Donna Summer (1948 - 2012)

In an era of on-demand twenty four hour pop television, twenty four radio stations and a mass media that allows the likes of me to pontificate online to a potential audience of, well at least double figures on a good day, it's probably hard to convince anybody under the age of forty five what an impact Donna Summer had on teenagers at the beginning of 1976.

Most of us had never heard anybody else with toothache, let alone the sound of a grown woman groaning with toothache at the end of a sixteen and a half minute long album track.  The main topic of conversation at the start of that year was Queen and their live performance on the Christmas Eve, Old Grey Whistle Test concert. The strutting and preening Freddie Mercury and the orgiastic excess of the future Queen of Disco shared a common bond, they would redefine the word camp whilst proving that in the end talent will outlive anything ephemeral.

Love To Love You Baby reached Number 4 in the UK singles charts and it would be another eighteen months before she had her first Number One in the UK with I Feel Love. Again the timing of that record was perfect, pop was stale and punk music wasn't really having much of an impact on the charts even if it was resonating with the country's youth. I hated disco with a passion, a passion born out of the frustration that I was a skinny white boy with no discernible sense of rthyhm. The disco was where you could pull, but only if you had the moves and my idea of moving on the dancefloor had more to do with Skinhead culture than anything to do with, what the DJ's would call at the end of the night, the erection selection.

Thanks for the memories.


Written by Barry Manilow!