Donna Summer: Search and Destroy?

What else?

the only redeming song on the entire thing is "Grand Illusion" which is dubbed out and super nice.

Has anybody heard I'm a Rainbow?

also, first new album since '91 due in May

I really need to hear the '82 eponymous album.

"Summer is working with a wide range of collaborators, including DANIELLE BRISEBOIS..."

!!!

(Gregg Alexander too, plz?)

Has anybody heard I'm a Rainbow?

Yes. It's not very good, a lesser The Wanderer. You can hear the Donna-as-Lene-Lovich "Romeo" on the Flashdance soundtrack. But indeed, every song on I'm a Rainbow feels like soundtrack fodder, the kind of stuff Family Guy would use to make fun of 1980s film montages. Catchy, though. Too catchy maybe. And it might be a concept album (can't recall). Another deficiency: it includes her "Don't Cry For Me Argentina."

Once Upon a Time... is prolly my fave despite a crappy side three (the woman has serious side three problems). And there's some great porn on the earlier discs.

I've never gotten around to The Wanderer either, though "Cold Love" is my favorite of her rock moves.

I'm a Rainbow is one of my favorite Summer albums, and "People Talk" one of my favorite tracks!

No one's bought Crayons? I like it a little better than Eric -- my review comes out this week.

Girlie Action sent me the promo - I think it picks up real nice after a very, very disappointing and rocky start. But I don't see it changing anybody's life or dancefloor, sadly.

I heard rumors that she was hooking up with the Freemasons for this album or something? y/n?

Girlie Action sent me the promo - I think it picks up real nice after a very, very disappointing and rocky start.

OTM. The second side is the killer, but it's not totally aerodynamic either. Points for weirdness, though (tropicalia? blues?).

For the love of god, people. This woman is too much.

"There Will Always Be A You"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KjXeNh4eCjw&

"Love Is In Control"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3KEUrHzKg_E

"MacArthur Park"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SNknNoCBYfw

OH! I finally heard The Wanderer and Eric H and Marcello's beloved 1982 eponymous album. The latter is much better than expected, and the former verging on great. Much more consistent than the pre-Bad Girls Moroder-Bellotte recordings, and I like the desperation and weariness that made her run into the arms of Christianity. She's having a "Breakdown," she's "Running For Cover," until she affirms that "I Believe in Jesus."

1982 eponymous album?? I only remember the Wanderer single and I remember not liking it much at all.

Gosh thanks Alfred, I'm really glad you're awake right now. I already said it elsewhere but my daddy gave me the State of Indepedence 7" single at Christmas and I'll never forget it. I must have been...11?

Listening to the eponymous '82 album, now. Really strange to hear "The Woman In Me" and realize I used to have that single. I barely remember that song, though, and I don't like it very much, but there are other very cool things on this album for sure. This is a great album.

"Livin' In America" is good fun! Can we make it Obama's campaign theme song? And WOAH HO! Check out the synths on "Love Is Just A Breath Away". Surely that song is more fun than the cops will allow? And "Lush Life" is really beyond words. Fuck me, even Sheila E.'s first album ain't that good.

I'm going to see if I can get the Wanderer album next.

Try Me I Know We Can Make It
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ffIuIpnETA

Eponymous is my favorite Donna album by a pretty long shot. Only I Remember Yesterday comes close for me, based mostly off the strength of its bookends.

Bad Girls is certainly more consistent than the albums that came before it, in that it's flat and predictable.

by the way, She Works Hard For The Money's "I Do Believe (I Fell in Love)" is my favorite Summer ballad.

Very odd how little love A Love Trilogy gets here. "Try Me, I Know We Can Make It" is easily one of Moroder's best non-electro disco cuts (and great as they are, by and large the only thing people are praising here IS his electro disco cuts -- the electronic songs on Once Upon A Time, fourth side of Bad Girls etc.). But for 18 minutes, "Try Me" is every bit as good as those cuts, shifting dynamics and rhythms -- the amount of growth from "Love To Love You Baby" to this is pretty remarkable in retrospect. And on the second side, "Wasted" and "Come With Me" are outstanding as well.

"Could It Be Magic" is fantastic. That album is awesome too, though to me it mostly feels like a proto CD maxi-single or something.

Okay, hey, wait just a minute now. When I was wee lad and had my "On The Radio" double LP compilation of her work, and which included a shortened version of "McCarthur Park", no one told me about this "McCarthur Park Suite" thing with some other song tucked inside it called "One Of A Kind". It came from her 1978 "Live and More" album apparently, which I've never even heard...and there are apparently two different versions of it (the other from a 12"), so I haven't been able to get this all straight, yet. But this is really slaying me right now, this long suite. Also it has "Heaven Knows" as part of it, which was featured separately on the On The Radio compilation, and which I have not had the pleasure of hearing in many years.

I Remember Yesterday is great...as white as quality disco ever got and that includes Saturday Night Fever and "The Wiz".

Oh for the love of fuck

Bimble, what if youtube had never been invented?

Then I would be flipping through records in the store like the old days. And I wouldn't be able to find any Velvet Underground bootlegs at all, and that would make a Bimble very sad. ;_;

Okay, look, I'm nuts about this "Heaven Knows" song she did with Brooklyn Dreams. I haven't heard it since my childhood but GOD what a song!!!! And I love her green tunic in this video, too.

NO way, no way, listen to the rock and roll ending of the gigantic masterpiece that is her duet with Barbara Streisand "No More Tears (Enough Is Enough)" no seriously check out that guitar solo. Who the hell did that guitar solo towards the end? WOW.

Donna on the Johnny Carson show, 1978. Look for the interview at the end. Skip the whole song if you have to, just look at the interview. She's a fucking amazing woman, people. Fucking amazing.

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Okay look, I need talk about Donna with folks who know her 70's and early 80's career. I don't know anyone to talk about this shit with.

My end conclusion was that "A Love Trilogy" was the absolute shit by miles over anything she'd ever done, but I also found that there was a whole lot of wonderful stuff in the Bad Girls album I hadn't appreciated before.

Now I just finally got the "Four Seasons Of Love" album, and it sounds like such a joy, the first track, because I can't believe I didn't have all her 70's albums already after all. Though I admit I still don't have the first one.

But to be honest, several of her 70's albums left me flat. Gotta pick and choose really carefully, in my opinion. "Once Upon A Time" is just sappy at times. Whatever the one is with "Remember" in the title sounds too 50's-ish for my tastes. Etc.

"A Love Trilogy" is where it all really comes together in my opinion. But fuck me (butt fuck me) if this "Four Seasons of Love" sounds fucking good so far.

And if I have to collect everything Giorgio Moroder ever did, then it's probably none of your business, is it? LOL

What I was wishing for actually was a big double CD reissue of "A Love Trilogy" with BONUS TRAXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Oh well.

Jesus fucking Christ there's a song on here called "Summer Fever". I rest my case. I've got the fever, man. Oh my god.

In the break, in the middle of "Autumn Changes" she says "Yes We Can/Sure We Can/Yes We Can/Sure We Can"

LOL

Love To Love You Baby

I want you to watch this and tell me she is not the hottest woman to ever hit a stage.

&

Hetero boys get out of the way. Gay icon moving through.

She fries the hell out of gay boys, though, doesn't she?

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So if I'm moving on with my Moroder obsession, Love Trilogy is the next one to get? Or should I get this "Bad Girls" comp and go exploring from there?

I'm sorry I'm not familiar with a compilation called Bad Girls. I am familiar with the album of the same name, though. You can get Love Trilogy or Bad Girls. It doesn't matter, both will scratch a Giorgio Moroder itch. In fact, listen to "Our Love" first to prove it to yourself that Moroder is a synthesizer badass.

Then check out this Heaven Knows video:

I know, I've gone nuts over her again. And I will continue to go nuts over her until I convince the whole world that some of her late 70's material absolutely kicks ass. I won't give up.

I Love You

Last Dance

Just to give you some company on this thread, thanks for collecting up the clips. I hadn't heard much DS beyond the megahits, but damn, my loss 'cos she is amazing. "Our Love" on repeat.

Thanks for posting! I really appreciate it. I get pretty lonely in my Donna love. Just don't really know anyone who's as into her 70's stuff as much as I am. That said, I've kindof gotten away from her of late.

i thought everyone loved disco

I thought the people who hated disco had moved on to hating rap.

On NPR this morning, they miscomprehended this admittedly badly-written press release, and said that Donna Summer had a huge hit in 1977 with "Rapper's Delight."

An interesting (nerdy) article on the making of "Love to love you baby" and "I feel love", incl. mic choices, using tape-as-sync, and an orgy

http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/oct09/articles/classictracks_1009.htm

I've read in the last week comments about Summer's lack of "technical" competence. How is this even a serious question for a multi-octave singer?

who the hell is saying that

Once in this very thread, I think.

SHOW YOURSELF

I'd put "Lack of technical competence" slightly above "fat" on a list of dumbest crits you could level at a pop musician

this is a woman who scored a hit off a Bocelli opera piece in the late nineties.

It was sort of the height of the Andrea Bocelli craze tho.

and he wasn't around to see it

You're too short for that gesture.

The only time I've thought "huh" about Donna's singing was on "No more tears", mostly just cuz I could picture Babs getting cussy at her in the third person on some of the unison bits

Practice English past tense verbs with Donna Summer's "On the Radio"!

http://www.esolcourses.com/content/topics/songs/various-artists/on-the-radio.html

irregular past tense verbs, that is

i love everything about this performance

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dC8cCqblNas

I liked the new doc from HBO. It had a lot of artsy touches that kept it interesting. It’s nice that seemingly her whole family got involved in it.

I’d never seen pictures of her first (German) husband. He looked like a little kid!

It's on Sky Arts right now!

I should advise people that it's not totally thorough in terms of looking closely at all of her music, and it may have a little too much of her family in it for some viewers.

oh i saw it on an airplane and LOVED IT -- my favorite part was when i learned that she was responsible for suggesting the arpeggiated synth (?) in "i feel love" in Germany and potentially changing the path of popular music singlehandedly?!

It also covered her homophobia pretty well -- I thought that was also interesting. It was a good doc!

She said such nice things about Giorgio too.