I am devastated to learn of the passing of the brilliant Donna Summer, whose music was such an integral part to my maturation. "Love To Love You" was mindblowing, with its driving synth and daring vocals. I thought Donna was gorgeous. When her second album, A Love Trilogy, was quickly released in March 1976, just eight months after Love To Love You, I went to DiscoMat on Lexington to buy the album. Reminiscing about dancing to Donna's music, I listened to her 70s output on YouTube one day back in 2008, and it reminded me how much I loved these tracks. I even incorporated Donna into the current novel I am writing, in which the main character is obsessed with her (Lady Lady or Personal Summer).
In tribute to Donna, here is what I wrote back in 2008:
Writing while jamming to music on YouTube. Why does “Try Me (I Know We Can Make It)” by Donna Summer give me such a delicious thrill? Because it’s 1976, lost in time.
Donna’s voice is operatically, candy-coatedly sweet. There’s the precision of the violins making their commentary over the four-on-the-floor beat, made more emphatic with congas, drums, and rhythm guitar in unison, on the One. Behind it: an ethereal progression of harpsichord notes, questioning, as though this is Marie Antoinette’s disco fever, as though Mozart himself condones this conga-driven, guitar-scratching morsel of dancefloor heaven. Try me, try me, try me, try me just one time, try me, try me, try me, try me any time, try me for love, baby don’t you think you should? Don’t you? The beat clops on, simple, bright and sharp as new pennies landing in a marble fountain. Donna in a wind tunnel, her voice a piccolo of melody rising from a golden throat, her breath and her hair floating, tossing, as the background vocalists sigh their harmonies.
And the breakdown, it’s heartbeat compelling, it’s a Gotta, you are gonna move your damn feet! The bass is metronomic in just two keys, alternating, I tell you the congas are delicious, I just wrote a whole story about the compelling propulsion of congas, try me, ohhhh, try me…. And now it’s a decision, a mandate: I know, I know, I know, I know, I know … twirling around in a silver feathered dream, and now the oh-so-European synth is tinkling down like a stream over the running bass and the shiver of high hat accent, … I know --we can make it! Now comes the part that is just the running bass with a tickle of guitar, the part that made me pick up my feet, hop a little in the Hustle, back and forth, We can make it if we try, we can make it touch the sky. Oh the happiness, the optimism, yes we can, I know we can can, there’s no way not to keep the beat, you bump up against the bass drum’s wall of massive power, pow, um, pow, um, every two steps, and she says, I wanna hold on tight with all my might, pray you’ll never stop, it’s a cupid prayer sent to the sky, to the glory of the night, and this is a disco siren song of symphonic, epic proportions, we’re now in the third movement.
We can make it if we try, we can make it, dead or alive, because even if we pass from here, we’re going on, our feet keep us moving to a place beyond this pale reality, where nothing fails us. And now we’re onto the next phase, baby, the place where we began, and the cymbals crash, we pause for breath, there’s a tense warning crescendo of strings, and we tumble back to Try me I know we can make it, I know we can try, and the black girls go, if we try try try. Damn, this shit gives me goosebumps.
Yet it’s so silly, so simple, so creaky with age, this track. But it wings me back to 16, when all is still new and I am fleet of foot, dancing in perfect time with a guy, a stranger who holds my hand who matches me step for step, we’re a tag team of two, never met but we know exactly what to do, and there is nothing but wind in front of us as we concoct this instant magic across a starlit floor. We’re sliding into the end zone, a beautiful high-heeled and sequined denouement, and now the drum kit is shivering, the drummer’s got both feet working, the cymbals are chattering with joy, and Donna is heaving, moans of ecstasy fading, afterglow sweet as honey sliding slowly down like the sweet icing in MacArthur Park, and I am sticky, limp with gratitude.
Thank you, Donna. Thank you.
