The Summer Of Summer – Donna Summer Dead at 63

I feel I need to write a blog entry following the death of Donna Summer because her music was so influential to my coming out. It was an important time for many reasons, and this personal story will help illuminate that period.

I came out during the summer of 1975 between Sophomore and Junior years in college, and by “coming out” that meant going to gay disco bars (to meet men). Prior to coming out I was a fan of punk rock, but liking disco was synonymous with being gay, so I didn’t have much choice.

I had just moved into my new apartment for Junior year and I had been named Assistant Music Director at the college radio station. I had also just purchased the first consumer grade DJ mixer and set it up in my new apartment for the first time (with two unmatched belt drive turntables). One of my closest gay friends, Chuck, came over to see my new apartment and listen to the new records I brought over from the radio station to review. Chuck was one of my gay mentors because I was very naive about the gay world. The gay community as we know it was brand new and totally underground, so you needed someone to fill you in.

Going through the pile of records, Chuck pulled a couple choices that, from that moment on, would influence the rest of my life. In that one batch were the first offerings from:

-Village People
-Ramones
-Sylvester
-Giorgio Moroder
-Donna Summer

I could write at length about each of those names, but for now let’s concentrate on Donna Summer and Giorgio Moroder. It was the genius of Giorgio Moroder as producer that separated Donna Summer from every other R&B diva. The electronic sounds and beats he created had never been heard before and with the addition of a powerful black female voice, “I Feel Love” stood out from everything else played in the gay disco. It was not Motown, it was not horn-influenced “The Sound of Philadelphia”, it was not radio-influenced music from NY or LA. It was a mythical “European” sound and ultra modern, and at over 7 minutes in length, it was not meant for radio.

The culture was still trying to figure out “what” disco was. The concept of two records overlapping and blending into each other for more than a few seconds had only been explored for a couple of years. People still danced to juke boxes in many gay bars, and buying a dedicated sound system and hiring a DJ was only starting to become a trend. Unbelievable as it sounds, “disco” records were not played on the radio because they were often up to 20 minutes in length and didn’t fit either the Top 40 radio nor the rock and roll format of “progressive radio” on FM.

When a Donna Summer song was played in a gay disco during that summer, it was instantly recognizable and the boys all moved to the dancefloor in unison. She was our diva and everyone equated Donna Summer with anything (and everything) gay.

In 1979 I was a DJ in a gay bar in Detroit called The Gas Station that was as underground as you could possibly get. You entered through an alley, there were no windows and there was no sign on the door. Remarkably, though, early one Friday night a handsome yuppie introduced himself as a record company rep and brought me a 12″ record of “Enough Is Enough” by Donna Summer and Barbra Streisand. Donna AND Barbra singing a duet???!!! Oh, my queer god, I had died and gone to gay heaven! Though it’s too vocal-heavy to be considered a definitive “disco” record, it is no doubt an important classic that blew us all away for an entire season. The slow build to the crescendo still gives me chills.

Fast forward to Halloween 1995 and I was the Entertainment chair for the Sisters’ huge outdoor party for 100,000 people. I chose “Enough Is Enough” as the finale with two powerful divas (Paul Anelli and Richie Waits) to sing it live with fireworks blowing off at the end. It was the last Halloween the Sisters produced and a fitting end to that 5 year run.

After that nostalgic disco break, we return you to our regularly scheduled gay porn programming…