Donna Summer: She could sing anything, anywhere, with anyone, at any time.

[FEB 16] Happy Valentine's Day chocolate is 50% off weekend all!  lol  Let's start off with Stereogum's  series on The Number Ones.  On last week's update I mentioned that they had an article about Hot Stuff. Well, you know that they had to follow that up (a few days later) with Donna's next #1 - Bad Girls.  I'm thinking the next article (with Donna that is) in the series should be No More Tears in a few weeks. And then I think we're done unless Stereogum decides to look at other charts at some point.

[FEB 16] In musical news, Summer: The Musical is playing in Chicago right now, and the Daily Herald has a short interview with "Disco Donna" Alex Hairston to promote the show.  ChicagoNow.com also has a short article to promote the show - but this is more a profile of Donna herself than a discussion of the show.

[FEB 16] Bruce Sudano fans - Bruce is heading out to the Durango Songwriter Expo this weekend. Mark my words - there will probably be some live on the couch videos afterwards. You can't put a whole bunch of creatives together and not have have everyone coming out inspired to do something.  :-)

[FEB 16] I think that brings us to YouTube. I guess since it was just Valentine's Day and Donna is the First Lady Of Love, we should have some clips about love.  So let's start with Love To Love You live, and Donna's discussion of the song. Then we have Love Is The Healer live on VH1 Divas 2000, the video for Love Is In Control, the original mix of Love On & On,  Stor Dubine's video for I Got Your Love,  and of course no list like this is complete without I Feel Love - live in 1977.

[FEB 9] Happy Oscar Night all! It's a pretty quiet week, but we do have a new article in Stereogum's series on Number Ones. This one is a look at Hot Stuff which took that top spot on June 2, 1979. 

[FEB 9] Then we have a blog entry from a couple of years ago that I don't remember running into before.  This one is from Jeremy Gloff, and he talks about how he became a Donna Summer fan. It's a good read - go check it out.

[FEB 9] Remember that movie Spinning Gold about Neil Bogart that's been in the works.... ummm... forever?  LOL Things might be getting a little weird. Production was scheduled to start July 16, 2019. Now if you go to  the IMDB website (which in all fairness can be edited by anyone, and so may not always be 100% accurate - just like Wikipedia), the movie's status has been updated to  "Post-production."  But then if you look at the Trivia section, it says that the production was shut down after 3 weeks leaving many workers and suppliers unpaid. Now it's hard to find any recent info on this movie online, but I did find an article (in French) from Journalmetro.com which is based in Montreal. With the help of Google Translate, what I got is that they started filming in Montreal on July 15 and then they ran out of money by July 24 and didn't pay a lot of the technical staff. So naturally production stopped. (Yeah, if my job stopped paying me, I'd stop working too!) They were trying to work out something so that production could resume, but I couldn't find out if that actually happened or not.  So who knows if this thing will ever be completed?

[FEB 9] Johnnyswim fans: Check out their new video, Long Gone - Backstage At The Ryman, filmed unplugged at the famous Ryman Auditorium.

[FEB 9] I think that brings us to YouTube.  It's Oscar night, so let's make it a Sunday of movie songs.  So of course we have to start with Last Dance which won Paul Jabara the Oscar for  best Original Song back in 1978. Then in 1984 Donna sand Barbra Streisand's nominated song - Papa Can You Hear Me. Up next is  A Whole New World from Aladdin - a 1993 Oscar winner covered by Donna and Dave Koz in 2007, and The Way We Were which won the Oscar in 1974 and was covered by Donna on tour 1977-79. Other movie songs are The Power Of One from Pokemon: The Movie 2000, Whenever There is Love from Daylight (1996), Romeo from Flashdance (1983), and Ordinary Miracle from Let It Be Me (1996).

[FEB 2] Happy Groundhog Day all! Our local guy predicted an early Spring.... I guess it makes sense since we've barely had any winter at all so far.  :-)  It's a new month so you know what that means. It's time for a new Summer Fever Pick and I'm sure this one will make all the Bad Girls out there happy. :-)

[FEB 2] In box set news, Instinct Magazine has an article about the Junior Vasquez mix of My Life that will be on the Encore set.

[FEB 2] In the Donna is everywhere category, SundayPost.com posted an interview with Barbra Streisand in which she talks about some of her favorite artists. Donna made that list.  :-)  Barbra says: "She was a Disco Queen but boy could she sing just about everything. What an amazing voice and she was as good with a slow, moody number as she was belting out a great dance number. One of my favourites."

[FEB 2] Bruce Sudano fans, Bruce posted this clip of him performing Coney Island Days in 2018.

[FEB 2] That brings us to YouTube. And in honor of the Summer Fever Pick, I think we should look at some Bad Girls tracks.  First up is this classic Tonight Show performance of Bad Girls from 1979 (with the glasses!  lol) Then we have Hot Stuff live on the 1980 TV special, Dim All The Lights from Live & More Encore, an instrumental of Lucky, Sunset People from the 1980 TV special, an acapella version of There Will Always Be A You, the 8:31 version of Walk Away,  and the Summer2k Insomnia mix of Can't Get To Sleep At Night.

[JAN 27] Just sneaking in with one little (or big depending on your point of view) update on the upcoming Encore box set. SuperDeluxeEdition.com has the scoop - art and track list!

[JAN 26]  Happy Sunday all! Big news this week....  Amazon UK is listing a new box set due out on March 27.  The set is called Encore and it will be a 33 CD set  all of Donna's studio albums (starting with Lady Of The Night up through Crayons).  Also included ate both Live & More albums, On The Radio and a whole bunch of "non album singles" and extended mixes. One of the tracks includes will be the first time ever commercial release of Junior Vasquez's mix of My Life. And that's not all. (God, I sound like an infomercial now!  LOL)  The disc will be in mini replica sleeves, there will be a 40 page 12x12 book with a new 25,000 word essay by Christian John Wikane, a foreword by Giorgio Moroder, tributes from 25 industry legends, and the album label copy info.  This thing just screams collectible! :-)

[JAN 26] Moving on to the musical, Sao Paulo Brazil, you get to see the show March 5 to June 28. If I am interpreting the Portuguese right, it looks like  Amanda Souza is playing the young Donna (Duckling Donna), Jeniffer Nascimento is Disco Donna, and Karin Hils is Diva Donna.  Welcome to the family ladies! Get used to your audiences dancing in the aisles.  :-) You can read a longer article about the show here.

[JAN 26]  Bruce Sudano fans - Bruce is live on his couch again on Facebook.  This is #27 and is a new song Bruce is working on that will probably resonate with anyone who has been in a relationship.  :-)

[JAN 26] I think that brings us to YouTube. First up, in honor of the box set we have the studio version of My Life. Then we have the rare track, Sometimes Like Butterflies, another b-side called Tearin' Down The Walls, another one called Face The Music, the original Love On And On, Donna's cover of Someday, and finallyDonna's "duet" with Dave Koz on A Whole New World.

[JAN 19] Greetings all! First let me say CONGRATS! to Summer: The Donna Summer Musical. The tour just played its 100th show. And it's still got plenty more to go, so catch it when they come to your area.  :-)

[JAN 19] Collectors: We have a new limited edition yellow vinyl pressing of She Works Hard For The Money due out on March 27. It is available for preorder at Amazon now,  and it is the same album you know and love - it's just yellow.  :-) (Too bad they couldn't add the red lines too...   I'm so demanding!  LOL)

[JAN 19] There is an interview on YouTube with photographer Bruce Talamon and Earth Wind & Fire's Verdine White. At one  point talks about a photo session with Donna that directly led to his first national magazine cover. The Donna part starts at about 19:05 - my link should bring you right to it.

[JAN 19] Bruce Sudano fans - his upcoming EP now has a new title. It will be called Spirals Vol 1 and he said not a straight line is to be found. (I'd also like to note that anything called Vol. 1 is bound to be followed by a Vol.2  :-) )  This is the EP that will have  In The Garden Of November, and With Him. The EP is due out this Spring and if you head over to Bruce's Facebook page, you can see some shots of him and Steve Addabbo working in the studio.

[JAN 19] And that brings us to YouTube. Let's do some interviews because I ran into a few good ones I hadn't watched lately while looking for something else. So first up, a 1994 interview in 2 parts. Part 1 is here and part 2 is here.  Then we have a 1984 interview with Paula Yates and a 1986 GMA interview with Donna and Dick Clark. And finally, here is a clip of State Of Independence that I don't remember seeing before.

[JAN 12] Happy Sunday all! Let's start with Johnnyswim. They have announced a Valentine's Day show  in Los Angeles. Tickets are available NOW for those who want to go. (And, yes you want to go if you can.  :-) )

[JAN 12] Moving on to Donna, we have a new article from Stereogum celebrating MacArthur Park. We also have an old interview posted by Paste Magazine from 1982 promoting the Donna Summer album.  That one is audio so you get to hear Donna's voice.  :-)

[JAN 12] We have a couple of ummmm.... unusual things this week as week.  Let me start with the prayer candle. There is a company out there called Kitschup Creations that makes celebrity prayer candles. Basically, they are prayer candles that would ordinarily depict a saint, but these depict various celebrities as saints. And yes, there is one for Donna. 

[JAN 12] Then in another head-scratcher I found this week, someone posted  an "afterlife interview" with Donna on YouTube.  The premise of the channel is that this woman uses a medium to contact her dead son and in some videos they get the son to put them in touch with famous people who have passed away.  Whatever you think of the "interview", personally I think it is proof that you can find literally ANYTHING on the internet - whether you want to or not! LOL

[JAN 12] Ok time for some sane stuff on YouTube! lol First up is actually a Daily Motion video of She  Works Hard For The Money taken from the Nobel Peace Prize concert (and decorated with a border of portraits of Donna). Then on YouTube we have (from the same Nobel concert) Bad Girls/ Hot Stuff, and Last Dance.  For something a little different, we have There Will Always Be A You as an acapella version. (Obviously somebody stripped the music off the original recording, but it's pretty cool to hear.) And then for those of you interested in Donna's vocal range, someone on YouTube broke it down with clips from various songs. It's interesting in a music geek sort of way.  :-)

[JAN 5] Happy New Year all and Happy Birthday to Brooklyn Sudano!

[JAN 5] It's been a really slow week  since everybody has been off celebrating the holidays,  but we do have Albumism's tribute to Donna in honor of her birthday.

[JAN 5] In musical news, the tour wraps up its stay in Seattle tonight and then opens in Tempe, AZ on Tuesday.  So catch it you can.  :-)

[JAN 5] Oh yeah, I almost forgot - the new Summer Fever Pick is up. This time we are dancing to Once Upon A Time.

[JAN 5] And that brings us to YouTube.  Let's do some clips in honor of the Summer Fever Pick. First up, the title track live in Japan.  Then we have audio of the single versions of Rumour Has It, Once Upon A Time and Winter Melody.  (Yes, I know Winter Melody is from a different album - call it a bonus.  LOL) After that we have Working The Midnight Shift set to clips of an old movie featuring office workers, and finally, I Love You love from 1978.

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