Giorgio Moroder
Just stumbled on this amazing video of Georgio Moroder playing with a vocoder. So thought I’d do a little tribute.
“I Feel Love”, that he co-wrote with Donna Summer, is his most famous. And was as important at Kraftwerk in building the foundations for house, techno and synthpop.
As some so elegantly put it on You Tube: “Kraftwerk and Tangerine Dream were pioneers but it is Giorgio who put the FUNK in electro. Do the kids of today know what debt that is owed to this man.”
Said David Bowie of I Feel Love: “One day in Berlin … [Brian] Eno came running in and said, ‘I have heard the sound of the future.’ … he puts on ‘I Feel Love’, by Donna Summer … He said, ‘This is it, look no further. This single is going to change the sound of club music for the next fifteen years.’ ”
Here’s a great video for one of my fave Moroder tracks – From Here To Eternity. Classic.
Moroder also is an essential part of late 70s and 80s culture, bringing disco and synthpop, synthesizers and computers, and a whole lot of funk to the masses writing and producing a wide range of classic pop songs and working on soundtracks for some of the biggest movies of the decade: Midnight Express, Scarface, Top Gun, Flashdance, Never Ending Story, American Gigolo, to name a few.
Here’s Fly Too High, co-written with Janis Ian.
He worked with Sique Sique Sputnik on their first album, which I’ve always thought was under-rated. “Ah, that was quite an, er, adventure. We had a lot of fun – God, crazy guys, ” he said of the band, in a 1996 interview with Future Music.
Here’s Sique Sique Sputnik, Atari Baby:
Moroder also produced Sparks:
And Blondie, Call Me:
And as a special bonus here’s Moroder with Phil Oakley in Together In Electric Dreams. But check out around 1:02, there appears to be a sound reactive computer animation. And some others later on.
Don’t really love this tune, but like the 8 bit sound reactive stuff:
Finally, I bet you didn’t know that Giorgio Moroder also produced a sports car with automotive engineer Claudio Zampolli – the Cizeta-Moroder V16T. Checkit:
