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The Pet Shop Boys have released the video for "Winner," the first single from their new album, Elysium, slated for relase September 18. The video appears to be a part-documentary on British Women's Roller Derby league, and prominently features a transgender member.

When I first came out as a college student in the mid-‘90s, the gay dance club in Columbia, Mo., would end the night with Donna Summer’s “Last Dance.” 

And why should it be otherwise?

 “Yes, it’s my last chance, for romance, tonight,” Summer sang, as the queens sang right along with her – and sized each other up one last time, looking for “my Mr. Right,” at least for the night. 

Well, sadly, it’s time to turn up all the lights in clubland: The Queen of Disco and Dance died today in Key West, Fla., of breast and lung cancer, according to the Associated Press.

Summer, born LaDonna Adrian Gaines only 63 years ago, may not have had many hits in the past two decades. But the gospel-reared pop belter’s place as a reigning and enduring diva in clubland – and the gay community in general – was established long, long ago. 

If largely unfounded and certainly outdated claims of anti-gay comments couldn’t dethrone her, fortunately, neither can death.

“So many years ago, on the radio, she crept into your soul, and loved to love you, oh-oh,” Donna Summer sang, subtly referencing a couple of her biggest hits, on “The Queen Is Back.” That appealing 2008 track came from her album Crayons, her first all-new set in 17 years – which was better and fresher than I had expected, at least. And her voice was as supple and glorious as it had ever been.

Just think about all those hits that were the soundtrack to gay nights out: “On The Radio,” “Bad Girls,” “Hot Stuff,” “Love To Love You Baby,” “Heaven Knows,” that wondrous duet with another gay diva Barbra Streisand, “No More Tears (Enough Is Enough)” – and that was just a sampling of her biggest hits from a prolific run in the ‘70s. “She Works Hard For The Money” was one of a few post-disco ‘80s hits, and then every few years from the ‘90s on Summer would score a club hit, from “I Will Go With You (Con Te Partiro)” to “You’re So Beautiful” to “Power of Love.” (What's your favorite Donna Summer hit? Take our poll and tell us what you think?)

Over the past decade everyone from Madonna to Beyonce to Jennifer Lopez has sampled or covered Summer’s hits to fashion hits of their own. And Summer’s most enduring hit, the orgasmic “I Feel Love,” has still not left DJ playlists. DJs value the song, co-produced with Giorgio Moroder, and its many remixed versions, as a secret weapon: It just may be the best, most quintessential dance song ever, one that will rejuvenate any fading dance floor. The song never gets old no matter how many thousands of times you’ve heard it.

Especially over the past decade Summer became an active performer at AIDS-related benefits and gay dance events, and donated to the fight against AIDS. Two years ago, she told me before a concert at Wolf Trap that she was preparing to record both a new dance album and a standards set.

It’s not clear how close to completion she was on either set at the time of her death.

In that same interview, she also said that her hit “Last Dance” was her personal favorite. “That song is tied in with a lot of personal memories. And there's something magical about [it], honest and truly,” she told me. “I used to see Judy Garland, and she would be in her light and in her moment. And there are times in that song when I have a sense of that [same] feeling. Everybody knows the lyrics, they're singing it back to me. There's a real connection in that song. That's beautiful.”

Heaven knows, it’s true.

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Last night, April 12, Katie White unceremoniously took to the 9:30 Club stage after the house lights had dimmed. Wearing a ball cap low on her head and sporting bagging clothes, White slunk to center stage all while repeatedly shushing the boisterous sold-out crowd.

Later, she told the crowd to "shut up." Of course, it was in service of the Ting Tings, her nervy pop partnership with fellow Brit Jules de Martino. White was shushing the crowd for "Silence," the slow-to-build opening track from Sounds from Nowheresville, the duo's second set, released last month. The album itself is slow-to-build – but the more you listen to it, the more you come to appreciate its pop craftsmanship. The album finds the Ting Tings continuing to straddle the divide between dance and punk, with a little hip hop thrown in, creating a fun, spunky blend of pop that recalls forebears from Blondie to New Order to the Beastie Boys as well as contemporaries such as the Gossip, Le Tigre/JD Samson + MEN, even a little Robyn. And also Pink, whom the Ting Tings opened for in 2009.

"Hold your tongue now," White chanted as "Silence" opens, "and let them all listen to your silence." The crowd listened all right. There was a fair amount to watch, too. The LED show lights, in particular, were a perfect shade of mood-enhancing intense. Both White and de Martino, who spent much of the time behind his drum set, strapped on guitars from time to time, with assistance from their guitar gofer, seen constantly running around. At another point White banged on the centerpiece bass drum sporting the Ting Tings logo, banging it so hard it fell from its stand.

"Every time we come here you're so wonderful," White buttered up the crowd toward the end of the short, roughly 75-minute show. It was one of the rare times White actually talked to the crowd or made much of an effort to engage rather than simply perform music. While half of the material was new, there were the hits from the band's 2008 breakthrough, the cheekily titled We Started Nothing: chiefly "Shut Up And Let Me Go" and That's Not My Name," the unforgettable ditty that closed the show as part of a one song, pseudo-encore.

The duo then exited the stage nearly as quickly and as resolutely – as quietly too – as White had entered. Almost as if they couldn't wait to be let go.

9:30 Club Set List

Silence
Great DJ
Hang It Up
Give It Back
Guggenheim
Hit Me Down Sonny
We Walk
Fruit Machine
Shut Up And Let Me Go
Hands
That's Not My Name

Tickets remain for Saturday, April 14, at 9 p.m., at Rams Head Live!, 20 Market Place, Baltimore. Tickets are $25. Call 410-244-1131 or visit ramsheadlive.com.

Additional remaining shows on The Ting Tings' U.S. Tour:

April 13

Philadelphia, Penn.
The Trocadero
www.ticketfly.com

April 16

Atlanta, Ga.
Variety Playhouse
www.ticketmaster.com

April 17

Birmingham, Ala.
Workplay Theater
www.workplay.com 

April 18

New Orleans, La.
House of Blues
www.livenation.com

April 20

Houston, Tex.
Fitzgerald's
www.ticketweb.com 

April 21

Dallas, Tex.
Granada Theater
www.tickets.granadatheater.com