Donna Summer

[Lateralthinking1]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Feel_Love

According to David Bowie, then in the middle of recording of his Berlin Trilogy with Brian Eno, its impact on the genre's direction was recognized early on:

“ One day in Berlin ... 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.' Which was more or less right.(my italics)

Yes, on listening to it again, it still sounds like a ground breaker. I was surprised just how fresh it seemed. I find though the above quote from Bowie a little surprising. Others might have more of an understanding of this than me but my memory is of Saturday Night Fever; Odyssey's "D-I-S-C-O" etc; which was very lightweight, the truly innovative and brilliant Nile Rodgers and Chic, who were nevertheless not at all similar; and then a whole host of acts in the eighties like Aurra, the SOS Band and the Gap Band who were not exactly linked to it either. Among the few exceptions, in different ways, might be Sylvester and Arthur Baker/Freeez.

But I would say that you have to go forward to at least 1987 before there is any sense of legacy. Raze - "Break 4 Love" - for example and then house music in the next couple of years, followed by the Orb and Orbital and so on in the 1990s. I will leave it at this point because in a few sentences, it is only possible to comment on 0.001% of it. It also isn't very Radio 3. I just feel that in terms of the electronic angle, rather than the disco one, it didn't heavily influence club music in the next 15 years but was actually getting on for 15 years ahead of its time. No doubt someone like Gilles Peterson could comment with considerably more authority.

[johncorrigan]

No doubt someone like Gilles Peterson could comment with considerably more authority.

Lat, Alex Needham wrote an interesting piece in today's Guardian about Donna's influence - I liked Bobby Gillespie's boastful claim in particular.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2012/may/17/donna-summer-disco-pop

[Mahlerei]

Donna what's happened to our summer :(

[Lateralthinking1]

Lat, Alex Needham wrote an interesting piece in today's Guardian about Donna's influence - I liked Bobby Gillespie's boastful claim in particular.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2012...mmer-disco-pop

Interesting, John, and I think that nails it. He accepts that it took 20 years for others to catch up. He is also right to identify New Order's Blue Monday, 1983, which is one of its few equals as a pivotal record. That really helps to clarify the perspectives, ie:

One would expect David Bowie to have a white, rock leaning, angle on the history of dance music. The Kraftwerk influence clearly goes to the British indie kids in the period 1977-1982 and is rarely dance music in the commonly understood sense. New Order then introduce elements of dance which are taken forward more fully and in a myriad of ways in the crossover period circa 1989. The so called Second Summer of Love. Gillespie's "Screamadelica" in 1991 really pushes that on further while American, Continental and British DJs and producers, white and black, strip out all of the rock/indie elements, via house, techno, and so on from that time.

As for black music, it largely loses its soul, figuratively and in a literal music sense, from the advent of disco, strong as disco was as a genre. He mentions Janet Jackson as the example of innovation in the 1980s and that really proves the point. It isn't that all the records by black artists in the eighties are bad - far from it - but most lack roots and they only half take on board the immense possibilities offered by electronica. Frequently, they are awash with bland, overly commercial, arrangements. Some might perhaps put in a claim for the production of, say, a Jam and Lewis but I couldn't say that would fully win me over. The Whitney Houston thread has relevance here too of course. Sadly, soul is far from what it was before the mid-seventies but that's progress!

I have to say that on reviewing Moroder's entire output, it isn't as strong as one might have thought. There is some crassness before the collaboration with Summer and a lot of blandness after it. Those records were clearly from one of the astonishing moments in time when things gel and perhaps, with hindsight, I was wrong to call it 90%-10%. Maybe it was more of a Lennon and McCartney. It also seems right to mention Stevie Wonder who had introduced the moog to stunning effect in the early 1970s. Up until that time, any dabbling had mainly been done by rock and pop artists but isn't he just the epitome of how things in soul tailed off? There has hardly been anything since Hotter Than July in 1980 to match the brilliance he demonstrated from the mid-1960s.

And that, boys and girls, was a short story entitled "One Reason Why Soulful World Music and Roots Music are So Important, Along With Innovative Electronica, and They Must At All Costs Be Kept on Radio 3". PS Thank you Rob Cowan for playing Tomita.

[Serial_Apologist]

Disco-philes might well have missed this, Soft Machine's solitary take on I Feel Love - not being a Disco-phile myself, but I wouldn't have blamed them.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3IFdnMXeidQ

[Lateralthinking1]

Disco-philes might well have missed this, Soft Machine's solitary take on I Feel Love - not being a Disco-phile myself, but I wouldn't have blamed them. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3IFdnMXeidQ

I've never heard that before. Sounds like a different song. I was more into art rock - but not prog rock - in 1975-1977 and later indie but I started with soul, folk and reggae in 1970 aged 7 when I was producing my own Top 30s every week. Sad but true.

I'd be interested to hear what your one hour talk covered. Did you mention Otto Bekker, for example?

[Serial_Apologist]

I've never heard that before. Sounds like a different song. I was more into art rock - but not prog rock - in 1975-1977 and later indie but I started with soul, folk and reggae in 1970 aged 7 when I was producing my own Top 30s every week. Sad but true.

I'd be interested to hear what your one hour talk covered. Did you mention Otto Bekker, for example?

It was a very last minute depping operation, Lat; I must admit I have never heard of Otto Bekker. I needed to get some examples together quickly, so I took some LPs and cassettes which included tracks with a piece by Eisler from 1940 combining early electronic keyboards with a mixed chamber group, one written for Trautonium by Hindemith in 1937, Ondes Martenot pieces by Milhaud, Koechlin, Messiaen and Jolivet, and I just had time to play two pieces of Musique Concrete: one by Pierre Schaeffer and Pierre Henry, and one by Luc Ferrari, all three from the 4 LP Philips Electronic Panorama. I also handed round photocopied photos of some of the instruments. I only wish I had had time to play the Electronic Studien I and II and Gesang der Jungelinge of Stockhausen. I don't think the students were that impressed!

[Lateralthinking1]

It was a very last minute depping operation, Lat; I must admit I have never heard of Otto Bekker. I needed to get some examples together quickly, so I took some LPs and cassettes which included tracks with a piece by Eisler from 1940 combining early electronic keyboards with a mixed chamber group, one written for Trautonium by Hindemith in 1937, Ondes Martenot pieces by Milhaud, Koechlin, Messiaen and Jolivet, and I just had time to play two pieces of Musique Concrete: one by Pierre Schaeffer and Pierre Henry, and one by Luc Ferrari, all three from the 4 LP Philips Electronic Panorama. I also handed round photocopied photos of some of the instruments. I only wish I had had time to play the Electronic Studien I and II and Gesang der Jungelinge of Stockhausen. I don't think the students were that impressed!

Blimey. I'd have learnt something. He is Okko actually. I got that wrong. I'm not recommending him but he's a moment:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f9qSTy4_egU

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OP1RAQlw7ws&feature=results_video&playnext=1&list=PLDC7292837D630B45

[burning dog]

Bowie was always into black dance music. He was a guest on Soul Train in 75 or 76 and took questions from the audience explaining he was keen on James Brown as a teenager (he was into modern jazz too and plays alto sax).

It's true what LAt says, dance music didn't sound much "I Feel Love" until the mid/late 80s at least, possibly Detriot Techno when that got grittier and more "urban" and escaped from the overt Kraftwerk influence.

PS
If anyone except Lat and myself is interested - examples of Kraftwerk inspired Detriot music and a later urban sounding disc from the same stable

1984

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cZFL2Ewo-oI

1987

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JvHwEouB9xE

[Lateralthinking1]

Bowie was always into black dance music. He was a guest on Soul Train in 75 or 76 and took questions from the audience explaining he was keen on James Brown as a teenager (he was into modern jazz too and plays alto sax).

It's true what LAt says, dance music didn't sound much "I Feel Love" until the mid/late 80s at least, possibly Detriot Techno when that got grittier and more "urban" and escaped from the overt Kraftwerk influence.

PS
If anyone except Lat and myself is interested - examples of Kraftwerk inspired Detriot music and a later urban sounding disc from the same stable

1984

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cZFL2Ewo-oI

1987
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JvHwEouB9xE

An interesting post Burning Dog. That clip from 1984 does sound early to me whereas the one by them alongside it on YT from 1981 seems more like a standard 1980s production. Perhaps more was happening in Detroit in the first half of that decade than I had realised. By contrast, your 1987 clip sounds a little New Orderish, if I can put it in that way. I recalled late this afternoon "Magic Fly" by Space which was European and recorded in 1977. That somehow seems more relevant too than at that time.

Space - Magic Fly (Chart hit in 1977) - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DSLWKw4NImA

Space (updated Robert Miles like Trance Mix) - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3rfWI7YqMI8

I don't dispute Bowie's interest in soul and dance music by the way. One of my starting points in this thread was Bowie and Berlin and, hand on heart, I hadn't Googled it. It just felt very much in parallel with that Summer/Moroder vibe so the fact that the latter was noted and commented on during the recording of the former really does fit well there. I hadn't though realised that DB was a fan of JB. I suppose I expected cooler, even watered down, tastes but then again both had theatricality in their prime.

Going further back, the Wiki entry for "moog synthesiser" has left me with a list of things I now want to hear including Terry Manning's "Home Sweet Home", Tonto's Expanding Head Band's "Zero Time" and Gary Wright's "The Dream Weaver". I might even be giving Gordon Lightfoot's "Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald" a new hearing with fresh ears. Funnily enough, I dug out a track by the Jackson 5 recently called "(We've Got) Blue Skies" which appears to be another unexpected early use of moog.

Jackson 5 - (We've Got) Blue Skies (1971) - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MxHNAERNAA0

And this is a bit different. Bruno Spoerri - Les Electroniciens (1971) - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jp0SZf5iRJM

[burning dog]

I'll give those clips more of a listen later Lat. Alongside the use of electronics in soul/funk/dance there seems to have been a movement away from conventional song structure, either dispensing with it altogether, or lessening it's importance, although James Brown was a "hot" performer it's his music that best shows these changes IMO. This track was influenced by the much "cooler" So What and is the earliest I'm aware of.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BrExO-EYf7U

[pilamenon]

Yes, 'I Feel Love' still gives me goose bumps - a timeless classic. 'Love To Love You Baby' I will always associate with 'Abigail's Party', it conveys perfectly that soulless, suburban world that Mike Leigh wanted to depict. Donna Summer had a very uplifting voice at her best, and a number of her songs brought me a good deal of pleasure.