Early Moog encounters

[AntManBee]

Recently, there was a brief discussion here about Moogs and musicians' first encounters with them. I can't remember in what thread though, so I start a new one for this quote from Annette Peacock. It was originally published in the Impetus magazine #8 in 1978.

"We want over to a critic's house -- Don Heckman of the New York Times -- just to hang out with him and we asked him if he'd heard anything new. He said, 'well, there's this one by Walter Carlos of synthesizer music,' and he played it for us. I fell right in love with it; it was the first new instrument in three hundred years. I just kept asking Paul [Bley] about it, but he wasn't too enthusiastic about it in the beginning...

There's quite a funny story... on the way over to see Robert Moog I psyched out exactly the take with him in terms of interesting him in giving us a synthesizer because we didn't have any money. So Paul said, 'We've got to take the synthesizer away; if we don't take it away with us then was won't get it,' so we went over in the station wagon we got all Paul's publicity and press and went over there. We thought that Walter Carlos was getting a lot of attention and credit and we felt that as Robert Moog had invented the instrument he might like a little bit of it himself. So we took the tack that we were going to create music with it rather than just use it as a 'jingle'-type instrument and we ere going to incorporate it into the main field of music, give it some dignity and the respect it deserves. So we went up there and Paul did the rap and I just stood around looking charming and lovely... and we drove away that night with a synthesizer.

We took it back to New York where nobody knew what a synthesizer was. Not only that, but anyone who did know what it was, or who had been working on it -- the commercial people -- wouldn't tell you anything about it, and there was no information out about it. So we had this thing that looked like an air-craft cockpit and it was just sitting in our bedroom. We just looking looked at it every morning for about six months saying 'What are we going to do with it?' Then we had it in the closet in the hall, behind some curtains, and didn't tell any musicians. Finally Gary [Peacock] came to visit one day and I drew back the curtains and said, 'Did you ever see anything like this before?' and he said 'What the fuck is that?' I said 'A synthesizer.' He said, 'A what?' Then we decided to set it up again and I started fooling around with it and patching. We had to make all these charts -- I drew the way it looked and noted the patching so we could find the sounds again. I actually invented a way to graft the voice onto it."

[Gentle Giant]

Mickey Dolenz used one of the first Moogs on the Monkees' "Daily Nightly" (from Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn, & Jones, Led.).

Long before I was into ELP, as a kid I used to watch "Creature Double Feature" on a local station: back to back Japanese monster films, and the theme music was ELP's "Toccata" from [Brain Salad Surgery[/i].

[VIBEr]

After Switched-On Bach,these are my earliest sightings:

Strange Days by the Doors, Paul Beaver on Moog.
"Minotaur" by Dick Hyman.
In A Wild Sanctuary, Ghandarva by Paul Beaver and Bernie Krause.
Zero Time, Tonto's Expanding Head Band (Margouleff by and Cecil).

[Dr Dave]

Truth: I liked the idea of the Moog synthesizer, but I never liked the sound. Ever.

That's a pretty funny story, especially the bit where Paul and Annette get the Moog and then don't do anything but look at it for six months. What a couple of mooks.

The story also makes me wonder whether anyone has devised a chart of jazz marital relationships. I mean, first there's Gary and Annette Peacock. Then there's Paul and Carla Bley. Then there's Paul Bley and Annette Peacock; Carla Bley and Michael Mantler...you get the idea.

Quiz: What was Annette Peacock's maiden name? (I have no idea, myself)

[AntManBee]

Originally Posted by Dr Dave

That's a pretty funny story, especially the bit where Paul and Annette get the Moog and then don't do anything but look at it for six months. What a couple of mooks.

And when they finally learnt how to use it and took it on tour, it was incredibly inconvenient to use. The entire interview is found here. (Scroll down to "Chapter IV".) Quite a good one, with a few more Moog anecdotes.

Originally Posted by Dr Dave

Quiz: What was Annette Peacock's maiden name? (I have no idea, myself)

That's something I've been curious to know myself.

[GoodSpeak]

My first encounter with Moog Synthesizers?

[Deke]

Originally Posted by Gentle Giant

Mickey Dolenz used one of the first Moogs on the Monkees' "Daily Nightly" (from Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn, & Jones, Led.).

In an interview previous to that Dolenz had mentioned that there was this guy with a new instument that made purely electrical sounds, and he (Dolenz) was going to try to find a way to link it up to a keyboard so you could play it on stage. To this day I don't know if the idea of adding a keyboard came from Dolenz. Surely Dr. Bob must've thought of it?

Whatever, The Monkees were supposedly the first artists to release an album with a Moog on it, then suddenly the Electic Flag threw their hats into the ring with a soundtrack album they'd recorded. I think it finally came down to an argument about recording dates and release dates. I don't know who won.

[graypencil]

I remember wwhen they first showed up in the studios iin the early 70s ..a pianist friend of mine sprung for one of the big ones that was contained in three of four big cases and looked like an old PBX board with lotsa flashing lights on the sequencers.. and patch cord wires out the ying yang!

They made some interesting sounds, but they were impossible to keep in tune in a studio, and you had to build everthing up one part at a time ..very tedious!!

one thing they did do quite well was make very interesting sample-and-hold noises resembling what computers might sound like if they could participate in a gang bang

[Chris D]

The ARP was cooler! "Baba O'Riley," baby.

[Enforcer]

I remember Billy Cobham abusing the sh** out of the Moog and Mini-Moog on his Spectrum CD, and maybe another recording after that, I'm not sure.

Larry

[stonemonkts]

[walto]

I remember seeing the four Moog synthesists who made up Mother Mallard's Portable Masterpiece Co. in Ithaca, back in the early 70's. But I can't remember if that was before or after I got my own first synth, the Moog Sonic 6.

[Chris D]

Originally Posted by Larry Nagel

I remember Billy Cobham abusing the sh** out of the Moog and Mini-Moog on his Spectrum CD....

That was Jan Hammer, of course, performing the service.