My Donna Summer Youth, Way After Disco Sucked

I'll just come out and say it: Donna Summer's passing at the age of 63 yesterday has affected me way more than Whitney Houston's death in February. To be completely honest, I had no emotional investment in Whitney. Her music in the mid-to-late 1980s was so bland and saccharine to me. It just wasn't sexy.

Of course, I say this, and my introduction to Donna Summer really came with her 1989 Another Place And Time album — the one produced by Stock Aitken Waterman. The one with "This Time I Know It's For Real". Now that was a jam.

I had just turned 15 when that song was released, and, really, it opened up the floodgate for my high school friend Becky and I to delve deep into all the disco music we missed out on (by being toddlers) from the previous decade. "MacArthur Park". "Last Dance". "Hot Stuff". "On The Radio". And this was at least three years before disco became retro-cool again in the early-'90s. Disco still sucked. We were cheesy. But it was a lot of fun.

One particular memory is of Becky and I being in her green Volvo, driving through the downtown parking lot behind the public library one Friday night in early 1992, where all the metalheads hung out. We drove through the lot, circled back around and did it again repeatedly, all the while blasting Donna Summer and Bee Gees and Sylvester. We were wearing sunglasses and trashy velour suits we'd bought at the Salvation Army.

Some kids got wasted on the weekends. We chose to find those kids and give them a shock to the system with disco. Like I said, we were cheesy.

I will say one thing — discovering this clip of a 1975 performance of "Love To Love You Baby" was the highlight of yesterday. It's all about the main backup dancer dude.



So thanks making boring teenage life in the suburbs into fun times, Donna. Your music is truly timeless.

I wrote these on Idolator yesterday:
* Donna Summer Dead At 63
* Donna Summer: 7 Great Music Moments 

Read More

13 Iconic Pet Shop Boys Images By Eric Watson, Who Has Died

Eric Watson, photographer of Pet Shop Boys from the very beginning (and former pre-PSB Neil Tennant colleague at Smash Hits), died of a heart attack on Sunday at age 56.

There are so many iconic photographs Eric took of the Boys and videos he directed — images that were imprinted on my mind from a pre-teen age and on — and this roundup really doesn't do it justice. But they're some of my favorites. (For a complete look at Watson's work with the Boys up through 2005, pick up the coffee table read Catalogue.)

 

From the Guardian's obituary:

Eric Watson, who has died of a heart attack aged 56, was an important shaper of 1980s pop photography. His work for Smash Hits during a key era in British pop helped create the glossy image of the age. In particular, Watson's collaboration with Pet Shop Boys – Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe – defined the notion of image-making as a vital part of the way the post-punk generation took control of its own marketing.

Writing in the Guardian in 1993, Dave Rimmer noted: "Everything one now thinks of as the Pet Shop Boys – silent Chris walking two steps behind singing Neil, and so on – stems from discussions the group had with photographer/videomaker Eric Watson at the very beginning of their career."

"His aesthetic and our aesthetic pretty much coincided," Tennant says now. "We had endless discussions about the way we wanted to look. We didn't want to be smiley pop stars. We spent lots of EMI's money on endless photo sessions."

Read More