Grammy Museum to unveil new exhibition "Donna Summer: Four Seasons of Love"

Fans of classic 70s and 80s pop/rock/dance music - mark your calendars!

On July 2, 2014, The GRAMMY Museum will unveil its latest temporary exhibition Donna Summer: Four Seasons of Love.

Located on the Museum’s fourth floor, the exhibition will offer visitors a behind-the-scenes look at the iconic career of 5-time Grammy Award-winner Donna Summer. This will be the first exhibition highlighting the career of the legendary “Queen of Disco.”

“Donna Summer galvanized a diverse group of music fans and she was able to give credibility to a genre of music that had many skeptics,” said GRAMMY Museum executive director Bob Santelli. “We are honored to tell her story and help demonstrate why Donna Summer is not only the undisputed ‘Queen of Disco,’” but also one of the most successful female artists of all time.”

On display through Spring 2015, the exhibit, (produced by client relations rep Brian Edwards and Summer’s son-in-law Rick Dohler) will feature gowns, costumes, set design sketches, handwritten lyrics and notes, rare and never-before-seen photos, hand-painted pieces from Summer's Fine Arts Collection and much more from the Donna Summer estate.

With a career that spanned decades and musical genres, Donna Summer holds the record for most consecutive double albums to hit #1 on the Billboard charts (3) and first female to have four #1 singles in a 12 month period; three as a solo artist and one as a duo with Barbra Streisand.

Donna Summer was the first artist to win the Grammy Award for Best Rock Vocal Performance, Female (1979, "Hot Stuff") as well as the first-ever recipient of the Grammy Award for Best Dance Recording (1997, "Carry On").

In 2004, she became one of the first inductees, as both an Artist Inductee and a Record Inductee into the Dance Music Hall of Fame in New York City.

Most recently, Summer was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame on April 18, 2013, less than a year after her death on May 17, 2012.

The GRAMMY Museum features 30,000 square feet of interactive and multimedia exhibits located within L.A. LIVE, the downtown Los Angeles sports, entertainment and residential district.

(via press release)

Let's hear it for the amazing Barbara Eden

The ageless Barbara Eden headlined Europe's largest AIDS fundraiser yesterday, appearing in her Jeannie costume and looking as fab as ever.

The event, Life Ball, is organized by the nonprofit organization AIDS LIFE, which was founded in 1992.

AIDS LIFE supports aid organizations devoted to helping people who are HIV-positive or have AIDS. The team entrusted with the allocation of funds thoroughly examines each petition. Moreover, it is an explicit goal of AIDS LIFE to raise public awareness.

Take a look at what 78 can look like, kids. Bravo Barbara!

(Via Boy Culture)

The fabulous Nichelle Nichols from "Star Trek"

My Facebook friend Aaron Baldwin shares some facts about the fabulous Lt. Uhura from the original Star Trek:

“Uhura” comes from the Swahili word UHURU meaning “freedom”. Uhura was pretty much the first ever black main character on American television who was not either a maid or a domestic servant.

In 1966, TV network NBC refused to let Nichelle Nichols be a regular, claiming Deep South affiliates would be angered, so Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry hired her as a “day worker,” but still included her in almost every episode. She actually made more money than any of the other actors through this workaround, and it was kept secret from the other actors, but it was still a humiliating second-class status. The network people made life hard for Nichols, constantly trying to pare down her screen time, purposefully dropping racist comments in her presence and even withholding her fan mail from her.

This deplorable state of affairs led Nichols to make the decision to quit after the 1st season, but then she happened to meet with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. who pleaded with her to stick with the show because as a black woman she was portraying the first non-stereotypical role on television.

Star Trek is still winning in the public arena with the huge success of it's latest movie sequel "Star Trek Into Darkness."