Plastic Surgery of the Soap Stars

[EricMontreal22]

I loved DeeDee's rougher vocals. Yeah, she's divided her time between Brazil and the US for a while now.

[DRW50]

That fur coat reminds me of the scene in Ghostbusters 2 where slime makes the rich woman's fur coat come alive and chase her down the street.

[EricMontreal22]

YAY another fan. With Donna, it's hard--I've gotten *lectured* by a number of older gay men when they find out I worship her music about how doing so makes me a disgrace to my sexuality, bla bla. What makes me mad is these people pull out the same hearsay, and have never bothered to do any research. That's why I pull out the Shirley Bassey story--because unlie Donna's, Shirley's quotes are *on record* and while I fully think she doesn't feel that way anymore, I've NEVER seen any gays take her to task for them, they've been forgotten.

Donna was really pretty messed up during the end of her disco years (remember she was, Diana Ross probably aside--we won't know because of how Motown worked--the biggest selling female artist of the 70s--a massive star and was hooked on various prescribed and non prescribed drugs). Then in the early 80s she became born again--and in many ways I think it did save her life, but it also turned off a lot of her fans (I can't stand the She Works Hard for the Money album because, the fun title song aside, most of it is thinly veiled religious crap). However, some facts--she never turned her back on her good friend Paul Jabara (the very gay man who wrote Last Dance, Enough is Enough, Raining Men, etc) and even sang at his funeral when he died of AIDS--as well as she recorded an AIDS crusade ballad he wrote, We're Gonna Win (I have the demo) which her record label decided she shouldn't release. She also has sued anyone who has said she said things like "God sent AIDS to punish gays" and has given all the money to various AIDS and Gay Men's Health charities (even doing a Carnegie Hall benefit for them), and the church she now goes to is an openly gay friendly one. I think at one time she was pretty hardcore born again--and she seems to have thankfully relaxed from that (when I saw her tour, she sang Love to Love You Baby again a song she never did in the 80s), and now has a great sense of humour and comfort in herself (another reason I don't think her weight bothers her too much). I do think maybe at some time she did say something negative about gays--it's more than possible--but if she did I think she resents it and doesn't feel that way (again her last album was done with many of her close friends who are openly gay, etc).

So I'm willing to forgive that, the way I am Shirley Bassey and countless others. (The overated Gloria Gaynor, who often gets mad when people call Donna the Disco Queen, even though Gloria had about one hit on the level of Donna's half dozen, just recently gave a very pretentious interview where she basically said she only plays gay clubs because she hopes her performances will suggest "a new way of life" to gays, etc. Yet, somehow the media does not pick up on her attitudes towards gays, and she's still a fixture at Prides, etc.)

But for anyone interested in the *facts*, this is a great piece http://www.donna-tribute.com/articles/99/rumor.html

ANYWAY sorry for that rant--but the stuff about that time for Donna often comes out when she's brought up, and I like to try to nip it in the bud. Alpha--I agree with you about the dress. For a long time when she was at her heaviest she wore a lot of boring black pant suits, etc, which really for a disco singer is... dull. I was so glad when I saw her last tour that, not only was she looking genuinely fit, she had (in her 7 costume changes lol) a myriad of shapes and coloured outfits. In recent photos of her (partying it up with RuPaul! lol) at Giorgio Moroder's 70th birthday party last month, she looked the skinniest I've seen her since the 90s. But her weight doesn't bothe rme, I don't think she's ever gotten to a level where it affects her voice, or her health (the way I honestly think it must someone like Aretha), and while many of her disco fans wish she could be a decade older take on someone like Madonna--obsessed with maintaining a perfect image, etc, Donna honestly can't be bothered--she's happy being a casual recording artist now who's honestly more devoted to her family. She wrote so much of her own material (as well as hits for Dolly, etc) that she lives very well on her royalties. Tieing this into the thread, I think she may have had a facelift at one time, but not even sure about that...

[EricMontreal22]

Probably because she's seen as a disco star (though really, she's one of the few people who came from the disco era and managed to create a star persona, unlike most disco divas who were more at the mercy of their producers), her vocals have never been given their due, even though you hear people like Barbra Streisand say she's one of the best voics they've worked with. To me, her vocals are every bit as good as Whitney Houston's were at her peak--and I've always appreciated how she changes and adapts her vocals to suit the song (she says she appraoches it like an actor) unlike people like Mariah and Whitney--I also appreciate that she doesn't come from their style of doing endless "vocal runs", leaving the actual melody and lyrics of a song in their wake. But yeah her effortless live vocals, still, are absolutely amazing.

[EricMontreal22]

That's a brilliant clip. I love Diana's two disco albums, but as brilliant as I'm Coming Out and the rest of her Chic produced album is, I actually prefer her earlier, and kinda forgotten The Boss album. A great Ashford/Simpson production from start to finish.

I have to say one of my most disappointing concerts was Diana a few years back. No energy and little love for her adoring fans, and she lip synched at least more than half of it. I know she was never a great live vocalist, but... (I remember RuPaul wrote about how disappointed she was in the same tour, later on her blog which made me feel a bit better lol)

[DRW50]

I remember when Donna was on American Idol about 6 years ago, she still sounded great, although her voice cracked once or twice.

I think the furor over her came at a time when a lot of people in the gay community were probably powerless and were getting kicked constantly and she was an easy target. Sometimes when I see stuff from that era and I am disgusted at just how commonplace it was to see gays and AIDS as something inhuman. When I was watching some Dame Edna special from 1984 one of the jokes from Edna about her son Kenny (who is supposed to be gay) was that he went down to the blood bank in Australia, to monitor the donors, because, basically, he knows one when he sees one. I was like...really? Is this a joke about people dying of AIDS? Then I remembered just how typical this was for comedians of that era. At least a few of them eventually apologized, long after the fact.

I've never believed Donna made those comments. People who hate gays that much, to say something so sick, would have a history of that type of attitude. They would say it over and over, either on the record, or off the record but it would eventually be brought out. I've never really heard anything about Donna Summer feeling this way. All she's ever really done is entertain people, and I just wish that era of music was still around. There's plenty to hate about disco but some of the most powerful and seductive voices and beats came from those years.

[EricMontreal22]

She was also on the American Idol finale two years back (and I admit didn't look her best--but she sounded good lol.

I think you're right, and I think one reason Donna got picked on was because she became so religious so quickly which is something of a warning sign to many gays (myself included)-- But I agree completely with everything you say. That's pretty shocking coming from a transvestite comedienne--I have seen some of the infamous Eddie Murphy gay/AIDS humour from that time which is just kinda... Wow. I mean you still see homophobic stand up comedy a lot (even from some late night hosts, ones I hate like Leno, or ones I like like Jimmy Fallon they can't resist the random prison rape joke or "you're gay" punchline), but to make the jokes abotu a disease people were dieing from. It's just kinda, wow.

And yeah, the thing about Donna is this isn't something that she had a history of--you didn't randomly hear about her making random anti gay remarks, her gay friends repeatedly said she wasn't homophobic and didn't treat them differently, etc. I think in some ways she was made a sort of target.

(The death of the disco era--in the US--it never died in Europe thank God--with the whole disco sucks campaign which EVEN now, though it's starting to change, has tainted dance music's image in the US, is fascinating to me. There's been several articles pointing out that in many ways the disco sucks demolition was a raist and homophobic act. Even to this day I know people, even gay friends who see all dance music as an inferior, "sissy" form of music next to their more "authentic" R&B and hip hop, not to mention rock. )

[SFK]

LOL, yeah, totally. I tried to pause and count, it's about 70 fox tails.

[DRW50]

I remember Nile Rodgers of Chic saying, back when VH1 used to have something to say about music, that disco was killed because those in power were afraid of black people running the show and all those black artists becoming big stars. Given how white the early 80s were, aside from Michael Jackson and a few others, I wonder if he had a point. Looking back it's actually kind of surprising to see so many unique types of artists getting exposure the way they did, even if they were often controlled by white executives, it's still such a marked departure from what happened with other genres, in that it wasn't a shell game where a new form of music had to be co-opted by white, mainstream, straight.

What I love with disco music is that unlike a lot of rock or hip hop it isn't about denigrating or looking down on those who are seen as inferior. Unfortunately that's what the industry often markets, because they know there is a public ready and willing to eat this up. Over and over people tend to look for scapegoats and then hope that if those voices are silenced then everything will be wonderful again, and they can go back to the old days when, as that awful Frankie Avalon home shopping song put it, "Desi loved Lucy and my neighbors all knew me."

[SFK]

I think it's also worth pointing out that the majority of the black divas came out of the church, and sadly, the black community, let alone the black church community, is notoriously homophobic. Speaking in generalities here. Donna was raised black and Baptist before she "found her way back to the Lord" so it's very possible that anything she may have said had roots that ran deeper than the '80s. A lot of these women have embraced their gay fans, and I think it's genuine, not just about knowing who butters their bread. Patti LaBelle probably being the most shining example, she always works some lines about gay acceptance into her concerts. But this is a big deal, bigger of a deal than some people may realize. These aren't always popular opinions within their own communities and I'm sure there are plenty of people who roll their eyes when Patti says such things and she'd probably meet cold silence if she tried to spread that love in many pulpits (despite the fact that there are so many gay people in the black church it's not even funny). But this is changing, and you have people like black lesbian singer and pastor Yvette Flunder in San Francisco, she was close with Sylvester and he was a member of her church.

[EricMontreal22]

Completely agreed, though I'd add gays and hispanics to Rodgers' quote about blacks. To be fair, some of it was just oversaturation--suddenly in 1979 disco really blew up into the mainstream--that's when you got "hits" like Disco Duck, and every artist cranked out a disco tune (some halfway decent) and mainstream radio finally fully embraced--ie overexposed--the genre, sicos started popping up in strip malls, etc, etc. So the time was ripe for those who were, honestly, scared of the genre and its success to stage a backlash. But the venom it was done with is surreal to me. And the belief that disco was all manufactured and "inauthentic" when punk, etc, was all "authentic" is, we now know, utter crap--much of that was arguably even more a corporate creation than the best disco.

There's also of course some misogyny there--while nearly all the disco producers were male, it was a genre that depended and celebrated women (and the power women could have) in a way that very little rock, punk, etc, at the time did. It's funny though, now suddenly many in the music bizz look back on the best disco records (and much of the best stuff of course never got on the radio or played at wedding receptions) and realize just how much musicianship and songcraft went into those pieces--they've held up, something no one at the time (even the peple making the music) ever expected, and often hold up much more impressively than the rock, the punk, etc, of the time.

Sorry for going so off topic

[alphanguy74]

I got some DIRT on that coat! At the taping of that special, Mary Wilson walked into the theatre in the EXACT SAME COAT, only hers was not full length. But the taping had not started, and everyone oohed and ahhed and applauded when she walked in. So wehn diana made her big entrance, everyone in the audience had already seen the coat on Mary! LOL Diana was so pissed (as if Mary knew what she was going to wear!) that Mary wore that coat, that she had her edited out of the special completely. Ironically, Eric... I saw Diana in 1991, and she was IMPECCABLE. right on the mark, sounding great... but in the last 10 years, she's gone straight to hell, while Mary can always be depended upon to give a good show. She sounds different than she did in the 70's, but most think she sounds better.

[SFK]

I was so shocked when I was reading about my old neighborhood in Manhattan and discovered that the church across the street had once been a disco. I never got the disco hate thing, it always looked like people were having so much fun and the beat appealed to black, white, gay, straight, and everything in between. And those crazy spaceship blasting off sound effects that must have heighteneed the affect of whatever drug you were on. That time period really fascinates me, scares me even. The rampant drug use and the rise of AIDS, I've worked with people in NY who lived through it and it's so sad when they talk about their artistic generation being decimated.

We have no less than five threads goin' here.

[EricMontreal22]

VERY VERY true--in fact nearly ALL of the Black disco vocalists came from an American religious background (it's funny that so many of them were discovered in Germany--at the time there was just more work for, particularly, black female singers there--Donna of course had run away from home to be in first a German tour of Hair, then Godspell and later Show Boat). I always roll my eyes when Donna says she remembers being in Church and hearing God tell her she could sing, and then that voice came out--but Donna's always been a bit goofy--the fact she goes to a church that does embrace gay members and clergy as much as I personally am skepticle about all organized religion, is enough for me.

For Donna too, during her disco years she lived a particularly hedonistic, "free" life, particularly with her first husband, Peter (who I think turned out to be controlling--Mimi her first daughter is from him--Brooklyn Sudano, who is tunning and has recently had some success singing and acting on tv is of course from her second and current husband, Bruce Sudano who was from the disco group Brooklyn Dreams and she met when they started songwriting together). So I think she had a very "anything goes" attitude about gays, and everything back then, and then going back to the church maybe she started having second thoughts about that. At any rate...

But yeah--the New Yorker recently had a fascinating article about a gay gospel singer (male) who was also a church minister, I believe, and the difficulties he had coming out, etc, but also the fact about how many closeted gay men in the black community particularly are in the church, etc, etc.

[DRW50]

It's tough to think about, how much the 80s, especially the early 80s, changed the world, and how that never gets as much attention as, say, 1968. In a lot of ways I feel like we have never left the 80s or they've never left us. That uncertainty, people wanting to escape yet not knowing where to go, the clothes, adjusting to a confusing world, the uneasy mix of segregation and inclusion, the schizo music and TV choices, and everyone being so far apart but big moments bringing them together. In the 90s there was a conscious effort to treat the 80s as a freakish decade, oh look at how everyone was so self-absorbed and stupid and we're much more intelligent and serious now, but actually I kind of think the 90s turned out to be more of an aberration.