Last night I went to see Donna Summer perform at Mansion in New York City because she’s launching a new album for the first time in 17 years (called Crayons) and the crowd was basically what you’d expect: a whole lot of nightlife characters and then a belt of weird middle aged women who have forced their bodies to stay really thin through surge, starvation and cigarettes. They were the kind of women who look like biker chicks but they’re sort of suburban New Jersey mafia instead. Carmella Soprano but with a lot more trash.
I’m talking about women in their 40s and 50s who do themselves up to look really trampy and have lots of hairspray and who dance about in a mildly slutty manner, knowing all the words to all the old songs that I have only heard because I happen to go to the crummy C Town supermarket near my house when nothing else is open and that’s what they play. They play Donna Summer and also that fucking annoying song that goes ‘Shake your booty…” God, I hate that. I really hate it. Like, I hate it more than Willy Lowman’s musical stylings.
Then there were all these big, fat husbands who stood around, proud of themselves for getting in, a whole lot of older gay men who live for Donna Summer because she’s old school and this amazing black girl who danced so well on the dance floor they put a spot light on her. Donna Summer sang all her old hits like Last Dance, Bad Girls and all these other songs that I, again, only knew from ads or from movies or from my worst nightmares as I sat and waited for test results this one time in Chelsea.
Still, she was ok in a couple of places – one when she was singing some song and she got a bit rock n roll and picked up the mic stand effortlessly and swung it behind her head. Who would have expected that? Not me but then I couldn’t expect anything besides the clichés in the audience because I don’t know Donna Summer that well. Actually, I used to work with Vince Aletti at the Village Voice when he was the Arts Editor there and he apparently discovered her. So, that’s something I guess.
Anyway, here’s her new song, there are little bits of it that I don't mind:
TMZ just posted a picture of Donna Summer and Randy Jones from the Village People and I was there with Randy. [source]
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