Requiem for a synthetic pleasure

By Ken Taylor

MY 18TH BIRTHDAY was a real blast. My ex-girlfriend and I hung out at her cousin's house. I learned how to shotgun a beer. It was shapin' up to be quite a rowdy passage into manhood, and when Glenn broke out Wendy Carlos's Switched-On Bach (Columbia) – the cover featured a portly, powdered-wigged, composer-looking figure standing stoically before a patch bay of wires and keyboards – I knew it was par-tay time. I trusted Glenn infinitely. His recommendations of Burroughs, Kind of Blue (Columbia), and Jamiroquai's Emergency on Planet Earth (Columbia – and no, he didn't work for them) not too long before, proved revelatory. But the concept of covering a bunch of classical classics on a synthesizer seemed a bit passé, and on first listen to the 30-year-old record, my mind wasn't exactly blown. This was to be my adult life, I supposed: a series of chatty buildups and crushing letdowns.

Years later, after seeking out Yes's Closer to the Edge (Atlantic), after poring over Japan's Adolescent Sex (BMG), after going bonkers for Bobby O's "I'm So Hot for You," and after throwing myself full force into Detroit's techno scene, I finally began to grasp Switched-On's significance. Bach still seemed relatively irrelevant to my life, but I was convinced that the Moog synthesizer, pretty much the only instrument used on the 1968 recording and the driving force behind nearly all my favorite records, was the strangest, most fascinating sound generator ever made. Violins made classical music or country – forgive the blanket generalizations here, please – and guitars made rock, but the Moog made everything else ... or made everything else interesting, at least.

The keyboard's burbling, low-end hum didn't tackily ape the string section of a philharmonic, or a funky bass guitar, or even a plain ol' piano. It was a sound all its own, synthesized from sine waves: bendable, contortable, and controllable. No two Moogs would ever sound the same, and they're finicky things, according to anyone who's got one. They need a good warm-up before they're put into action, and the analog technology is as warm and idiosyncratic as it gets: a strange contradiction since Dr. Robert Moog, the synthesizer's creator, was criticized for the board's icy tone upon its release.

I found one of the old keyboards a while back at an instrument shop, not too far from Glenn's house, after having combed garage sales for years in search of one of the rare relics, and I thought I'd hit pay dirt. Its particleboard sides were droopy and waterlogged from sitting in someone's basement for decades. Its keys were broken. It had just one working oscillator. The guy wanted a ridiculous $200 for it, and I nearly caved, thinking wistfully about the machine's plastic name tag instead of the plastic scrap heap that was its condition. I left without it, yet there are still days when I regret not buying the piece of shit.

"My own Minimoog's surface console is cracked, and it barely works, but I would never throw it away," admits Drew Daniel of Matmos and Soft Pink Truth, one of the countless Moog devotees who can't part with the magical and versatile bit of gear. He "was someone whose genius at instrument building extended to thinking through how to meet musicians halfway," he says of the inventor.

In fact, until Moog was diagnosed with brain cancer in April, just months before his death Aug. 21 in Ashville, NC, he'd worked steadily. Moog started off building theremins (those motion-sensitive musical instruments popularized by old science fiction films and the Beach Boys' "Good Vibrations") in the '50s, and soon after graduating from Cornell University with a PhD in engineering physics in the '60s, changed music forever by manufacturing the first mass-produced modular synthesizer.

"Last time I was at the dreaded NAMM trade show in LA, January of this year, I saw Bob still at his booth the day after the show was done," recalls San Francisco's Matthew Curry, who records as Safety Scissors. "Myself and two other people from Cycling '74 were left with the dull task of packing everything up when most of the bigger companies had hired guns just to do such dirty work. When walking over by the Moog booth, I asked Bob what he was still doing around and why he, the head cheese, was packing up the displays. I don't remember his response exactly, but he just said that someone had to do it and he was happy to help." Despite the draining trade show atmosphere, "he was always just beaming whenever I saw him there," Curry adds.

Moog was one of few scientists who truly bridged that chasm between art and technology, and he constantly worked alongside musicians to help them better express themselves with technology. For me, though, finding great pleasure in the synthetic was his real legacy.

Robert Moog R.I.P. Five

Wendy Carlos, "Sinfonia to Cantata No. 29" (Columbia) – for Glenn

Isley Brothers, "(Who's) That Lady" (T Neck) – for Kristin

Emil Richards, New Sound Element: Stones (Vivid Sound) – chosen by M. Curry

Dick Hyman, "Give It Up or Turn It Loose" (Varese) – chosen by D. Daniel

Kraftwerk, "Autobahn" (Philips) – for me

Soft Pink Truth and Safety Scissors play Sept. 22, Mighty, 119 Utah, SF. Call for time and price. (415) 626-7001.

Safety Scissors' Tainted Lunch (~scape) and Hans Fjellestad's documentary Moog (Plexifilm) are both out on DVD.

E-mail Ken Taylor at synthetic@sfbg.com.