Woke up to this shock news this morning.What the hell's going on with all these great talents being taken away from us?
Rage have gotta roll out the red carpet for her.Disco would be a very different story without Donna Summer.

Well, they're playing 3 clips of hers on Saturday morning... of course, the same 3 they've played over recent years: 'She Works Hard For the Money', 'This Time I Know It's For Real', and 'State of Independence'. Then the 90's remix of 'I Feel Love' is airing on Saturday night, coincidentally chosen by the guest programmers. Surely they must have some other videos of hers lurking somewhere in the vaults?

I am truly saddened by the passing of Donna Summer.

Donna may be gone but she has left such an IMMACULATE body of work that artists these days could only DREAM of leaving!

Donna Summer covered so many genres and made THE most amazing Electronic Disco EPIC 'I Feel Love' which will ALWAYS remain a CLASSIC!

I wish rage would have played one of my BIG fav's 'Dinner With Gershwin'.

And from Love's About To Change, Hot Stuff, Love To Love You Baby to Mc Arthur Park, On The Radio and BEYOND, GENIUS!

Isn't it funny that the guy from Beastie Boys gets a whole night dedicated to him yet Donna gets 3 videos??? rage are completely CLUELESS!!

R.I.P DIVA xoxo

Weird, I was only watching 'State of Independence' on YouTube a couple of weeks ago. The first time I have ever watched one of her vids on YouTube. I have missed the vid a couple of times on rage, so will get it Sat. morning. They should play 'Finger On The Trigger' from the August '82 Countdown episode! Yes, she definitely was the Queen of Disco. This morning on my fav. am radio station, they did a tribute to her and played 'On The Radio'. R.I.P.

Yes, she definitely was the Queen of Disco.

For sure.
I remember when Love to Love You Baby first came out - raunchy or what!!
My very favourite is Donna's epic, I Feel Love.
Absolutely hypnotic.

Gone far too soon....

Not to mention ROMEO for Flashdance which is SO hot!!!

Ms. Summer was fantastic and her music will live on forever - unlike most of today's tripe.

Yes, Romeo is a favourite of mine as well plus 'Love is in Control (Finger on the Trigger) - great dance number that one.

Very Sad news. It's a disgrace that Rage are only playing a few of her clips. She had so many great songs 'Enough Is Enough', 'Down Deep Inside' ( theme from the movie 'The Deep),'I Fell Love'.'Love To Love You','Romeo', 'She Works Hard For The Money','The Wanderer','Hot Stuff','Bad Girls'....the list goes on.

I agree, I was just saying this afternooon that it's funny how a guy from Beastie Boys dies and some idiot at rage does a whole night dedicated to the Beastie Boys and Donna get 3 MEASLY videos!!!!!

rage should be utterly embarrassed by this, Donna IS a legend and deserves MUCH MUCH MUCH more!

Her most underrated GEM ever for me is 1987's Dinner With Gershwin. I recorded the video from MTV and also the Solid Gold performance and watched and listened to it religiously.DOnna's voice is SO unique and no one EVER sounded like her, this is truly devastating :-(

I have a strong feeling that rage will do a decent special next week. They probably could only play what they currently had in their archive. Give them a week to get their hands on most of her other work/videos and they will do something good. Wasn't it the same with the Whitney Houston special a week or so after her death (because she died on the weekend, it gave rage a good 5 days to put something together). For a while over the years, we thought they only had a few Whitney vids, but they did a great discography over the years a week later. Stay postive folks!

Shocked to read that she attributes her lung cancer to the 9/11 attacks. She was in the city at the time and close to ground zero.

It would be nice to have a full Donna Summer special but I have a feeling what we got is probably it for a couple of reasons.

Firstly there were very few videos made for Donna's songs, particularly at her peak in the 70's. This was fairly common for many disco tunes at the time. There were no official clips that I can recall having ever seen for Love To Love You, I Feel Love and Hot Stuff. Most of the footage for Donna's material comes from live performances either from concerts or TV appearances.

Watching the Channel 10, 7, 9 and 2 news reports on Friday seems to indicate that none of the stations seem to have much as they all virtually played the same items, a number of which look to have come from YouTube rips and were very low quality.

Secondly I don't think that the programmers of Rage would hold her in the same esteem as Whitney Houston or Beastie Boys which is unfortunate. Although I am not a Beastie Boys fan I thought the tribute Rage did for Yauch was excellent and Whitney's wasn't bad either. Probably a generational thing as Donna had not really been in the spotlight for well over 20 years.

Hopefully Rage will make an effort for next Retro season which gives them some time. After all they seemed to bypass the 70's this year.

Prior to YouTube, when I used to make an effort collecting clips, I spent a fair amount of time trying to find her material as I was a fan of her disco anthems (I even have a copy somewhere of the Four 'n' Twenty Pie TV advert from 1979 which featured Hot Stuff - it used to get shown during the footy replays a lot and was a favourite ad of mine for years). I have 2 of her videos - Greatest Hits and Live so there is material out there just depends whether Rage can show it as it is concert footage. Maybe they can find a way to play her Hot Summer Night 1983 concert which featured classics such as Romeo as well.

I hope Rage does have a decent special on Donna Summer and not with only 3 clips on Saturday morning and 1 on this past Saturday night.

Now with Robin Gibb gone they may consider hosting a Bee Gees special as I know there are quite a few music clips in the ABC archives.

I hope they don't play the 1971 concert from Festival hall, Melbourne again when Maurice died in 2003.

I may pull off some suggestions on the Rage site.

R.I.P. Donna & Robin.

Hi Jason

If you want the nice clean video of Dinner With Gershwin, I can supply that one for you. It also has superb audio

Welcome back Guru! Very true with your thoughts, but let's hope they give us something a bit more substantial than 3 videos. Cheers. 1983 concert would be good!

Lee,

I am DESPERATE for Dinner With Gershwin!!!!!!

Welcome back? Hadn't realised I was away, football season takes me away from music a bit and sport is not the sort of thing I discuss here, along with there not having been much to discuss in music lately - my good friend Ronald is actually pondering whether there is an ulterior reason of dubious nature for not posting, hmmmm.

I have been absorbed in researching other lines of interest - mainly going through my piles of hundreds of old TV recording video tapes to see what is on them and cross referencing/checking against programming listings in TV guides. Sometimes you can unearth little treasures. Just today found one with an advert for 1984 The Beat album and another with YTT (Tina Arena etc) selling electrical appliances while doing singing/dancing routines - cringeworthy and nostalgic at the same time. Also learnt that there were a lot of Faulkland Island documentaries in 1982 and the ad breaks in the 1981 Royal wedding were a lot more interesting than the wedding, and that's saying something as the ads were terrible. Also saw mentioned in a TV guide that Greg Rowe (child actor in Storm Boy and Blue Fin) hosted Countdown on July 24 1977 and Gary Twinn of Supernaut hosted about every 10 weeks or so along with the usuals of Daryl, Shirley, JPY, Mark Holden, Marcia, Marc Hunter etc. Other hosts of lost Countdowns from 1977-78 included Dr Hook, Hot Chocolate, Meatloaf, Supercharge, Shaun Cassidy, Graham Bonnett, Peter Allen, Alice Cooper, Norman Gunston. It's interesting and sad at the same time as you discover information but know the footage is lost (although most of these are mentioned in the 1979 Countdown book).

Anyhow, hopefully Rage do make an effort and uncover more than their 3 usual Donna Summer clips, even if it includes live performances. They should be able to do a great one for Robin Gibb. The news broadcasts on Monday showed a lot of varied early footage of the Bee Gees so it would be great to also see their pre-disco era material.

Whilst not a big fan of the Disco era, I can tell you all that the release of Donnas "I Feel Love" back in 1977 really changed the musical landscape at the time. With that hypnotic computer-generated synthesiser backing (Georgio Moroder) the song was absolutely different to anything else around at the time. The first time a 45 had also been released as an extened version on Cassette of all things (still have that original cassette). An amazing track, but no official video was ever made which rings true for most of Donnas material.

With regards to Robin Gibb - expect Rage to trot out the same old Bee Gees promo clips yet again. Whilst there is amazing Bee Gees archive footage from all hosts of other TV stations & shows around the world, the ABC does not have much (besides that 1971 special and a few promo clips) - so you can guarantee there will be nothing new for this tribute.

So many people from those great eras are sadly passing away now.

Hey Guru, I said 'Welcome Back' because you had not posted for some time and you are a very regular user of this forum. The footy season (NRL)is a distraction for me too, but music will always prevail and so will this forum.

Hi Michael, your welcome back was very warmly received and appreciated. It was just that I was unaware that I hadn't posted for a while as I still drop by a couple of times a week and see what's happening. Time tends to get away from me.

I wonder if one of the reasons (besides wanting her privacy, which is understandable) Donna didn't 'announce' she had lung cancer before her death was the stigma associated with it; that it's only a disease smokers get (and therefore could have been prevented). But I've read that in non-smokers, lung cancer is more common in women. A non-smoking teacher at my high school died of lung cancer after having it on and off for over 20 years, so it can happen.

Donna put out some weird stuff, or rather her record company did. Remember that 12 inch disco single which featured two songs on one side and on the other a groove featuring nothing but a low hum and a label saying "Special one-sided record. Play the other side".

Another thing many might not know is that I Feel Love was actually the B side of the 1977 single. The A side was Can't We Just Sit Down (and Talk It Over). Radio stations by that stage wanted to play disco songs so they flipped over the single and ignored the ballad.

Thanks for that info. Hoin. Stuff I didn't know. Cheers.

I saw at my local sanity music store their is a cd of Donna's titled The Journey The Very Best of . A limited edition is available of the cd.