A short post, prompted by having just stumbled upon a video of one of the best dance songs of all time, Donna Summer's 1977 classic "I Feel Love." Apparently originally released as a b-side, it, of course, became a massive hit. Amazing, really, how futuristic and forward-thinking the song was, for which most of the credit should go to producer Giorgio Moroder. The video is not all that great in terms of quality, but it's definitely worth a see.
I should add that Giorgio Moroder himself released a few albums, one of which, From Here to Eternity (also from 1977) was something I listened to quite a lot when I was in my early teens (thanks to a friend of mine, Sameena, who, God knows where she is these days, was a big fan). It's definitely worth checking out. The kids these days say that From Here to Eternity was where trance and house music began, which seems a little overstated. Looking up the album on the dreaded wikipedia, it turns out that in the production credits of the album, Moroder wrote: "Only electronic keyboards were used in the making of the album." I think that's fantastic!... Because it completely inverts the kind of self-important claims for "authenticity" that rock musicians would aspire to in the 1980s, about how everything on their albums was played on guitars....you know....no Goddamn synthesizers...but REAL instruments. Giorgio, it turns out, was way ahead of pack in many respects, not just in terms of his music but also in terms of an understanding of what he was doing.
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