Grasping the wine-filled greenish rood of his weekend arrogance tightly to his fleshy breast he sits down at the kitchen table and begins to (sip) brood over (sip, sip) the fawning demise of disco music (sip, sip, sip), its crazed, contradictory, mutation into (gulp, gulp, gulp) ritualistic new wave formalism (hic). And, of course, Donna Summer:
Drifting through the citified smog of bejeweled, dull-eyed disco-pharaohs, of rhyme mutants crawling with festering rhythm wounds, of zombie-stunned chorus girls doing monotonous barbiturate dervishes to the insistent, mega-industrial thumpings of some cosmically inspired bassist, wanders a dazed gothic-huntress desperately trying to overcome the Romanized decay of a musical beast that she, herself, was partially responsible for creating. The old Frankenstein ploy lingers in the wing.
Donna Summer’s career-exploding orgone-bleats instantly made her the houri of the hour. These sensual puffs ’n’ wheezes also sent her strolling through numberless, crumbling, urban bodegas overflowing with jump-cut epileptic strobe light furies--alien fashions adorning pasty bodies caught up in the throes of precision acrobatics thinly disguised as simple boogie-funk-get downs and countless other scenarios of purling decadence. She quickly became a sensual mummer acting out an apocalyptic juba of babylonian wickedness, designed specifically to awaken in the masses the great lords of fuck.
Unlike the current chilly suburbanity of Debbie Harry, her acknowledged successor as the harem-child of the disco-booboisie (“Heart of Glass” was after all, responsible for almost singlehandedly revitalizing the sagging musical ghost, giving it a sneeringly formidable respectability while simultaneously stroking a gleaming sonic-shiv, spang, into it’s quivering pizzle--creating in the process the detonatable pop mess we now so bullishly hail as “New Wave”), Summer’s ebony reign was earth-cool--as opposed to Debbie’s city-cool--resplendent with not only her nature-inspired beauty and jungle-frenzied voice, but, also, despite all of the accompanying sensual flummery, a remarkably brittle innocence.
That carefully masked innocence, when allowed to occasionally breathe, made Donna Summer a frail, sexual apparition haunting to behold. An apparition easily uglified by the routinized minions of the ever-hysteroidal simoleon cabals and thusly, an apparition quickly dumped on by the self-righteousness of those silver-tongued guardians of musical morality (aka, critics). Who could take serious the Queen of the disco-booboisie, when by self-definition, the disco-booboisie paid nightly homage to such insidious things as chain-gang aesthetics, tribalistic deodorizations of individual spirit, insentient passion, and the inalienable ability of “everyone” to dance through the night practicing the unholy rites of the big pick-up and the forbidden nectars of the BIG SCORE!!!???
As disco lapsed into a fleering gangs of lemurs wafting through the dawn air, confused by their own potential annihilation, talents like Donna Summer were allowed, by the good-graces of the $-cabals, to seek out and explore new avenues of musical (aka...$) expression. Wuzza, wuzza. Enter The Wanderer, her first leap into the churning pit of swishing rock vertigo. While no blazing rockathon, this album does show off a winning, amp-charged voice and an unmistakable feeling for the form that’ll no doubt gain it the good blessings of the Devi guardians of rock’s precious spirit.
Where else but within the confines of rock’n’roll could such a much maligned innocence as Donna Summer’s be allowed to settle in and, hopefully, mature. Rock’n’roll with all its hip-cocked attitudes is a perfect, and fertile, breeding culture for her kind of unmistakable talent. As soon as she discovers all the beauty and finitude of its contradictory nature, her innocence finely sculpted into a roaring mass of rhythm, raunch ranching and general all around disrespect for the gods of order, she just might cause a ripple or two in the collective rock consciousness. From the 50s tinged echo-noise of the title track, through the ghostly “Grand Illusion,” with its lurking electronic motes and alien handclaps, and on to the understated regality of “I Believe In Jesus,” Donna Summer’s first attempt at crossing over into the suburbs of the rockopolis is something of a minor joy...believe me...it’s true...
He smiled messily (sip), stumbled into the cellar (sip, gulp, hic), and fell to his knees in semi-slumber next to the quietly blazing furnace, feeling overpowering contentment with the only honest warmth he’d felt in 33 years. As he looked through half-open eyes, he thought to himself, in a pulsing surreal mind-cramp, “to hell with new wave ritualistic formalism, anyhow!” Turning his head to one side he noticed the washing machine doing a shimmy shammy across the floor, lurching its way towards his drunken genuflection...in a sad, low, nicely frightened voice, he murmured “the Wisk!”, “Oh, the Wisk!”
Get your own Free Home Page