singing Donna Summer’s “Bad Girls” and making all the car horn noises. In the summer of 1979 there were critics who claimed that 16-year-old girls should not be singing songs about happy hookers, but it’s plain that the girls in “Bad Girls” are not happy. Anyway, I’m sure that by September, Gayle and Debbie were singing something else. Gloria Gaynor’s “I Will Survive,” probably.
Donna Summer had one of the best voices of her generation. She wasn’t in the same class as Buffy Sainte-Marie or Minnie Ripperton, but she was sexier than Buffy and had better material than Minnie. I wish she had done an album with Chrissie Hynde.
In that long-ago era I heard Donna Summer’s songs every time I went to a disco, but the song that remains with me pre-dates the entire movement: “I Feel Love.” All forms of synthesizer or computer-based dance music – electronica, trance, house, acid jazz, whatever you want to call it – descend from this song. This is my favorite music to write to! Rest in peace, Donna. Save the last trance for me.
Random Pick of the Week
Los Lobos, Kiko (1992)
Tex-Mex meets Pink Martini. Totally joyful.
Random Pan of the Week
Fun., Some Nights (2012)
I don’t understand why “We Are Young” is getting so much radio time. I haven’t heard anything this bad since Mitt Romney covered “Who Let the Dogs Out?” I also don’t get the surplus punctuation in their name. Do you call them “Fun Stop”? “Fun and Done?” “Fun Up to a Point”?
I give Some Nights an F. Period.
Random Run-DMSteve Reader of the Week
Judy Gould, whose ambition for many years was to jump out of a cake on The Edge’s birthday. When she was getting ready for an Aerosmith concert at the age of 56, she wrote, “I figure that as long as I remember that I can no longer wear fringe as an actual piece of clothing, I should be OK.” Judy is wearing a hospital gown rather than fringe at the moment, though she hasn’t lost her sense of humor. You pretty much have to have an indestructible sense of humor to be an Aerosmith fan. I know this is Journey and not Aerosmith, but don’t stop believin’, Judy.
In the summer of 1979 we danced to “I Feel Love,” possibly at a club that is now a pricey stack of condos. It might’ve been the night that Yaz hit his 400th homerun. If it wasn’t, it should’ve been.
Run-DMSteve 