74 is the new 24

And 53 is the new 13! At least as far as me and my mentality are concerned. Because nothing makes me feel more youthful, carefree, and positive about the future than new music by Giorgio Moroder.

The new single, "74 is the new 24," is out now with a new album--his first in 30 years--due in early 2005.

Thanks to Daft Punk and others, finally Giorgio Moroder's reputation has been rehabilitated, but I knew he was brilliant all along--despite what pseudo-intellectual hacks like Peter Shapiro may have written in Turn the Beat Around. But more about that another day when I have my claws fully sharpened and can rip that book apart in a way that it most truly deserves.

Oh, sure, there were missteps and mistakes, things I didn't particularly care for at the time or even now--for example, the music from his 1976 album, Knights in White Satin, is wonderful but his weird, poorly executed orgasmic "singing" kind of ruins the record for me. Shame that. And I admit to losing interest in some of his later '80s Phil Oakey/"Together in Electric Dreams" stuff, which oddly represents all that I eventually disliked about '80s music--the faux edginess and insincere hipness of it all. More about that another day.

But then he followed it up with the tremendous From Here to Eternity, a record I still play regularly, nearly 40 years later.

Sometimes it's funny what sticks with me all these years later. For example, remembering the first time I heard "Son of My Father" on the radio, listening to the console stereo in my parent's living room, in Eastern North Carolina circa 1972. I recall being fascinated and "funkified," if you will, by that bouncy synth riff--Bomp bomp bomp ba BOW BOW, bomp bomp bomp ba BOW BOW--played by some Euro unknown named simply Giorgio.



Move forward to 1977, and I'm blown away by Donna Summer's "I Feel Love," produced and co-written by Giorgio Moroder. I've said it before, and I'll say it again: There was music before "I Feel Love," and there was music after "I Feel Love," but after "I Feel Love," music was never the same. Hallelujah. Amen.

Who came first, Giorgio or the egg? Kraftwerk or the chicken? I have no idea, but I do know that I think Mr. Moroder was a genius, a popular musical innovator, and one with whom I'm proud to have shared an era, a mood, and some most excellent music.

And now there's even more music to look forward to in 2015.