In 1975, like most 40 somethings, I learned to dance to Donna Summer. I didn’t like disco, but the babes did exclusively and if you wanted to even touch them, you danced. Now, Donna was a little different than most. Her music was usually very rich and usually the music itself was fun to listen to. I Feel Love was the disco song that kicked disco into high gear. However, if you really wanted to get the girl, you danced the entire disco version of Love to Love You Baby. After more than 16 minutes of bumping and grinding, you knew everything about your potential date. Usually, a lot more than you wanted to. I didn’t mind the song, it was lush and had a quality sound to it.

In 1978 my dancing preference changed dramatically as I fell in love with the song Heart of Glass by Blondie. Musically it was a lot like I Feel Love, but it was newer, fresher, and Debra Harry had a piercingly clear voice that I just fell in love with. They immediately followed their breakout album with an even better album that featured my favorite Blondie song, Union City Blue. Now, this is where you might THINK Bowie ties in. If you bought the re-released Eat to the Beat, you would get their version of Bowie’s ‘Heroes’. But, it’s not the catch I’m getting to. Although Blondie was cruising, their biggest hit was yet to come. In 1980 Blondie released Call Me. It was their biggest hit, and pretty much signaled the end of Blondie as we knew it. It pretty much established Giorgio Moroder as a music producer for films. Call Me was the theme song to the hit movie, American Gigolo.

In 1982, Moroder was producing the soundtrack for another movie, Cat People. For the vocals of the theme song, Putting Out Fire, he teamed up with Bowie. Now, the film version was very dark and brooding. I REALLY liked it. Bowie remixed it and put it on his grab-bag of miscellaneous new and old songs CD called Let’s Dance. He kept some of the original mix, but pepped it up a little with the help of Nile Rodgers. By combining two of the gods of disco, Bowie produced a monster hit well after people were burning disco albums and publicly blowing them up. Cat People wasn’t the biggest hit on the album, but it was the richest musically and is my favorite song from the album. Here’s my version. I enjoy it a lot.

Moroder then produced Flashdance ( What a Feeling ), No More Words by Berlin ( most excellent band! ), Janet Jackson’s Dream Street, soundtrack to The Neverending Story, the soundtrack to Top Gun, Kenny Loggins’ Danger Zone ( from Top Gun ), Berlin’s Take My Breath Away ( from Top Gun ), and most recently with Enrique Iglasias on Escape, and rumored to now be working with Jessica Simpson.

And, I bet, most of the people who started reading this post at the beginning were thinking “Who is Giorgio Moroder?”. I didn’t even list nearly all that he’s done, just the parts I like best!