Robert Moog

With a smart little synthesiser app on their title page (that actually allows you to record four tracks of “music”) Google tells me its Robert Moogs 78th birthday today..

Now being a bit of an electronic music fan, Mr Moog’s  instruments have played a huge part in the sound of my musical back catalogue: from the Progness of Yes, Genesis, and Floyd, through the squeaks and wobbles of Kraftwerk, Jean Michel Jarre and Tangerine Dream, to the masterly sequencing of Giorgio Moroder and the electronic stylings of Travelogue era Human League, right through to today and Etienne Jaumet’s timeless Nightworks EP, I have always loved the sound of analogue oscillators, sequencers and modulators…

So happy birthday Mr Moog and thank you very much indeed for many thousands of hours of listening pleasure, created (I know not how) by these extraordinary machines…

The Moog logo is also a timelss and lovely thing..

 

Donna Summer – RIP

I’ve just learnt of the sad and very untimely death at 63 of Donna Summer.

The online headlines are calling her the Queen of Disco, but I think she should be more rightly dubbed The Voice of House

I have to admit that I’m not really up to speed with what she’s done for the last 20 years, but in 1976, she helped create one of the greatest records ever made, and that’s more than enough for me…

Giorgio Moroder & Rod Temperton

Most people I guess will have heard of Giorgio Moroder, but I suspect the same is not true for Rod Temperton. I can guarantee however that everyone will have heard at least one song from both of these men. Both are instantly recognisable, Rod’s is one of the biggest tunes of the Twentieth Century and Giorgio’s is one of the most important tunes for dance music heads like myself, and arguably the greatest dance/electronic track ever…

The prompt for this post was a TV programme over the weekend about Disco. Obviously in the mid 1970′s when I was a bouncy kid, all disco sounded good to me, and it’s only as you get older, that you realise that most of it was inane, and only certain tracks bear repeated listening…

One such track is of course, the timeless and iconic 8 minutes of aural lushness that is Donna Summer’s “I Feel Love”. Co written by Summer, Pete Bellotte and the Italo/German producer & writer  Giorgio Moroder  in 1976 (released to the world in 1977) it was nothing less than a total reinvention of dance and electronic music.

Previous to this record, the heart of disco was its four to the floor drums, vocal harmonies and rich string and brass orchestrations. Moroder saw the potential of the new electronic instruments that were then becoming more widely available and programmed them all to stun… just listen to the Modular Moog bassline that underpins the whole track and the groundbreaking breakdown at about 3 minutes… it STILL makes my spine tingle, and I must have heard this tune a thousand times…

Moroder admittedly went on to do some dodgy stuff (a very questionable soundtrack for his coloured in version of Fritz Lang’s visionary 1927 film Metropolis and Together in Electric Dreams with Phil Oakey are two that jump to mind) but I would argue that I Feel Love more than makes up for these lapses (as does the truly outstanding moustache he sported throughout most of the 70′s and 80′s)…

Rod Temperton, a UK born songwriter, also wrote one of the most instantly recognisable songs of all time, more of which later…

He was originally a member of Heatwave, a multi cultural UK based band that found fame on the back off the Disco revolution. To my ears however, their sound was always so much more than just disco, with strong elements of funk, jazz and pop clearly present. The two tracks that always do it for me whenever I hear them are Boogie Nights (also from 1977) and Gangsters of the Groove from 1980 (which I bought on 12″ when it was released).

Check out the most excellent dancing from the video below (Rod’s the one far right, smiling like a loon and playing the keyboards)

Temperton was the primary songwriter behind Heatwave and his gift for a tune brought him to the attention of many people for whom he wrote some true classics including Quincey Jones, Herbie Hancock, George Benson and of course Michael Jackson, for whom he wrote Rock With You, Off The wall, and a little track called Thriller…. Not bad for a lad from Cleethorpes eh?

So all in all, a pretty enjoyable TV programme about the joys of disco and a timely reminder of two of music’s songwriting greats…