Rolling Stone VS. Donna Summer: A Critical Reappraisal

[markydefad]

OK, continuing the Donna Summer reviews we finally come to one written by the editor of early editions of The Rolling Stone Record Guides, Mr. Dave Marsh, himself. Now we see his earlier bias exposed. He wants Donna to be a rocker!!! And he finally gets his wish.




Rolling Stone Review Of The Wanderer (3/19/81):

The Wanderer is Donna Summer's most consistent album, and that alone would make it her best. But this disc does something more for Summer. By placing her firmly within a rock & roll context in which she thrives, The Wanderer clearly proves that she's an artist as well as a star. The result is music that exudes both strength and delight.

It's almost redundant to say that this is Summer's finest LP. Her career is a story in which each chapter tops the last, from her escape from the seeming dead end of the novelty hit, "Love to Love You Baby," to the breakthrough of Bad Girls. The Wanderer is less a breakthrough, however, than a consolidation of all the good points of Summer's recent records. It picks up the loose threads on albums like I Remember Yesterday, Once upon a Time and Bad Girls and weaves them into a personal sound and statement.

It shouldn't be too surprising that Donna Summer's most mature sound is based on rock & roll. While she's certainly been shaped by black culture, Summer has never been especially comfortable with the gospel phrasing of such soul singers as Mavis Staples and Aretha Franklin. Though her vocal touch is lighter, the relentless groove of her music is harder. In her best songs, she echoes Carla Thomas' "Gee Whiz" and Darlene Love's "Today I Met the Boy I'm Gonna Marry" far more than Aretha Franklin's "I Never Loved a Man (the Way I Loved You)." These traits were revealed as early as I Remember Yesterday (brimming with girl-group homage), and they explode in The Wanderer's "Who Do You Think You're Foolin'," in which Summer attains the pinnacle of hard-boiled romanticism that Darlene Love expressed in some of Phil Spector's finest productions.

But that, too, is a misleading analogy, since it suggests that Summer is a producer's protégé. She isn't–and not only because she's always had a hand in writing her best numbers. More important than Donna Summer's solo writing is her collaborative work, as a performer and writer, with the studio team of producers Giorgio Moroder and Pete Bellotte and the very underrated engineer-arranger-keyboardist Harold Faltermeyer. Together, this quartet functions as a rock band in much the same way that Steely Dan's Walter Becker, Donald Fagen and Gary Katz do. Whether or not they ever appear onstage as a unit is irrelevant. What's really crucial are the slashing, Who-style power chords of, say, "Cold Love," which Summer punches across like the ultimate Anglo-rock singer, and the absolute seamlessness of The Wanderer's material. (Though she rarely writes as explicitly about infidelity and physical love as Bellotte does, it would otherwise be almost impossible to guess which of these compositions was written by whom.)

On The Wanderer, Summer, Moroder, Bellotte and Faltermeyer mesh more smoothly than ever, revealing (among other things) how shamelessly padded their early work was. But the LP also shows they've reached a peak where the pieces fall into place with a certain inevitability. This is a position of rare strength, and it's been achieved because, while collaboration remains the essence, Donna Summer is the controlling center, the single indispensable element. Teamwork gives The Wanderer its remarkable consistency, but it's Summer who pulls everything together with such intense purposefulness that the album is finally a complete and convincing statement of innocence, faith, joy, terror and the ability to deal with life head-on.

"The Wanderer" itself is the summation of these themes: musically and lyrically, it sets up what is to follow. Inevitably, the tune emerges as a declaration of independence–not only independence from the business entanglements of past years but from creative pigeonholing and whatever fears the artist may have had. In track after track, Summer beats back the night and blasts through dread into the finer emotions. The portraits of street life in "Running for Cover" and the opening verse of "Nightlife," the hard-knocks romances of "Breakdown" and "Cold Love," the commentaries on stardom in "Who Do You Think You're Foolin'" and "Stop Me" are all of a piece.

Yet Donna Summer's journey from innocence to experience is built on such firm foundations that it's utterly without bitterness. Even in The Wanderer's most awesome and shattering love song, the brittle and brilliant "Cold Love," she's triumphant: "Hope in the dark, love in the light/I'll keep on looking for someone who's right." In the end, this triumph is so total that the closing number, "I Believe in Jesus" (a statement of belief so naive it ought to seem puerile), sounds completely natural and fitting.

"I Believe in Jesus" is the first convincing gospel-based vocal performance of Summer's career. Based on the militant fundamentalist hymn "Onward Christian Soldiers" and the nursery rhyme "Mary Had a Little Lamb," the composition escapes being cloying only by the narrowest of margins–a chorus so perfectly sung that to deny it is practically inconceivable: "I believe in Jesus you know I know him oh so well/And I'm going to heaven by and by 'cause I already been through hell."
These words evoke images of those satin jackets that soldiers used to bring back from Vietnam–jackets that displayed a map of the country with large stars locating Khe Sanh or Da Nang and the same flat statements about having witnessed hell on earth. In its way, I think, The Wanderer is a road map of Donna Summer's soul. And while nothing on it matches the hellishness of actual combat, the analogy is less a conceit than a metaphor that the rest of this resounding record gives her the absolute right to use. (RS 339)

DAVE MARSH

[EricHG23]

OMG.....I totally forgot that I had written that! Thanks Eric for bringing back a memory.

My views haven't changed regarding what I said, and while reading the reviews of Donna's albums from Four Seasons Of Love to Bad Girls, yes, the pretensiousness of the rock critic you can cut with the dullest knife abounds. Naturally, these reviews are not for the common man who appreciates music by the way it sounds, perhaps with the lyrics but more so with the former.

This reminds me of a RS critic who said (paraphrasing here), when reviewing Marvin Gaye's I Want You album, that Gaye must have been recording the album a few doors down from Donna Summer (mind you, this was most likely written in 1976).

Shame on the critic who said that side three of Bad Girls was "shlock"; you said you wanted Donna to be versatile, well there it is!

OK I agree with all this (even many of the Disco/Donna fans seem to have not liked side 3 at the time while I think all the songs on it are wonderful--oh well). It's interesting that the critic of Live and More calls MacArthur Park Suite "ghastly" even though he seemd to like Last Dance and Once Upon a Time. Is it a biase against the very idea of disco-fying the song?

I think it is true that even int he best reviews there seems to be a desire for DOnna to break the disco mode so they can call her legit (The Wanderer I believe was chosen as the number 2 best record of 1980 by Rollign Stone--although I have to say, disco or rock, I do think it's a wonderful album).

But Salsoul I still say it's unfair to judge all rock music and rock music fans by pretentious ROCK CRITICS--who are largely a different kettle of fish, altogether.

[markydefad]

Bringing this back for remicks...regarding Stephen Holden and Donna Summer--see page 3.

[philphila]

Since HRH (as Jeff refers to her) Donna made her debut on this week's Disco Compilation Consensus chart for 10/4/75 and since I recently purchased the new Rolling Stone Album Guide and read HRH's new critical reavaluation, I thought I'd share with y'all.

I have 3 volumes of Rolling Stone Album (the first was "Record") Guides from 1979, 1992 and the new one from 2004.

I'm gonna type the RS critical evaluations of Miss Summer from those three volumes and then show her discography ratings as they have changed over the years.

Needless to say, Donna's critical stock has risen considerably since the first collection was published in 1979.

1979:

"Produced by Pete Bellotte in Munich, Donna Summer's first album consists of the full sixteen-minute discoid moans and sighs of her hit title song and a few limp soul numbers. Interestingly, only "Love To Love You Baby" is actually disco, serving as a novelty dance number. But its too slow for dancing and too long for the recorded multiple orgasms not to become self-parodying.

A Love Trilogy formularizes Summer's silky pliancy into a "mood" album, but its feeble pumping is rather boring beside Four Seasons Of Love, which is more spirited because Bellotte and his Munich Machine have finally worked out their oily European variant of the disco genre.

I Remember Yesterday proves a complete surprise. Here, Summer presents herself as a pleasantly competent soul singer; the randy Siamese posing of her earlier records disappears before her affectionate replays of Ronettes, Supremes and ballad styles, concluding with a Kraftwerk-derived dance tune, "I Feel Love." Once Upon a Time presents her as Cinderella, a ridulously gauzy move that almost works. The live album, despite containing a major hit in "MacArthur Park" (no less), is dismal. (BT= ??)

1992:

"Love To Love You Baby" sounds like a pure novelty record at first: a sultry, disembodied woman's voice shudders and sighs in the throes of passion, while a fluid dance groove provides water-bed support. With its seamless orchestration and brazen sensuality, however, this 1975 Top Ten hit heralded the dawn of disco. And from such humble beginnings sprang Donna Summer, who went on to rule this oft-maligned musical province. A Boston-born singer, who'd performed in European productions of Hair and Godspell, Summer met up with producer Giorgio Morodor in Germany. Moroder and songwriting partner Pete Bellotte crafted a sleek, propulsive orchestrated backdrop-- Eurodisco-- for Summer's heart-piercing (and occasionally ear-piercing) vocal workouts. The full-lengthy album version of "Love to Love You Baby," more than fifteen minutes of it, is a hugely influential piece of work. Moroder incorporates the mix-moves of a club DJ into a record; over a stalwart bass line, Summer's moans float endlessly around symphonic variations and a startling , Kraftwerk-style electronic intrusion.

A series of failed quasi-autobiographical concept albums followed--Eurodisco is big on CONCEPTS-- :P
A Love Trilogy, Four Seasons of Love & I Remember Yesterday. That last album spawned a masterfully synthesized Top Ten hit, "I Feel Love," in 1977. Once Upon a Time is a slightly more successful opus, while Summer's studio-bound sound falls predictably flat on Live and More. And then Donna Summer came into her own. On Bad Girls, the addition of soaring lead guitar lines and tighter, earthier songwriting took everybody--especially dance fans--by surprise. "Bad Girls" and "Hot Stuff" took this disco-rock fusion to the top of the pop charts, while slow-dancers like "Dim All the Lights" tapped into Summer's sweet side. Her On the Radio--Greatest Hits Volume I & II belongs on your shelf, right next to Chic's greatest hits. Even if you don't dance: disco doesn't get any more listenable than this.

The Wanderer continues, and deepens, the rock influence while hueing to a still-danceable Eurobeat. Quincy Jones produced the mega-ambitious Donna Summer for the new Geffen label; to put it mildly, not everything works. There is a lot to choose from: a Bruce Springsteen cover ("Protection"), a bona-fide hit single ("Love Is In Control [Finger on the Trigger]"), a new-age choral nightmare epic ("State of Independence"). She Works Hard For The Money serves up another winning, seemingly effortless vocal hook (the hit title track), amid plently of pleasantly unambitious tunes. Summer hit a rough patch after that; even Stock-Aitken-Waterman's machine -tooled dance fluff (on Another Place and Time) can't seem to get her motivated again. Mistaken Identity is not quite a full-fledged comeback, but it's quite encouraging. In between the misguided opener ("Get Ethnic") and the strained closer ("Let There Be Peace") lies striking evidence of Summer's enduring talent. Something about her voice hits home, whether she's aiming for the heart ("Work That Magic"), the soul ("Say a Little Prayer") or the feet ("Fred Astaire")." (MC =Mark Coleman)

2004:

"When Donna Summer broke her first hit, little more than whispers and moans over a tepid eurodisco beat, her career didn't seem to promise more than another Andrea True. That the best song on her second album was written by Barry Manilow wasn't very promising, either. But two things changed all that: Producer Giorgio Moroder figured out how to deploy the string synth, and Summer took charge of her material.

Turns out that she could sing, belt even. Turns out that she liked rock & roll as much as disco. Turns out that she discovered that niche at the crosshairs of rock, soul, dance, and showbizz pop that Madonna exploited so successfully a decade later.

Summer was born in Boston but went to Europe to sing onstage in productions of Hair and Godspell. There she hooked up with Giorgio Moroder and Pete Bellotte, who were cranking out disco fluff as the Munich Machine, and they had a hit with "Love to Love You Baby." Summer became an instant disco icon, and her early records exploited that. The first two albums were more Moroder/Bellotte than Summer, with side-long disco suites on the first side, and filler on the second. Indeed, one of the things that we notice now is that all of Summer's albums were conceived as LP sides, usually laid out in a continuous mix, which makes for some inconsistencies as the sides were piled up on CDs. Four Seasons of Love, a cycle of disco songs for each season, is one of the few albums that benefit from being heard whole; the transitional I Remember Yesterday, with its strong first side and filler plus hit on the second, is less consistent. But two songs there portended where Summer was going: "Love's Unkind" :D was updated girl-group rock, while "I Feel Love ," her second big hit, was so propulsive that Brian Eno called it "the future of music."

Summer's next album, Once Upon A Time, was an ambitious double-LP retelling of the Cinderella story, a suite of songs connected by a relentless disco beat. It was a lot to swallow at the time, but it contains some of her strongest work, especially Act One with "Fairy Tale High" :D and "Say Something Nice." This was an intensive period for Summer, with four double-LPs in a two-year stretch from 1977 to 1979. Bad Girls was the next new studio set, another big advance in songcraft and a broadening of her music: more rock, more soul, one side of ballads, and hits as compelling as 'Hot Stuff," "Bad Girls," and "Sunset People." The other two doubles were the improbable Live and More and the inevitable On The Radio. The much-panned live album actually sounds remarkably fresh now, the sound clear, the energy palpable. Perhaps the reason for the pans was the side-long "MacArthur Park Suite," moved from the Live and More CD to The Dance Collection, but even though it's built around one of rock's all-time worst songs, the extended music this is some of Moroder's most elegant disco, and there's nothing wrong with two interpolated Summer songs. As for On the Radio, it not only sums up Summer's oeuvre to date, half of it was new to LP, coming from singles and soundtracks.

Summer's discography falls apart after 1980: She divorced, changed labels and producers several times, remarried, proclaimed herself born-again, moved to Nashville. Not much of her post-1980 work is in print. (Hard to say why; maybe God is punishing her for blaspheming her gay fans). :P Still, the Michael Omartian-produced She Works Hard for the Money is one of the best things she's ever done.
Another Place and Time, produced by Bananarama braintrust Stock-Aitken-Waterman, is more rigid rhythmically, but she's more than ever a skilled, powerful singer. This period is chronicled, for better or worse, on the second disc of The Donna Summer Anthology. Since then, we have only the second coming of Love and More-- if tragedy returns as farce, perhaps ambition returns as conceit. Then there are the comps: the first disc of Anthology ends with "Bad Girls," a fine selection from the rising slope of her career. Endless Summer compresses Anthology's two discs down to one, including two new cuts not likely to stand the test to time.

The Millennium Collection shows only that less is less: 11 cuts, 51 minutes, a bare canonical minimum. The Journey is almost a carbon copy, with two (not bad) new songs added, but both comps thin out after the 1980s output. The Millennium Collection is more canonical, using longer mixes to stretch its not quite a dozen songs to nearly an hour. But the most effective use of her long dance mixes is on the extra disc of Bad Girls (Deluxe Edition).TH= Tom Hull)
__________________________________________________ ___

Rolling Stone Ratings Guide:

***** (5) = INDESPENSIBLE (A record that must be included in any comprehensive collection.)

**** (4) = EXCELLENT (A recod of substantial merit, though flawed in some essential way).

*** (3) = GOOD (A record of average worth, but one that might possess considerable appeal for fans of a particular style).

** (2) = Mediocre (Records that are artistically insubstantial, though not truly wretched)

* (1) = POOR (Records in which even the technical competence is at question or which are remarkably ill-conceived).

0 (0) - WORTHLESS (Records that need never (or should never ) have been created: reserved for the most bathetic bathwater).

__________________________________________________ ___

Donna's Discography (as rated by Rolling Stone)

LOVE TO LOVE YOU BABY (1975)
1979 RSRG: *
1983 RSRG: **
1992 RSAG: ***1/2
2004 RSAG: ***

A LOVE TRILOGY (1976)
1979: *
1983: *
1992: **
2004: ***

FOUR SEASONS OF LOVE (1976)
1979: *
1983: *
1992: **
2004:***1/2

I REMEMBER YESTERDAY (1977)
1979: **
1983: ***
1992: ***
2004: NOT LISTED

ONCE UPON A TIME(1977)
1979: **
1983: ***
1992: ***
2004: ***1/2

LIVE AND MORE (1978.)
1979: *
1983: *
1992: **
2004: ***1/2

BAD GIRLS (1979)
1979: N/A
1983: ****
1992: ****
2004: ****

ON THE RADIO (1979)
1979: N/A
1983: ****
1992: *****
2004: ****

THE WANDERER (1980)
1983: *****
1992: ****
2004: NOT LISTED

DONNA SUMMER (1982)
1992: ***
2004: NOT LISTED

SHE WORKS HARD FOR THE MONEY (1983)
1992: ***1/2
2004: ****

CATS WITHOUT CLAWS (1985)
1992: **

THE SUMMER COLLECTION (1985)
1992: ***

ALL SYSTEMS GO (1987)
1992: **

THE DANCE COLLECTION (1987)
1992: ***
2004: ***1/2

ANOTHER PLACE AND TIME (1989)
1992: **1/2
2004: ***

MISTAKEN IDENTITY (1991)
1992: ***

DONNA SUMMER ANTHOLOGY (1993)
2004: ****

ENDLESS SUMMER (1995)
2004: ****

VHI PRESENTS: LIVE AND MORE ENCORE! (1999)
2004: **1/2

BEST OF DONNA SUMMER: THE MILLENNIUM COLLECTION (2003)
2004: ****

BAD GIRLS [DELUXE EDITION] (2003)
2004: *****

THE JOURNEY: THE VERY BEST OF DONNA SUMMER (2003)
2004: ****

__________________________________________________ __

What I found interesting is the critical upgrading of the early LPs from POOR to GOOD/GOOD+ and especially the "Live & More" LP (always bad-mouthed) going from POOR to GOOD+ in the 2004 edition.

I think we see what's stood the test of time.

And your faves? Hmmmm........

Hi. Just thought I would complete the record on this, so to speak...

Rolling Stone also published an updated record guide in 1982. For the most part it carried over writeups and reviews from the 1979 book; however, Donna Summer was among the artists who received a completely new article (this one written by Dave Marsh) and the albums were critically reassessed as well. Here goes...

"Working with producers Pete Bellotte and Giorgio Moroder in Munich and L.A., Donna Summer perfected a version of disco that was the height of the genre's aspirations to artistry. In five years, Summer managed to move from the ultimate sex queen - 'Love to Love You Baby,' her first hit, was nothing less than sixteen minutes of simulated orgasm, a genius novelty - to committed, introspective, even religious artist.

"She didn't really hit her stride on LP until the initial concept sets, 'I Remember Yesterday' and 'Once Upon A Time.' Both of those expanded on her basic danceable premise not only with hints of a story line - nostalgia for her pop past on the former, a kind of Cinderella fairy tale on the latter - but with echoes of Motown and rock & roll. The live album is dismal - Summer is a perfect studio artist in that she has little or no idea of what to do when confronted with situations calling for spontaneous interaction with a crowd. This stiffness results in her least listenable disc.

"'Bad Girls,' however, presented Summer's boldest declaration of independence from disco stereotyping. 'Hot Stuff' and the title track both moved with typical late-Seventies bounce and also incorporated powerful, surging Rolling Stones-style guitar chords. This trend was extended - not to say perfected - on 'The Wanderer,' in which Summer's songwriting also took a turn toward the personal, expressing not only her keen feeling for urban paranoia but also her commitment to Christianity. On this album, Summer, Bellotte and Moroder actually function as a sort of high-tech rock band; with the possible exception of Michael Jackson's 'Off The Wall,' no one has made a contemporary pop dance record with so much stylistic depth, grace and power.

"'On The Radio' is a marvelous collection of Summer's hits through 'Bad Girls' and 'Hot Stuff,' including 'No More Tears (Enough Is Enough),' her duet with Barbra Streisand. Together with 'Bad Girls' and 'The Wanderer,' it establishes Summer's credentials as one of the most important new artists of the Seventies."

Revised album ratings shown above.

[nycsam]

Back in 2008, Stephen Freeman said:

As for the "Love To Love You" LP... Remember that the only complete version of the b-side, can be found on the German/Atlantic Records pressing.

What is the complete version? What's missing on the one I bought in Pennsylvania that included Full of Emptiness, Need-A-Man Blues, Whispering Waves, Pandora's Box and Full of Emptiness Reprise? I can't stand that I may be missing something of Donna's in my collection!

The Love to Love You album really impressed my young, impressionable mind. I wasn't old enough to get into discos yet, but man, when I heard the title track on American Bandstand it did not prepare me for the 16-minute version on the album! Donna's voice was lush and seemed to float above the exotic and erotic music. The symphony Moroder wrote was the perfect mood setter and I could almost never play it with the lights on - it just seemed to demand candles. Then I flipped the album over and heard that amazing voice transition from sex kitten to rock goddess (Pandora's Box). I loved the lyrics of Whispering Waves ("sifting sand through my hand weighing what he means to me...") and I definitely listened to that ballad more than any of the other songs on the disc, but Pandora's Box simply stunned me. I wasn't prepared for the wild woman presented there but again, I fell in awe of the lyrics ("when you opened up to love me, you opened up Pandora's box"). I loved Donna immediately with this album and my admiration for her grew stronger over the years. I love her rock voice (Hot Stuff, Protection, My Baby Understands) and never more so than in the Masters at Work mix of I Feel Love ("Wandering through my life without you/Never knew the love that you do/Baby you're from up above/When I'm with you, I feel love!") and the electrifying Love is the Healer ("I-I-I-I-I gotta get help!").

And since this post began with a question about what I may be missing in my extensive Summer collection, I'll bring it back full circle and ask about a song that's gone missing for me over the years. When the German import of Donna's Greatest Hits came out there was a song included that I haven't been able to find since. It was called Virgin Mary. Has anyone ever found this on CD?

[SandraDee]

What is the complete version? What's missing on the one I bought in Pennsylvania that included Full of Emptiness, Need-A-Man Blues, Whispering Waves, Pandora's Box and Full of Emptiness Reprise? I can't stand that I may be missing something of Donna's in my collection!


And since this post began with a question about what I may be missing in my extensive Summer collection, I'll bring it back full circle and ask about a song that's gone missing for me over the years. When the German import of Donna's Greatest Hits came out there was a song included that I haven't been able to find since. It was called Virgin Mary. Has anyone ever found this on CD?

The complete version of the LP that you asked about incuded the Virgin Mary track that you asked about.

[nycsam]

The complete version of the LP that you asked about incuded the Virgin Mary track that you asked about.

Thanks! I had no idea that track was on the Love to Love You Baby album! I'll have to search to see if there's a way to get this complete original version.

[markydefad]

Thanks philphila for adding the 1982 RS Record Guide review & LP rankings. Much appreciated.

[The Disco Dentist]

On the subject of Dave Marsh .....
In 1989 he published "The Heart Of Rock And Soul". His favourite 1001 singles, listed in order of preference, with accompanying essays. He hadn't revised his bias much; here are his three Donna Summer placings -


No 531 Bad Girls
476 On The Radio
164 Cold Love
So what's our aging rock critics' thoughts now ??
Over to you Dave :

Scott: It seems like your own feelings about disco at the time were kind of complicated.
Dave: My feelings about everything at ALL times is pretty complicated. [laughs] Here's what happened. I wrote a piece about some of the r&b vocal groups that had been desperately trying to make disco--Archie Bell & the Drells. And Vince Aletti wrote a brilliant rejoinder to it in the Voice, which totally changed my mind about what was going on. And really--I think I may have called Vince and apologized. [laughs] I remember doing something like that. And then of course the other thing that happened was that horrible pogrom at the Detroit Tigers / Chicago White Sox game with those racist disc jockeys. Then I think the other thing was--it's in The Heart of Rock and Soul--I went to Yankee stadium before opening day, must've been '78 or '79, the year of the Reggie Bar, I think it was. And Reggie Jackson's doing batting practise and he's hitting ball after ball... hang on a second, I gotta get my dog. [Calls dog into the room.] He's hitting ball after ball into the right field stands, and while this is happening the record that's playing at full volume over the Yankee Stadium loudspeakers is "Disco Inferno." Well, you know, I argue with lots of things, but I do not argue with my ears.
And when you hear--disco music is a music that--and house is like that and some of the techno and stuff that's derived from techno--is that you have to hear it in the right context or you can't get it. I remember Arthur Baker being astonished, because I'm not a clubgoer and I like the first house records that he played for me. And I liked them because I understood the ostinato piano figures as being basically a sped-up version of Chicago blues, which they are. But that was a fluke. In general, you're going to have an experience that snaps you out of your context and INto the context of that music. I can hear free jazz very easily--not to say that I understand it or write about it well, but I hear it, take pleasure in it, and have some concept of what's going on because of all those Sun Ra / MC5 shows, it's as simple as that. I have been in that world long enough to know, right? And sometimes that's truer than other times. Early reggae you didn't need that, or at least I didn't, because you could rely on some parts of your r&b thing to get you through. Dancehall, you're gonna have to work harder, it's as simple as that.

Dave Marsh interview, part 2

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