Amsterdam/Giorgio Moroder At ADE
That’s where I am, home of the world’s tallest people.
Everybody could play in the NBA…or the WNBA! I’m in the rest room tonight and I’m urinating UP! It reminded me of nothing so much as elementary school, when my third grade class was in the junior high wing and the bathroom seemed to be made for Brobdingnagians.
But it’s warmer than Minneapolis!
I left Tuesday night, after speaking at MIMA, the Minnesota Interactive Marketing Association confab, Nate Silver opened and I closed. I ran into Nate on the sidewalk. And he was oh so nice, funny how these people with Asperger’s learn to cope, he was overly interested (at least that’s the legend, he’s an Aspie) and for a moment there the notion passed through my brain that I should shoot a photo. I never do this, but today we memorialize all events with a pic, which we spam all over the Internet, showing our exalted position, but then I thought better of it.
And the highlight of my exit from the Land of 10,000 Lakes was the TSA pre-check. Are you hip to this? It comes free with Global Entry. You don’t have to take off your shoes, your belt, remove your computer, hell, you can even keep change in your pocket while you go through security, in a line that usually doesn’t even exist! Of course I had to cough up my fingerprints to qualify, but I’ve lost so much privacy to the Internet I’m not worried, I just don’t want to wait in immigration anymore.
And from the Twin Cities, it’s only 8 hours to Amsterdam, as opposed to the 11 from L.A. And that’s not long enough! Took them almost three hours to serve dinner, so I couldn’t get enough sleep, but it was a great ride. And after finishing the day’s newspapers I dug into the Amazon/Bezos cover story in “Bloomberg Businessweek,” a great magazine you should subscribe to, far superior to its previous iteration. Some people are confronted with the advertising slowdown and cut back, BB invested, and it makes a difference. This was an excerpt from the new book, and it was fascinating to be exposed to the real Jeff Bezos, not the laughing doofus on TV. He’s just like Steve Jobs. He’s a prick. But with a college degree, from Princeton. Read this story and you’ll feel inadequate. But you’ll also realize that one individual can make a difference. Without Bezos the company’s not the same, he’s mercurial, he bends the company to his will, and that’s why it’s so great.
Then again, excellence always triumphs. I was in the Rijksmuseum today and it’s stunning how Rembrandt is just a little bit better than everybody else, and that makes all the difference. And I was never a huge fan, but I am now, because of the shadow! Yup, in his most famous painting, “The Night Watch.” You don’t recognize it at first, but they’ve got these cards that explain all the nuances, this is a museum that cares, and once it’s pointed out your jaw drops.
And they also pointed out the last remaining scar from the 1975 knifing, it’s above the dog, but otherwise the painting is perfect, except for the fact that a sixth or so is missing, cut off a few hundred years back so it would fit in a new space. This is REMBRANDT! Didn’t anybody know, didn’t anybody respect history? I guess not.
And I saw “Dutch Masters,” you know, the painting from the cigar box (aka “The Syndics of the Drapers’ Guild.”) It killed Rembrandt’s portraiture commissions. Because they didn’t like his new style, with fuzzy images, verging on Impressionism. Did he no longer want to make the effort, or was he just mercurial like Bezos? We’ll never know, but we do know Rembrandt went broke. The story is always the same, great artists are terrible money men.
Kinda like Giorgio Moroder. Who invested untold sums in a 16 cylinder automobile, he said we could look it up online.
Yes, the father of disco, at today’s number one gathering of the electronic music elite. Days of talking and nights of spinning. And for those who think “EDM” is a johnny-come-lately, you should have gone to last night’s presentation of “25 Years Of Dance In The Netherlands.” Yup, it’s been that long. Impressive, even though I left in the middle, I didn’t understand the language and I couldn’t see over the heads of those in front of me!
So we’re in a low-ceilinged basement akin to the Cavern Club and Giorgio Moroder is telling his story.
It’s always amazing to me that these people are both alive and normal. Because you expect icons to be gone and gods.
He started out singing cover songs.
Starved playing music in Amsterdam.
Moved to Munich, employed Donna Summer on a track and then trying to imitate “Je t’aime,” he called her back to sing on “Love To Love You Baby.”
Seventy three year old Giorgio is getting a victory lap. But he’s frustrated with today’s record making. Because it’s so much more expensive and it takes so much more time.
Huh?
Used to be there was one writer, who was the act, and the albums were knocked out in the studio in a matter of weeks. Today it takes in excess of a year. Every album has multiple producers, tracks are composed bit by bit in camps, and the A&R man meddles.
This didn’t happen in the seventies. They made the record and delivered it, the label had no input whatsoever in the creative process. Neil Bogart only weighed in on a track ONCE! Oh, how different it is today. But who would you rather trust, the suit at the label or the creative people themselves? Then again, today there’s so much more money involved, the companies are public and the acts are willing to bend over for a chance to become rich and famous. And you wonder why the sixties and the seventies were a golden era.
And Giorgio remembers it all.
He loves tech, but can’t talk it. He mentioned the only three synths he used, a Mini Moog and two Jupiter keyboards. Oh, and the two Revox machines he used to learn recording at home.
Not that Giorgio laments the new era. He loves the power of the deejay. He just did a gig in Mexico City for 40,000 and when the audience lifts its hands in the air…Giorgio tingles. Not that he can understand how these guys and gals can endure the travel from gig to gig. He did a night in Tokyo and then flew back to L.A. and he needed to recover!
And I asked him how it felt to be benched, replaced by Quincy Jones as Donna Summer’s producer. Not good, but there was poetic justice when the man paid a million dollars to produce couldn’t have a hit either.
Not that Giorgio stopped. He wrote music for the Olympics. He composed soundtracks. He said directors always move the music around. The supervisor places it and then it ends up somewhere completely different, like the opening of “Blade Runner,” which was supposed to be deep in the movie.
And it’s so weird, because he’s coming across so nice and he’s just walking the planet, seemingly well-adjusted, despite having his finger on the pulse of the culture for a good long time, making Academy Award-winning music.
Maybe he should be in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, certainly before KISS, even before the influential Paul Butterfield Blues Band, definitely before Patti Smith. How come we decry the popular? If you have mainstream success you get no insider respect. And that’s just b.s. Hell, Giorgio and his cronies invented a whole genre of music, but unlike the Ramones they had a slew of hits, changed the whole world.
Not that Giorgio’s bitter. He tries to stay positive. Worrying about the money Bogart stole from him is just gonna hurt his life, you’ve got to let some stuff go.
Oh, and one more thing. Even though the Casablanca building was coated in white powder, Giorgio Moroder never ever did a line. You think you’re so cool, with your tattoos and drug talk, but the true greats are so busy walking the razor’s edge of creativity they can’t afford to lose a moment, to be less than fully present.
And from there, to the Red Light district. And the famous New King Chinese restaurant. Past the canal that was the end of the city four hundred years back.
Yup, there’s history here. Did you know that Belgium used to be part of the Netherlands? And then there was that war with the Spanish and religious differences and…
That’s what you gain when you travel. Not only information, but perspective.
Leave home.
P.S. This was written to “Cat People (Putting Out Fire),” I forgot Giorgio worked with Bowie. And I haven’t heard this cut in decades. Wasn’t worth buying the whole album just for this track when it was released in 1982, but on the Internet it now comes back alive, I searched on Giorgio in Spotify and it came right up! And if you’re bitching about Spotify, know that it’s readily available on YouTube, the world’s premier music service, where if you get paid anything, it’s positively bupkes.
MusicTalks with Giorgio Moroder at Amsterdam Dance Event (ADE)
“The Secrets of Bezos: How Amazon Became the Everything Store”
“The Night Watch” shadow cast by the captain’s hand on the lieutenant’s coat
