Life was much simpler back in 1979 when Donna Summer was queen of the pop charts. The music helped define the 1970s, the decade of mistrust, betrayal and failure.
And as much as that decade said "Disco Sucks!" it was the music that moved us. It was the beat that helped us endure and transition to a new decade of living large and enjoying the good times: the Big 80s.
No singer transcended the music of the disco era better than Donna Summer. And if Disco sucked, it was a reflection of our leaders who sucked: Nixon, Ford and Carter.
I was a wide-eyed naive 17-year-old begging, hoping to put high school behind me as fast as possible for college and the beginning of my adult life with endless possibilities.
So what was life like before the Internet, cell phones, apps? Some kids my age were lucky if they had a Walkman, introduced in 1979. It was the age of the VCR and Pontiac Firebird. And it was definitely the age for the music of Donna Summer, Gloria Gaynor, Chic, KC and the Sunshine Band and so many others.
While the Bee Gees brought Disco to the forefront with John Travolta in "Saturday Night Fever," it was Donna Summer who helped usher us into the new decade and handed off to the likes of Michael Jackson, Blondie and Madonna and the curtain call on a decade that began with the betrayal of a crook for a president to a president who was afraid of his own shadow.
The helicopter crash in the desert in a failed rescue of the American hostages signaled the end of Jimmy Carter's presidency. The 1980 election brought us Reagan, a president with real muscle, who made sure those hostages were going to be set free. It was the God-fearing Reagan in Berlin, demanding of Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev: "Tear down this wall!"
The 1970s was a painful decade as we lived through Nixon and Watergate, the fall of Saigon that brought an end to our humiliating defeat in Vietnam, a stumbling transition presidency of Ford and Rockefeller (the first administration not elected by the people), followed by Carter.
Earlier in the decade we had the Olympic massacre of athletes at the 1972 Olympic Games by Muslim terrorists, we had the Arab Oil Embargo and gas rationing, and Detroit's rebates for cars like the AMC Pacer, the Ford Pinto and the Chevy Vega.
The Beatles were done before the decade even started and a plane crash ended the promising rock of Lynyrd Skynyrd. Ironically, my 1980 high school class song was Skynyrd's "Freebird."
Still, we had Donna Summer singing to the beat of "On the Radio," "Bad Girls" and "Hot Stuff."
And it was the same Donna Summer who reminded us in the early part of the 80s Reagan mantra with "She Works Hard for the Money."
Here I am now, a 50-year-old man, who captured some of those endless possibilities as a boy with dreams, saying thank you to the 1970s "Queen of Disco." You helped us endure and close the decade of failure. Donna Summer, dead at the age of 63. We love you and remember you through your music.