Podcasts about Robert Moog

This week, I'm joined by JoE Silva, the author of The Minimoog Book and host of Athens 411, who chose the film Moog to discuss.We talk about how JoE first met Robert Moog and then went on a 14 year journey to write The Minimoog Book, Rush's Geddy Lee writing the preface to the book, the incredible stories surrounding Sun Ra as one of the first musicians to get a Minimoog, the strange era where digital synths overtook analog synths, how shy and gentle Robert Moog was, Moog's onstage work with Yes, the synth company's humble beginnings, the music industry's fear of synths replacing 'real' musicians, Kraftwerk, why live music was the most important factor for Moog making his instruments, JoE's time with Eno, the amazing early documentary footage of the Moog factory, Bernie Worrell & Rick Wakeman's outdated conversation in the film, DJ Spooky, Taco Bell's 'Island Of Electronicus, Stereolab, our top 3 synth parts of all time and more. So let's set the oscillators to the max on this week's episode of Revolutions Per Movie!JoE SILVA: https://www.athens441.org/aboutTHE BOOK: https://bjooks.com/products/the-minimoog-bookTHE FILM: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yRsSSjqZ1ykREVOLUTIONS PER MOVIE:Host Chris Slusarenko (Eyelids, Guided By Voices, owner of Clinton Street Video rental store) is joined by actors, musicians, comedians, writers & directors who each week pick out their favorite music documentary, musical, music-themed fiction film or music videos to discuss. Fun, weird, and insightful, Revolutions Per Movie is your deep dive into our life-long obsessions where music and film collide.The show is also a completely independent affair, so the best way to support it is through our Patreon at patreon.com/revolutionspermovie. By joining, you can get weekly bonus episodes, physical goods such as Flexidiscs, and other exclusive goods.Revolutions Per Movies releases new episodes every Thursday on any podcast app, and additional, exclusive bonus episodes every Sunday on our Patreon. If you like the show, please consider subscribing, rating, and reviewing it on your favorite podcast app. Thanks!SOCIALS:@revolutionspermovieBlueSky: @revpermovieTHEME by Eyelids 'My Caved In Mind'www.musicofeyelids.bandcamp.com ARTWORK by Jeff T. Owenshttps://linktr.ee/mymetalhand Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

SAN ONOFRE-Albert Glinsky interviú Alberto, please, put that great seal bug away! Angloentrevistas Traducidas, Vol. 2 https://libritosjenkins.bigcartel.com/product/angloentrevistas-traducidas-de-san-onofre-vol-2 SAN ONOFRE ponemos la enésima pica en Flandes y hacemos nuestros pinitos con el brainemin. Minucias, si comparamos con la sibilítica escucha que Lev Sergeyevich Termen endilgó a los gringos durante varios lvstros. Sí, créannos, amigos onofritas, parlamos hogaño con Albert Glinsky, biógrafo del caballo de Troya Leon Theremin, una de las figuras clave del siglo XX. Devoren su libro "Theremin: Ether Music and Espionage". SAN ONOFRE tenemos fundadas sospechas de que lo que a Vstedes realmente les interesa es tener un buen repertorio de consejos infalibles para ligar. Allá que te va con nuestra humilde contribución: regálenle a su persona amada un pastel de cumpleaños rodeado por ondas electromagnéticas que se mueven cuando uno se acerca a él. Y en unos meses, volvemos de contratar a Albert Glinsky para departir sobre la biografía de Robert Moog, "Switched On: Bob Moog and the Synthesizer Revolution". Ay, ¿podremos esperar tanto tiempo?

Episode 135 An Electronic Music Mixed-Bag Playlist Time Track Time Start Introduction –Thom Holmes 06:28 00:00 John Bischoff, “The League Of Automatic Music Composers: Recording, December 17, 1978” from Lovely Little Records (1980 Lovely Music Ltd.). Tracks from this six-EP collection of new music from a variety of Lovely Music artists. Computer, David Behrman, Jim Horton, John Bischoff, Rich Gold; Mixing, "Blue" Gene Tyranny. “The League Of Automatic Music Composers makes music collaboratively by forming microcomputer networks. … For this performance, “each composer independently created a music program for his own microcomputer; we then mutually designed ways to internconnect our computers, and modified our programs to enable them to send data back and forth.” 08:40 06:58 Frankie Mann, “I Was a Hero” from “The Mayan Debutante Revue” (1979) from Lovely Little Records (1980 Lovely Music Ltd.). Tracks from this six-EP collection of new music from a variety of Lovely Music artists. Organ, bass guitar, voice, composed by Frankie Mann. “The Mayan Debutante Revue” is a reinterpretation of religious history. The work is a performance piece  involving tape, slides, and one female performer.” 09:22 15:38 Frankie Mann, “How to be Very Very Popular” (1978) (excerpt) from Lovely Little Records (1980 Lovely Music Ltd.). Tracks from this six-EP collection of new music from a variety of Lovely Music artists. Tape editing, organ, synthesizer, voice, composed by Frankie Mann; voices, Julie Lifton, Ellen Welser, and unknown others. “How to be Very Very Popular” began as a letter-tape to my best friend. … Later I began composing electronic music, initially using homemade circuits and later using expensive synthesizers in college electronic music studios. My friend and I continued to send each other letters cross-country in tape form.” 08:49 24:58 Maggi Payne, “Lunar Dusk” from Lovely Little Records (1980 Lovely Music Ltd.). Recorded at the Center for Contemporary Music, Mills College, February 4, 1979. Composed, electronic music by Maggi Payne. This piece was “composed using the Moog and Aries synthesizers and the twelve-track recording studio at” Mills College. “Major concerns … are spatial location of sounds and complex timbral changes.” 07:59 33:46 The Commodores, “Machine Gun” from Machine Gun/There's a Song in My Heart (1974 Motown). Single release featuring the early Commodores on this instrumental with Lionel Richie wailing along on the ARP Odyssey. 02:42 41:42 Billy Preston, “Space Race” from Space Race/We're Gonna Make It (1973 A&M). Single release. Preston was best known for his piano, Hammond, and Fender Rhodes work on Beatles' records and his early solo work. By this time, he had picked-up on the unique sounds that synthesizers could conjure. He was inspired to create this song while experimenting with the ARP Pro-Soloist synthesizer. 03:26 44:24 George Duke, “Part 1 - The Alien Challenges The Stick / Part 2 - The Alien Succumbs To The Macho Intergalactic Funkativity Of The Funkblasters” from Master Of The Game (1979 Epic). Written by Byron Miller, David Myles, Ricky Lawson; Producer, Acoustic Guitar, Arranged By, Bells, Clavinet, Composed By, Fender Rhodes, Keyboards, Organ, ARP Odyssey, ARP String Ensemble, Minimoog, Oberheim, Prophet-5 and Crumar synthesizers, written by and vocals, George Duke; Bass, Byron Miller; Drums, Ricky Lawson; Guitar, David Myles. 09:21 47:46 Steve Roach, Side 2, “T.B.C.” (5:06); Canyon Sound (2:58); Time For Time (3:33); Reflector (6:50) from Traveler (1983 Domino). All music composed and performed on synthesizers by Steve Roach. American Roach has such a great legacy of electronic music that is clearly distinguishable from the German wave of the 1970s. This is from his first, official album released in 1983. 17:56 57:02 Reynold Weidenaar, “Twilight Flight” (6:56) (1977), “Close Harmony” (4:44) (1977), and “Imprint: Footfalls to Return” (5:04) (1981) from Reynold Weidenaar / Richard Brooks Music Visions (1986 Capstone Records). Weidenaar was formerly the editor of Bob Moog's Electronic Music Review journal (1968-70) and an early user of the Moog Modular synthesizer. He was director of the electronic music studio at the Cleveland Institute of Music and at the time of this recording was on the faculty of the NYU films and television department. Twilight Flight” for electronic sounds was composed in 1977. “Close Harmony” for electronic sounds was composed in 1977. “Imprint: Footfalls to Return” for soprano voice and electronically modified sounds of the bare feet of Bharata-natyam Indian dancer was composed in 1981. 16:50 01:14:58 Eric Siday, three short works, “Night Tide” (2:56), “Communications No. 2” (0:24); and “Threat Attack” (2:05) from Musique Electronique (1960 Impress). Hard to find original disc by Siday, before he ventured into commercial recording using the Moog Modular synthesizer. His intereste in electronic music was deep, and he was one of the first customers of Robert Moog when his synth became available. 05:28 01:31:58 Hans Wurman, “Etude In C Minor, Op. 10, No. 12” (1:54) and “Waltz In D-Flat OP, 64, No. 1 (1:24) from Hans Wurman – Etude In C Minor, Op. 10, No. 12 (1970 RCA). Arranged and performed on the Moog Modular synthesizer by Hans Wurman. Brilliant interpretations of two classical pieces. 03:22 01:37:14   Opening background music: Einstürzende Neubauten [ein-sturt-zen-deh noy-bau-ten], “Der Tod Ist Ein Dandy” from Halber Mensch (1985 Some Bizarre). Noise metal from this dependable source of industrial music. (06:39) Introduction to the podcast voiced by Anne Benkovitz. Additional opening, closing, and other incidental music by Thom Holmes. My Books/eBooks: Electronic and Experimental Music, sixth edition, Routledge 2020. Also, Sound Art: Concepts and Practices, first edition, Routledge 2022. See my companion blog that I write for the Bob Moog Foundation. For a transcript, please see my blog, Noise and Notations. Original music by Thom Holmes can be found on iTunes and Bandcamp.

Gordon Raphael is best known for producing Is This It and Room On Fire by The Strokes and Regina Spektor's ingenious Soviet Kitsch. He was born in New York, grew up in Seattle, and now lives in West Yorkshire, UK. From the age of 13, Gordon has been a keyboard player and later became obsessed with analog synthesizers, recording, and songwriting. His band Sky Cries Mary played a form of tribal space rock, with a 1960s-style multi-projector light show during the grunge scene in Seattle. This summer (2024) he released his 12th solo album, now streaming worldwide. Gordon's memoir, The World is Going To Love This (Up From The Basement With THE STROKES) was published in London by Wordville Press in 2022. Stories in his book include meeting Wendy Carlos and Dr. Robert Moog, detailed conversations from the recording sessions for Is This It, working with Ian Brown, Skin, The Libertines, Ian Astbury, and many others. Gordon has always taken a unique approach in his musical tastes as well as his production methods— which have kept him well outside of the traditional music industry! IN THIS EPISODE, YOU'LL LEARN ABOUT: Working on your own music vs. working on music from others Being critical of your own music Dealing with rejection Pushing forward even when you don't have everything figured out Perfectionism vs. control Finding the magic in raw recordings Working with The Strokes Getting the vocal sound of The Stokes Using saturation during the tracking stage Getting tight drum sounds The benefits of recording live-off-the-floor His special drum room mic technique Having a minimalistic approach, even when working with lots of equipment How he tackles compression in his mixes Embracing imperfections To learn more about Gordon Raphael, visit: https://www.gordotronic.com/ For tips on how to improve your mixes, visit https://masteryourmix.com/ Looking for 1-on-1 feedback and training to help you create pro-quality mixes? Check out my new coaching program Amplitude and apply to join: https://masteryourmix.com/amplitude/ Download Waves Plugins here: https://waves.alzt.net/EK3G2K Download your FREE copy of the Ultimate Mixing Blueprint: https://masteryourmix.com/blueprint/ Get your copy of my Amazon #1 bestselling books: The Recording Mindset: A Step-By-Step Guide to Creating Pro Recordings From Your Home Studio: https://therecordingmindset.com The Mixing Mindset: The Step-By-Step Formula For Creating Professional Rock Mixes From Your Home Studio: https://masteryourmix.com/mixingmindsetbook/ Subscribe to the show: Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/master-your-mix-podcast/id1240842781 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5V4xtrWSnpA5e9L67QcJej Have your questions answered on the show. Send them to questions@masteryourmix.com Thanks for listening! Please leave a rating and review: https://masteryourmix.com/review/

Episode: 2296 Moog the man and Moog the machine: a lesson in engineering design.  Today, we meet a musical engineer with guest scientist Andrew Boyd.

En aquest nou capítol l'Isma Palacios ha continuat amb el seu monogràfic sobre els Alquimistes de l'Electrònica per parlar-nos de Don Buchla i Robert Moog. La Laura ens ha portat temes de Will Hofbauer, YYARD i Skee Mask. Dosha ha punxat música de Mark E, Charlie XCX i Los Hermoanos entre molts d'altres. En Letung amb els seus Mites de l'Electrònica ens ha parlat de Derrick Carter. Finalment en Monqui ha punxat temes de K-Lone, Lnrdcroy i Burial en tre d'altres. Producció a càrrec de Streamflow (https://streamflow.barcelona) Imatge gràfica per Saudara Studio (https://saudarastudio.com/). Tracklist: 1- Nacht Plank & Futuregrapher - Mushroom Cup 2 2- Jean Michel Jarre - Oxygene Pt.2 3- C3-D & Hashman - Understood 4- Will Hofbauer - Heart Shaped Mole (COLA REN Remix) 5- Charlie XCX - I Think About it All the Time 6- Mark E - Repetitive Sense 7- Conception feat. Kim Sims - Love Me Right (Dubbed Right) 8- Sound Patrol - An Open Secret 9- Derrick Carter - Where U At 10- Los Hermanos - Remember Detroit 11- K-Lone - Yeah Yeah Yeah 12- Nicola Cruz - Continuum 13- YYARD - Leisrure Spleen 14- Lnrdcroy - Contact E 15- Skee Mask - Reminiscrmx 16- Burial - Phoneglow #podcast #ambient #downtempo #pop #hiphop #alquimistesdelelectronica #house #deephouse #electro #club #breaks #breakbeats #detroit #techno #viatgeelectroniccrew #barcelonaelectronica

El día 23 de Mayo es considerado como el día internacional del sintetizador. Hoy en 120 Segundos te contamos la razón.

In this latest episode of Sweetwater's Plugged In podcast, Mitch Gallagher is joined by Frédéric Brun, owner and cofounder of the French scion of sound, Arturia. Throughout their discussion, Frédéric dives deep into Arturia's history, from their nascent days and first products to the electrifying trajectory that led to a collaboration with the late Robert Moog and the state-of-the-art synthesis technologies that have made their hardware and software instruments a staple among countless artists and producers. Join Frédéric Brun and Mitch Gallagher to discover more about Arturia's illustrious history, what it's like to navigate the leading edge of sound, and where Frederic's vision might send Arturia next!  

What was that Frankenstein music machine with all the dials, sliders, patch cords etc., that made other-worldly sounds that were supposed to resemble “real” instruments, like strings, horns and flutes, but didn't? It was the mighty Moog, invented by Cornell doctoral student and Theremin salesman, Robert Moog. He hooked up with musician-educator Herb Deutsch, developed the voltage regulation for oscillators and modulators, and the thing caught on.The first time most of us heard it was on Wendy Carlos' SWITCHED ON BACH record, which, by aligning itself to one of the world's most beloved composers, became a sensation in 1968, and was a defining feature of Stanley Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange.  Not long after that it became an absolute must have for the Prog matadors like Keith Emerson of ELP.  The Beatles also used it extensively on Abby Road, etc. The list goes on and on. Speaking for myself, I've always found the Moog and the electronic sounds it made cold and clinical (though fascinating). However, on this record its positively cuddly, and it makes me smile when I recall that it was used by the Muppets for the Swedish Chef routine.  Composed by Gershon Kingsley, this hit version of Popcorn was recorded by Stan Free of Hot Butter, and its lighter than air. 

Robert Moog ist Torwarttrainer im Nachwuchsleistungszentrum vom SV Wehen Wiesbaden. Er ist für die Torhüter im Altersbereich U11 bis U14 zuständig. Wir reden über die Trainingsinhalte im Grundlagenbereich. Welche Handhaltung bietet sich in der Grundstellung an? Wie gestaltet man den Übergang vom kleinen ins große Tor? Welche Schwerpunkte werden pro Altersstufe gesetzt? Wir reden drüber! Viel Spaß beim Hören! Ihr findet Technik vor Taktik auf Spotify und allen gängigen Podcastplayern. NEU:NEU: Techniktrainerzertifikat für 2024 terminiert! 07.06-09.06.2024 in Ochtrup! Auch online verfügbar! Anmeldung unter www.m-steffen.com Aufgepasst! Ich biete für euch als Trainer/in oder für eure Mannschaft bzw. Verein verschiedene Workshops an. - 2 Std Workshops für Vereine / Trainer/innen - Trainingstage und Schulung für eure Mannschaft - Trainerausbildung zum Techniktrainer - Fußtechniken für Torhüter als Workshop Und vieles mehr! Schaut doch mal auf meine Internetseite www.m-steffen.com Ihr wollt mehr über Robert Moog erfahren? Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/instarrobbert/ Ihr habt Lust auf ein Techniktrainer-Zertifikat? Dann meldet euch unter info@m-steffen.com Ihr wollt ein professionelles Techniktraining buchen? Dann schaut auf meinen Seiten vorbei und kontaktiert mich. Instagram: MSIndividual Internet: www.m-steffen.com #torhüter #torwart #tw #torwartausbildung #goalkeeper #svwehenwiesbaden #svwehen #trainingsinhalte #techniktraining #jugendfussballtraining #technikvortaktik #1bundesliga #2bundesliga #dfbpokal #trainerausbildung #fussballtraining #scouting #techniktraining #bundesliga #profis #athlet #fussballpodcast #bundesliga #content #nlz #coach #coaching #podcast #nachwuchsleistungszentrum #trainer #trainerpersönlichkeit #ausbildung #jugend #athleten

Robert Margouleff is a Grammy Award-winning record producer, sound engineer, and electronic music pioneer who might be best known for his work with Stevie Wonder in the early '70s on a string of award-winning albums, like Music of My Mind, Talking Book, Innervisions, and Fulfillingness's First Finale. In 1980, Margouleff produced DEVO's Freedom of Choice album which included Whip It. Robert has spent time in the studio producing and engineering for Quincy Jones, Jeff Beck, the Doobie Brothers, Depeche Mode, Oingo Boingo, DEVO, and the list goes on and on. He was a colleague and friend of synthesizer inventor Robert Moog, and was also an early creative resource for Andy Warhol's "factory" and co-producer of the cult classic film “Ciao! Manhattan” in 1972.  

In the ‘70s there were signs that crime was on the uptick. Did you surrender any money as the victim of a stick up? After you were scammed, did you vow I won't get fooled again? At times it seemed like there was a breakdown in society where there ain't no sunshine to be found. Yet we all know there was a bigger story in your eyes. You had a look that said I woke up in love this morning with a sweet city woman! This week whatcha see is whatcha get when we take a look at the Billboard Top 40 from the Week of September 25, 1971. I'm not a liar when I say this one is bound to bring out some smiling faces sometimes, if you know what I mean. Link to a listing of the songs in this week's episode:  https://top40weekly.com/1971-all-charts/#US_Top_40_Singles_Week_Ending_25th_September_1971 Data Sources: Billboard Magazine, where the charts came from and on what the countdown was based. Websites: allmusic.com, songfacts.com,  wikipedia.com (because Mark's lazy) Books: “Ranking the 70's” by Dann Isbell, and Bill Carroll “American Top 40 With Casey Kasem (The 1970's)" by Pete Battistini. Rejected Episode Titles: The Story in Your Eyes?  Watcha See is Watcha Get Go Away Little Maggie May I Woke Up Saturday Morning in Confusion This is a Stick Up, Do You Know What I Mean? Some points of interest we talked about in this episode: Robert Moog on the pronunciation of Moog: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UDN-y0QQ7cs Moog Inc.: https://www.moog.com/ Moog Music: https://www.moogmusic.com/ The Deep Purple Podcast Episode #229 – Remembering Bernie Marsden: https://deeppurplepodcast.com/2023/09/02/episode-229-remembering-bernie-marsden/

On the August 21 edition of the Music History Today podcast, the Tragically Hip get together 1 last time, Bono gets married, the inventor of the Moog synthesizer passes away, & happy birthday to Count Basie, Joe Strummer, & Kenny Rogers. ALL MY MUSIC HISTORY TODAY PODCAST LINKS - https://allmylinks.com/musichistorytoday --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/musichistorytodaypodcast/message Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/musichistorytodaypodcast/support

Robert Moog et ses machines qui font Vzzziiiooung, raconté par Laurent de Wilde, et Samplerman seront les premiers invités, suivis de la #SessionLive du Crimi (France/Sicile). Dans sa banlieue natale du Queens, Robert Moog imagine l'équivalence entre le langage de la musique et celui de l'électronique. Il fabrique des boîtes métalliques qui produisent des sons jamais entendus auparavant. Sans ces machines à boutons reliés par des câbles, pas de vzzziiiooung ni de mouuuaaaaahh dans les musiques de Herbie Hancock ou des Beatles. Entre les mains des artistes qui s'en sont emparés, ses instruments ont créé le disco, la house, le rap. Bob Moog a pensé le futur de la musique.Les auteursLaurent de Wilde est compositeur, pianiste et écrivain. Il a été l'un des pionniers de la révolution électronique du jazz des années 2000 et continue de se produire activement. En tant qu'auteur, il a notamment publié une biographie de Thelonious Monk (Monk, Gallimard, 1997) et un ouvrage retraçant la trajectoire des inventeurs, au XXème siècle, d'instruments ou de machines à produire du son avec de l'électricité : Les Fous du son (Grasset, 2016). Œuvrant dans l'édition de bande dessinée alternative depuis les années 1990, Yvan Guillo alias Samplerman fabrique des images à partir de la transformation et de la duplication de comics mainstream des années 1950, y puisant des échantillons — des samples — qu'il réemploie dans ses propres créations.  Extrait« Car ces nouveaux instruments que sont les synthétiseurs tels que les fabrique Bob Moog sont le plus souvent associés à de la musique psychédélique, voire bruitiste, et les hippies qui la jouent sont bien loin des amateurs de Mozart ou Schubert que le label compte comme clients. Vendre un disque de musique classique synthétique à Columbia revient à proposer un deltaplane à Rolls-Royce, ce n'est tout simplement pas le même monde. Les titres des premiers disques de musique électronique faite grâce au Moog parlent d'eux-mêmes : The Zodiac : Cosmic Sounds, Strange Days ou Kaleidoscopic Vibrations… tout un programme ! On comprend pourquoi les huiles de Columbia ont fait la fine bouche. Mais bon, disent-ils, laissez-nous vos bandes, on va voir ce qu'on peut faire… La sortie est donc assurée a minima et l'espoir d'un succès, même modeste, n'est pas envisagé. Sauf que c'est un carton. Avec Switched-On Bach sorti en 1968, Wendy rafle quatre Grammy Awards et cinq ans plus tard, le disque est vendu à plus d'un million d'exemplaires. » Moog Plalylist- Hot Butter, « Popcorn », Popcorn, Interfusion/Musicor, 1972.- Mahavishnu Orchestra, « Birds of Fire », Birds of Fire, Columbia Records, 1973  - Donna Summer, « I Feel Love », I Remember Yesterday, Casablanca Records, 1977.- Kraftwerk, « Autobahn », Autobahn, Vertigo Records, 1974- Hal Blaine, « Love-In (December) », Psychedelic Percussion, Dunhill, 1967. Puis nous recevons le groupe Crimi dans la #SessionLive pour la sortie du 2ème album Scuru CauruScuru Cauru, des chansons sinueuses et envoûtantes inspirées par les montagnes sauvages de Sicile et les ruelles de Palerme et d'Oran. Après le succès de Luci e Guai sorti en 2021, Crimi poursuit avec Scuru Cauru son exploration des diasporas et cultures méditerranéennes, creusant ainsi d'autres fantasmes plus intimes à travers quatorze titres électrisants et magnétiques. Sur les traces de son héritage sicilien, le chanteur et saxophoniste Julien Lesuisse crée Crimi en 2018, et alors tente de se réapproprier une culture et une langue que sa famille immigrée avait dû travestir. Depuis plus de vingt ans, Julien Lesuisse est actif sur la scène musicale française au sein du dancefloor band Mazalda et aux côtés des chanteurs de la nouvelle vague du Raï algérien Cheb Lakhdar et Sofiane Saidi. Avec ce background miraculeux, il s'allie à l'éthio-jazz, funk et soul du guitariste Cyril Moulas, du bassiste Brice Berrerd et du batteur Bruno Duval pour former le groove diasporique de Crimi. Le groupe trace une ligne visionnaire qui connecte des traditions d'époques et de lieux différents et les reconstruit pour le monde interculturel d'aujourd'hui. Par ce syncrétisme du groove, Crimi réinvente une Méditerranée comme lieu d'échanges et de rencontres à l'opposé du théâtre des conflits et des divisions qu'elle est devenue.Titres interprétés au grand studio- Giannina Live RFI- A Sira Live RFI- Notti Ruffiana Live RFI. Line Up : Julien Lesuisse (chant, EWI), Brice Berrerd (basse), Damien Bernard (batterie) et Cyril Moulas (guitare).Son : Jérémie Besset et Mathias Taylor.►Album Scuru Cauru (Airfono 2023).

Wendy Carlos Electronic Composer VV_026 SONG LIST* M1 Air on a G String (JS Bach 1730, W Carlos 1968), Switched-On Bach, Columbia/CBS, 1968 (2:27) ·       Wendy Carlos – Moog Synthesizer ·       Benjamin Folkman, Assistance M2 Two Part Invention in F-Major,(JS Bach 1723, W Carlos, 1968), Switched-On Bach, Columbia/CBS, 1968 (0:40) ·       Wendy Carlos – Moog Synthesizer ·       Benjamin Folkman, Assistance M3 Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring ,(JS Bach 1723, W Carlos 1968), Switched-On Bach, Columbia/CBS, 1968 (2:56) ·       Wendy Carlos – Moog Synthesizer ·       Benjamin Folkman, Assistance M4 Chorale Prelude “Wachet Auf”, (JS Bach 1731, W Carlos 1968), Switched-On Bach, Columbia/CBS, 1968 (3:37) ·       Wendy Carlos – Moog Synthesizer ·       Benjamin Folkman, Assistance M5 Brandenburg Concerto #3 in G Major 2nd Movement, (JS Bach 1723, W Carlos 1968), Switched-On Bach, Columbia/CBS, 1968 (2:50) ·       Wendy Carlos – Moog Synthesizer ·       Benjamin Folkman, Assistance M6 Brandenburg Concerto #3 in G Major 3rd Movement, (JS Bach 1723, W Carlos 1968), Switched-On Bach, Columbia/CBS, 1968 (5:05) ·       Wendy Carlos – Moog Synthesizer ·       Benjamin Folkman, Assistance M7 Title Music from A Clockwork Orange), (Purcell, 1695, W Carlos, R Elkind 1972) , Columbia/CBS, 1972 (2:21) ·       Wendy Carlos – Moog Synthesizer ·       Rachel Elkind Producer M8 Theme from A Clockwork Orange (Beethoviana), (W Carlos, R Elkind 1972) , Columbia/CBS, 1972 (1:44) ·       Wendy Carlos – Moog Synthesizer ·       Rachel Elkind Producer   M9 Timesteps (Excerpt), (W. Carlos 1970, Tempi Music BMI), Stanley Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange, Warner Bros Records, 1972 (4:13) ·       Wendy Carlos – Moog Synthesizer ·       Rachel Elkind Producer M10 March from A Clockwork Orange/Ninth Symphony, 4th Movement, (L v Beethoven 1824, W Carlos, R Elkind 1970) Stanley Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange, Warner Bros Records, 1972 (7:00) ·       Wendy Carlos – Moog Synthesizer ·       Rachel Elkind Producer and Articulations Today's Vinyl Vibrations podcast features the artistry of Wendy Carlos, an American composer, arranger, and electronic musician. Wendy Carlos was born Walter Carlos in Rhode Island in November 1939. She is the first transgender recipient of a Grammy Award, her album SWITCHED-ON BACH won three Grammys in 1970. Later, in 2005 she was the recipient of the SEAMUS Lifetime Achievement Award for her contribution to the art and craft of electro-acoustic music. Wendy Carlos is best known for her electronic music such as SWITCHED-ON BACH…and film scores such as A CLOCKWORK ORANGE, THE SHINING and TRON. Her studies of music composition at Columbia University in New York City in the 1960s led to her working with electronic musicians and technicians where she helped in the development of the MOOG SYNTHESIZER. This was the first commercially available keyboard instrument from Robert Moog. During her time at Columbia, Carlos ordered components of a custom designed synthesizer from Robert Moog, and she collaborated with Moog on the design of that early instrument, which became known as the MOOG SYNTHESIZER. Some of the modules included a touch-sensitive keyboard, a portamento control, which slides notes in the scale between one note and the next, a filter bank, and a 49-oscillator polyphonic generator bank that could create chords and arpeggios, arpeggios are the individual notes of those chords played in cycles. Today, we take the synthesizer for granted. The keyboard synthesizer has become widely-available, and most keyboard musicians today, including me, use a synth keyboard such as BEHRINGER, KORG, NORD, ROLAND, YAMAHA, and yes… even the brand Carlos herself helped design with Robert Moog, the MOOG synthesizer. After getting her Masters in Music Composition from Columbia University in 1965,

Quand on passe à côté de la maison de Robert Moog, pas loin de New York, ça fait des Ziiouuunnng et des Mouuuahhhhonwww … Rien d'anormal, le père du synthétiseur moderne est simplement en train de révolutionner la musique avec ses machines. Un petit livre divertissant et joliment illustré, qui retrace l'épopée du Moog, sans qui le disco, la house, le rap et les musiques électroniques n'auraient jamais pu voir le jour. Par Ellen Ichters.

Episode 162 of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at "Daydream Believer", and the later career of the Monkees, and how four Pinocchios became real boys. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a twenty-minute bonus episode available, on "Born to be Wild" by Steppenwolf. Tilt Araiza has assisted invaluably by doing a first-pass edit, and will hopefully be doing so from now on. Check out Tilt's irregular podcasts at http://www.podnose.com/jaffa-cakes-for-proust and http://sitcomclub.com/ Resources No Mixcloud this time, as even after splitting it into multiple files, there are simply too many Monkees tracks excerpted. The best versions of the Monkees albums are the triple-CD super-deluxe versions that used to be available from monkees.com , and I've used Andrew Sandoval's liner notes for them extensively in this episode. Sadly, though, none of those are in print. However, at the time of writing there is a new four-CD super-deluxe box set of Headquarters (with a remixed version of the album rather than the original mixes I've excerpted here) available from that site, and I used the liner notes for that here. Monkees.com also currently has the intermittently-available BluRay box set of the entire Monkees TV series, which also has Head and 33 1/3 Revolutions Per Monkee. For those just getting into the group, my advice is to start with this five-CD set, which contains their first five albums along with bonus tracks. The single biggest source of information I used in this episode is the first edition of Andrew Sandoval's The Monkees; The Day-By-Day Story. Sadly that is now out of print and goes for hundreds of pounds. Sandoval released a second edition of the book in 2021, which I was unfortunately unable to obtain, but that too is now out of print. If you can find a copy of either, do get one. Other sources used were Monkee Business by Eric Lefcowitz, and the autobiographies of three of the band members and one of the songwriters — Infinite Tuesday by Michael Nesmith, They Made a Monkee Out of Me by Davy Jones, I'm a Believer by Micky Dolenz, and Psychedelic Bubble-Gum by Bobby Hart. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript When we left the Monkees, they were in a state of flux. To recap what we covered in that episode, the Monkees were originally cast as actors in a TV show, and consisted of two actors with some singing ability -- the former child stars Davy Jones and Micky Dolenz -- and two musicians who were also competent comic actors, Michael Nesmith and Peter Tork.  The show was about a fictional band whose characters shared names with their actors, and there had quickly been two big hit singles, and two hit albums, taken from the music recorded for the TV show's soundtrack. But this had caused problems for the actors. The records were being promoted as being by the fictional group in the TV series, blurring the line between the TV show and reality, though in fact for the most part they were being made by session musicians with only Dolenz or Jones adding lead vocals to pre-recorded backing tracks. Dolenz and Jones were fine with this, but Nesmith, who had been allowed to write and produce a few album tracks himself, wanted more creative input, and more importantly felt that he was being asked to be complicit in fraud because the records credited the four Monkees as the musicians when (other than a tiny bit of inaudible rhythm guitar by Tork on a couple of Nesmith's tracks) none of them played on them. Tork, meanwhile, believed he had been promised that the group would be an actual group -- that they would all be playing on the records together -- and felt hurt and annoyed that this wasn't the case. They were by now playing live together to promote the series and the records, with Dolenz turning out to be a perfectly competent drummer, so surely they could do the same in the studio? So in January 1967, things came to a head. It's actually quite difficult to sort out exactly what happened, because of conflicting recollections and opinions. What follows is my best attempt to harmonise the different versions of the story into one coherent narrative, but be aware that I could be wrong in some of the details. Nesmith and Tork, who disliked each other in most respects, were both agreed that this couldn't continue and that if there were going to be Monkees records released at all, they were going to have the Monkees playing on them. Dolenz, who seems to have been the one member of the group that everyone could get along with, didn't really care but went along with them for the sake of group harmony. And Bob Rafelson and Bert Schneider, the production team behind the series, also took Nesmith and Tork's side, through a general love of mischief. But on the other side was Don Kirshner, the music publisher who was in charge of supervising the music for the TV show. Kirshner was adamantly, angrily, opposed to the very idea of the group members having any input at all into how the records were made. He considered that they should be grateful for the huge pay cheques they were getting from records his staff writers and producers were making for them, and stop whinging. And Davy Jones was somewhere in the middle. He wanted to support his co-stars, who he genuinely liked, but also, he was a working actor, he'd had other roles before, he'd have other roles afterwards, and as a working actor you do what you're told if you don't want to lose the job you've got. Jones had grown up in very severe poverty, and had been his family's breadwinner from his early teens, and artistic integrity is all very nice, but not as nice as a cheque for a quarter of a million dollars. Although that might be slightly unfair -- it might be fairer to say that artistic integrity has a different meaning to someone like Jones, coming from musical theatre and a tradition of "the show must go on", than it does to people like Nesmith and Tork who had come up through the folk clubs. Jones' attitude may also have been affected by the fact that his character in the TV show didn't play an instrument other than the occasional tambourine or maracas. The other three were having to mime instrumental parts they hadn't played, and to reproduce them on stage, but Jones didn't have that particular disadvantage. Bert Schneider, one of the TV show's producers, encouraged the group to go into the recording studio themselves, with a producer of their choice, and cut a couple of tracks to prove what they could do. Michael Nesmith, who at this point was the one who was most adamant about taking control of the music, chose Chip Douglas to produce. Douglas was someone that Nesmith had known a little while, as they'd both played the folk circuit -- in Douglas' case as a member of the Modern Folk Quartet -- but Douglas had recently joined the Turtles as their new bass player. At this point, Douglas had never officially produced a record, but he was a gifted arranger, and had just arranged the Turtles' latest single, which had just been released and was starting to climb the charts: [Excerpt: The Turtles, "Happy Together"] Douglas quit the Turtles to work with the Monkees, and took the group into the studio to cut two demo backing tracks for a potential single as a proof of concept. These initial sessions didn't have any vocals, but featured Nesmith on guitar, Tork on piano, Dolenz on drums, Jones on tambourine, and an unknown bass player -- possibly Douglas himself, possibly Nesmith's friend John London, who he'd played with in Mike and John and Bill. They cut rough tracks of two songs, "All of Your Toys", by another friend of Nesmith's, Bill Martin, and Nesmith's "The Girl I Knew Somewhere": [Excerpt: The Monkees, "The Girl I Knew Somewhere (Gold Star Demo)"] Those tracks were very rough and ready -- they were garage-band tracks rather than the professional studio recordings that the Candy Store Prophets or Jeff Barry's New York session players had provided for the previous singles -- but they were competent in the studio, thanks largely to Chip Douglas' steadying influence. As Douglas later said "They could hardly play. Mike could play adequate rhythm guitar. Pete could play piano but he'd make mistakes, and Micky's time on drums was erratic. He'd speed up or slow down." But the takes they managed to get down showed that they *could* do it. Rafelson and Schneider agreed with them that the Monkees could make a single together, and start recording at least some of their own tracks. So the group went back into the studio, with Douglas producing -- and with Lester Sill from the music publishers there to supervise -- and cut finished versions of the two songs. This time the lineup was Nesmith on guitar, Tork on electric harpsichord -- Tork had always been a fan of Bach, and would in later years perform Bach pieces as his solo spot in Monkees shows -- Dolenz on drums, London on bass, and Jones on tambourine: [Excerpt: The Monkees, "The Girl I Knew Somewhere (first recorded version)"] But while this was happening, Kirshner had been trying to get new Monkees material recorded without them -- he'd not yet agreed to having the group play on their own records. Three days after the sessions for "All of Your Toys" and "The Girl I Knew Somewhere", sessions started in New York for an entire album's worth of new material, produced by Jeff Barry and Denny Randell, and largely made by the same Red Bird Records team who had made "I'm a Believer" -- the same musicians who in various combinations had played on everything from "Sherry" by the Four Seasons to "Like a Rolling Stone" by Dylan to "Leader of the Pack", and with songs by Neil Diamond, Jeff Barry and Ellie Greenwich, Leiber and Stoller, and the rest of the team of songwriters around Red Bird. But at this point came the meeting we talked about towards the end of the "Last Train to Clarksville" episode, in which Nesmith punched a hole in a hotel wall in frustration at what he saw as Kirshner's obstinacy. Kirshner didn't want to listen to the recordings the group had made. He'd promised Jeff Barry and Neil Diamond that if "I'm a Believer" went to number one, Barry would get to produce, and Diamond write, the group's next single. Chip Douglas wasn't a recognised producer, and he'd made this commitment. But the group needed a new single out. A compromise was offered, of sorts, by Kirshner -- how about if Barry flew over from New York to LA to produce the group, they'd scrap the tracks both the group and Barry had recorded, and Barry would produce new tracks for the songs he'd recorded, with the group playing on them? But that wouldn't work either. The group members were all due to go on holiday -- three of them were going to make staggered trips to the UK, partly to promote the TV series, which was just starting over here, and partly just to have a break. They'd been working sixty-plus hour weeks for months between the TV series, live performances, and the recording studio, and they were basically falling-down tired, which was one of the reasons for Nesmith's outburst in the meeting. They weren't accomplished enough musicians to cut tracks quickly, and they *needed* the break. On top of that, Nesmith and Barry had had a major falling-out at the "I'm a Believer" session, and Nesmith considered it a matter of personal integrity that he couldn't work with a man who in his eyes had insulted his professionalism. So that was out, but there was also no way Kirshner was going to let the group release a single consisting of two songs he hadn't heard, produced by a producer with no track record. At first, the group were insistent that "All of Your Toys" should be the A-side for their next single: [Excerpt: The Monkees, "All Of Your Toys"] But there was an actual problem with that which they hadn't foreseen. Bill Martin, who wrote the song, was under contract to another music publisher, and the Monkees' contracts said they needed to only record songs published by Screen Gems. Eventually, it was Micky Dolenz who managed to cut the Gordian knot -- or so everyone thought. Dolenz was the one who had the least at stake of any of them -- he was already secure as the voice of the hits, he had no particular desire to be an instrumentalist, but he wanted to support his colleagues. Dolenz suggested that it would be a reasonable compromise to put out a single with one of the pre-recorded backing tracks on one side, with him or Jones singing, and with the version of "The Girl I Knew Somewhere" that the band had recorded together on the other. That way, Kirshner and the record label would get their new single without too much delay, the group would still be able to say they'd started recording their own tracks, everyone would get some of what they wanted. So it was agreed -- though there was a further stipulation. "The Girl I Knew Somewhere" had Nesmith singing lead vocals, and up to that point every Monkees single had featured Dolenz on lead on both sides. As far as Kirshner and the other people involved in making the release decisions were concerned, that was the way things were going to continue. Everyone was fine with this -- Nesmith, the one who was most likely to object in principle, in practice realised that having Dolenz sing his song would make it more likely to be played on the radio and used in the TV show, and so increase his royalties. A vocal session was arranged in New York for Dolenz and Jones to come and cut some vocal tracks right before Dolenz and Nesmith flew over to the UK. But in the meantime, it had become even more urgent for the group to be seen to be doing their own recording. An in-depth article on the group in the Saturday Evening Post had come out, quoting Nesmith as saying "It was what Kirshner wanted to do. Our records are not our forte. I don't care if we never sell another record. Maybe we were manufactured and put on the air strictly with a lot of hoopla. Tell the world we're synthetic because, damn it, we are. Tell them the Monkees are wholly man-made overnight, that millions of dollars have been poured into this thing. Tell the world we don't record our own music. But that's us they see on television. The show is really a part of us. They're not seeing something invalid." The press immediately jumped on the band, and started trying to portray them as con artists exploiting their teenage fans, though as Nesmith later said "The press decided they were going to unload on us as being somehow illegitimate, somehow false. That we were making an attempt to dupe the public, when in fact it was me that was making the attempt to maintain the integrity. So the press went into a full-scale war against us." Tork, on the other hand, while he and Nesmith were on the same side about the band making their own records, blamed Nesmith for much of the press reaction, later saying "Michael blew the whistle on us. If he had gone in there with pride and said 'We are what we are and we have no reason to hang our heads in shame' it never would have happened." So as far as the group were concerned, they *needed* to at least go with Dolenz's suggested compromise. Their personal reputations were on the line. When Dolenz arrived at the session in New York, he was expecting to be asked to cut one vocal track, for the A-side of the next single (and presumably a new lead vocal for "The Girl I Knew Somewhere"). When he got there, though, he found that Kirshner expected him to record several vocals so that Kirshner could choose the best. That wasn't what had been agreed, and so Dolenz flat-out refused to record anything at all. Luckily for Kirshner, Jones -- who was the most co-operative member of the band -- was willing to sing a handful of songs intended for Dolenz as well as the ones he was meant to sing. So the tape of "A Little Bit Me, A Little Bit You", the song intended for the next single, was slowed down so it would be in a suitable key for Jones instead, and he recorded the vocal for that: [Excerpt: The Monkees, "A Little Bit Me, A Little Bit You"] Incidentally, while Jones recorded vocals for several more tracks at the session -- and some would later be reused as album tracks a few years down the line -- not all of the recorded tracks were used for vocals, and this later gave rise to a rumour that has been repeated as fact by almost everyone involved, though it was a misunderstanding. Kirshner's next major success after the Monkees was another made-for-TV fictional band, the Archies, and their biggest hit was "Sugar Sugar", co-written and produced by Jeff Barry: [Excerpt: The Archies, "Sugar Sugar"] Both Kirshner and the Monkees have always claimed that the Monkees were offered "Sugar, Sugar" and turned it down. To Kirshner the moral of the story was that since "Sugar, Sugar" was a massive hit, it proved his instincts right and proved that the Monkees didn't know what would make a hit. To the Monkees, on the other hand, it showed that Kirshner wanted them to do bubblegum music that they considered ridiculous. This became such an established factoid that Dolenz regularly tells the story in his live performances, and includes a version of "Sugar, Sugar" in them, rearranged as almost a torch song: [Excerpt: Micky Dolenz, "Sugar, Sugar (live)"] But in fact, "Sugar, Sugar" wasn't written until long after Kirshner and the Monkees had parted ways. But one of the songs for which a backing track was recorded but no vocals were ever completed was "Sugar Man", a song by Denny Randell and Sandy Linzer, which they would later release themselves as an unsuccessful single: [Excerpt: Linzer and Randell, "Sugar Man"] Over the years, the Monkees not recording "Sugar Man" became the Monkees not recording "Sugar, Sugar". Meanwhile, Dolenz and Nesmith had flown over to the UK to do some promotional work and relax, and Jones soon also flew over, though didn't hang out with his bandmates, preferring to spend more time with his family. Both Dolenz and Nesmith spent a lot of time hanging out with British pop stars, and were pleased to find that despite the manufactured controversy about them being a manufactured group, none of the British musicians they admired seemed to care. Eric Burdon, for example, was quoted in the Melody Maker as saying "They make very good records, I can't understand how people get upset about them. You've got to make up your minds whether a group is a record production group or one that makes live appearances. For example, I like to hear a Phil Spector record and I don't worry if it's the Ronettes or Ike and Tina Turner... I like the Monkees record as a grand record, no matter how people scream. So somebody made a record and they don't play, so what? Just enjoy the record." Similarly, the Beatles were admirers of the Monkees, especially the TV show, despite being expected to have a negative opinion of them, as you can hear in this contemporary recording of Paul McCartney answering a fan's questions: Excerpt: Paul McCartney talks about the Monkees] Both Dolenz and Nesmith hung out with the Beatles quite a bit -- they both visited Sgt. Pepper recording sessions, and if you watch the film footage of the orchestral overdubs for "A Day in the Life", Nesmith is there with all the other stars of the period. Nesmith and his wife Phyllis even stayed with the Lennons for a couple of days, though Cynthia Lennon seems to have thought of the Nesmiths as annoying intruders who had been invited out of politeness and not realised they weren't wanted. That seems plausible, but at the same time, John Lennon doesn't seem the kind of person to not make his feelings known, and Michael Nesmith's reports of the few days they stayed there seem to describe a very memorable experience, where after some initial awkwardness he developed a bond with Lennon, particularly once he saw that Lennon was a fan of Captain Beefheart, who was a friend of Nesmith, and whose Safe as Milk album Lennon was examining when Nesmith turned up, and whose music at this point bore a lot of resemblance to the kind of thing Nesmith was doing: [Excerpt: Captain Beefheart and the Magic Band, "Yellow Brick Road"] Or at least, that's how Nesmith always told the story later -- though Safe as Milk didn't come out until nearly six months later. It's possible he's conflating memories from a later trip to the UK in June that year -- where he also talked about how Lennon was the only person he'd really got on with on the previous trip, because "he's a compassionate person. I know he has a reputation for being caustic, but it is only a cover for the depth of his feeling." Nesmith and Lennon apparently made some experimental music together during the brief stay, with Nesmith being impressed by Lennon's Mellotron and later getting one himself. Dolenz, meanwhile, was spending more time with Paul McCartney, and with Spencer Davis of his current favourite band The Spencer Davis Group. But even more than that he was spending a lot of time with Samantha Juste, a model and TV presenter whose job it was to play the records on Top of the Pops, the most important British TV pop show, and who had released a record herself a couple of months earlier, though it hadn't been a success: [Excerpt: Samantha Juste, "No-one Needs My Love Today"] The two quickly fell deeply in love, and Juste would become Dolenz's first wife the next year. When Nesmith and Dolenz arrived back in the US after their time off, they thought the plan was still to release "A Little Bit Me, A Little Bit You" with "The Girl I Knew Somewhere" on the B-side. So Nesmith was horrified to hear on the radio what the announcer said were the two sides of the new Monkees single -- "A Little Bit Me, A Little Bit You", and "She Hangs Out", another song from the Jeff Barry sessions with a Davy vocal. Don Kirshner had gone ahead and picked two songs from the Jeff Barry sessions and delivered them to RCA Records, who had put a single out in Canada. The single was very, *very* quickly withdrawn once the Monkees and the TV producers found out, and only promo copies seem to circulate -- rather than being credited to "the Monkees", both sides are credited to '"My Favourite Monkee" Davy Jones Sings'. The record had been withdrawn, but "A Little Bit Me, A Little Bit You" was clearly going to have to be the single. Three days after the record was released and pulled, Nesmith, Dolenz and Tork were back in the studio with Chip Douglas, recording a new B-side -- a new version of "The Girl I Knew Somewhere", this time with Dolenz on vocals. As Jones was still in the UK, John London added the tambourine part as well as the bass: [Excerpt: The Monkees, "The Girl I Knew Somewhere (single version)"] As Nesmith told the story a couple of months later, "Bert said 'You've got to get this thing in Micky's key for Micky to sing it.' I said 'Has Donnie made a commitment? I don't want to go there and break my neck in order to get this thing if Donnie hasn't made a commitment. And Bert refused to say anything. He said 'I can't tell you anything except just go and record.'" What had happened was that the people at Columbia had had enough of Kirshner. As far as Rafelson and Schneider were concerned, the real problem in all this was that Kirshner had been making public statements taking all the credit for the Monkees' success and casting himself as the puppetmaster. They thought this was disrespectful to the performers -- and unstated but probably part of it, that it was disrespectful to Rafelson and Schneider for their work putting the TV show together -- and that Kirshner had allowed his ego to take over. Things like the liner notes for More of the Monkees which made Kirshner and his stable of writers more important than the performers had, in the view of the people at Raybert Productions, put the Monkees in an impossible position and forced them to push back. Schneider later said "Kirshner had an ego that transcended everything else. As a matter of fact, the press issue was probably magnified a hundred times over because of Kirshner. He wanted everybody thinking 'Hey, he's doing all this, not them.' In the end it was very self-destructive because it heightened the whole press issue and it made them feel lousy." Kirshner was out of a job, first as the supervisor for the Monkees and then as the head of Columbia/Screen Gems Music. In his place came Lester Sill, the man who had got Leiber and Stoller together as songwriters, who had been Lee Hazelwood's production partner on his early records with Duane Eddy, and who had been the "Les" in Philles Records until Phil Spector pushed him out. Sill, unlike Kirshner, was someone who was willing to take a back seat and just be a steadying hand where needed. The reissued version of "A Little Bit Me, A Little Bit You" went to number two on the charts, behind "Somethin' Stupid" by Frank and Nancy Sinatra, produced by Sill's old colleague Hazelwood, and the B-side, "The Girl I Knew Somewhere", also charted separately, making number thirty-nine on the charts. The Monkees finally had a hit that they'd written and recorded by themselves. Pinocchio had become a real boy: [Excerpt: The Monkees, "The Girl I Knew Somewhere (single version)"] At the same session at which they'd recorded that track, the Monkees had recorded another Nesmith song, "Sunny Girlfriend", and that became the first song to be included on a new album, which would eventually be named Headquarters, and on which all the guitar, keyboard, drums, percussion, banjo, pedal steel, and backing vocal parts would for the first time be performed by the Monkees themselves. They brought in horn and string players on a couple of tracks, and the bass was variously played by John London, Chip Douglas, and Jerry Yester as Tork was more comfortable on keyboards and guitar than bass, but it was in essence a full band album. Jones got back the next day, and sessions began in earnest. The first song they recorded after his return was "Mr. Webster", a Boyce and Hart song that had been recorded with the Candy Store Prophets in 1966 but hadn't been released. This was one of three tracks on the album that were rerecordings of earlier outtakes, and it's fascinating to compare them, to see the strengths and weaknesses of both approaches. In the case of "Mr. Webster", the instrumental backing on the earlier version is definitely slicker: [Excerpt: The Monkees, "Mr. Webster (1st Recorded Version)"] But at the same time, there's a sense of dynamics in the group recording that's lacking from the original, like the backing dropping out totally on the word "Stop" -- a nice touch that isn't in the original. I am only speculating, but this may have been inspired by the similar emphasis on the word "stop" in "For What It's Worth" by Tork's old friend Stephen Stills: [Excerpt: The Monkees, "Mr. Webster (album version)"] Headquarters was a group album in another way though -- for the first time, Tork and Dolenz were bringing in songs they'd written -- Nesmith of course had supplied songs already for the two previous albums. Jones didn't write any songs himself yet, though he'd start on the next album, but he was credited with the rest of the group on two joke tracks, "Band 6", a jam on the Merrie Melodies theme “Merrily We Roll Along”, and "Zilch", a track made up of the four band members repeating nonsense phrases: [Excerpt: The Monkees, "Zilch"] Oddly, that track had a rather wider cultural resonance than a piece of novelty joke album filler normally would. It's sometimes covered live by They Might Be Giants: [Excerpt: They Might Be Giants, "Zilch"] While the rapper Del Tha Funkee Homosapien had a worldwide hit in 1991 with "Mistadobalina", built around a sample of Peter Tork from the track: [Excerpt: Del Tha Funkee Homosapien,"Mistadobalina"] Nesmith contributed three songs, all of them combining Beatles-style pop music and country influences, none more blatantly than the opening track, "You Told Me", which starts off parodying the opening of "Taxman", before going into some furious banjo-picking from Tork: [Excerpt: The Monkees, "You Told Me"] Tork, meanwhile, wrote "For Pete's Sake" with his flatmate of the time, and that became the end credits music for season two of the TV series: [Excerpt: The Monkees, "For Pete's Sake"] But while the other band members made important contributions, the track on the album that became most popular was the first song of Dolenz's to be recorded by the group. The lyrics recounted, in a semi-psychedelic manner, Dolenz's time in the UK, including meeting with the Beatles, who the song refers to as "the four kings of EMI", but the first verse is all about his new girlfriend Samantha Juste: [Excerpt: The Monkees, "Randy Scouse Git"] The song was released as a single in the UK, but there was a snag. Dolenz had given the song a title he'd heard on an episode of the BBC sitcom Til Death Us Do Part, which he'd found an amusing bit of British slang. Til Death Us Do Part was written by Johnny Speight, a writer with Associated London Scripts, and was a family sitcom based around the character of Alf Garnett, an ignorant, foul-mouthed reactionary bigot who hated young people, socialists, and every form of minority, especially Black people (who he would address by various slurs I'm definitely not going to repeat here), and was permanently angry at the world and abusive to his wife. As with another great sitcom from ALS, Steptoe and Son, which Norman Lear adapted for the US as Sanford and Son, Til Death Us Do Part was also adapted by Lear, and became All in the Family. But while Archie Bunker, the character based on Garnett in the US version, has some redeeming qualities because of the nature of US network sitcom, Alf Garnett has absolutely none, and is as purely unpleasant and unsympathetic a character as has ever been created -- which sadly didn't stop a section of the audience from taking him as a character to be emulated. A big part of the show's dynamic was the relationship between Garnett and his socialist son-in-law from Liverpool, played by Anthony Booth, himself a Liverpudlian socialist who would later have a similarly contentious relationship with his own decidedly non-socialist son-in-law, the future Prime Minister Tony Blair. Garnett was as close to foul-mouthed as was possible on British TV at the time, with Speight regularly negotiating with the BBC bosses to be allowed to use terms that were not otherwise heard on TV, and used various offensive terms about his family, including referring to his son-in-law as a "randy Scouse git". Dolenz had heard the phrase on TV, had no idea what it meant but loved the sound of it, and gave the song that title. But when the record came out in the UK, he was baffled to be told that the phrase -- which he'd picked up from a BBC TV show, after all -- couldn't be said normally on BBC broadcasts, so they would need to retitle the track. The translation into American English that Dolenz uses in his live shows to explain this to Americans is to say that "randy Scouse git" means "horny Liverpudlian putz", and that's more or less right. Dolenz took the need for an alternative title literally, and so the track that went to number two in the UK charts was titled "Alternate Title": [Excerpt: The Monkees, "Randy Scouse Git"] The album itself went to number one in both the US and the UK, though it was pushed off the top spot almost straight away by the release of Sgt Pepper. As sessions for Headquarters were finishing up, the group were already starting to think about their next album -- season two of the TV show was now in production, and they'd need to keep generating yet more musical material for it. One person they turned to was a friend of Chip Douglas'. Before the Turtles, Douglas had been in the Modern Folk Quartet, and they'd recorded "This Could Be the Night", which had been written for them by Harry Nilsson: [Excerpt: The MFQ, "This Could Be The Night"] Nilsson had just started recording his first solo album proper, at RCA Studios, the same studios that the Monkees were using. At this point, Nilsson still had a full-time job in a bank, working a night shift there while working on his album during the day, but Douglas knew that Nilsson was a major talent, and that assessment was soon shared by the group when Nilsson came in to demo nine of his songs for them: [Excerpt: Harry Nilsson, "1941 (demo)"] According to Nilsson, Nesmith said after that demo session "You just sat down there and blew our minds. We've been looking for songs, and you just sat down and played an *album* for us!" While the Monkees would attempt a few of Nilsson's songs over the next year or so, the first one they chose to complete was the first track recorded for their next album, Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn, and Jones, Ltd., a song which from the talkback at the beginning of the demo was always intended for Davy Jones to sing: [Excerpt: Harry Nilsson, "Cuddly Toy (demo)"] Oddly, given his romantic idol persona, a lot of the songs given to Jones to sing were anti-romantic, and often had a cynical and misogynistic edge. This had started with the first album's "I Want to Be Free", but by Pisces, it had gone to ridiculous extremes. Of the four songs Jones sings on the album, "Hard to Believe", the first song proper that he ever co-wrote, is a straightforward love  song, but the other three have a nasty edge to them. A remade version of Jeff Barry's "She Hangs Out" is about an underaged girl, starts with the lines "How old d'you say your sister was? You know you'd better keep an eye on her" and contains lines like "she could teach you a thing or two" and "you'd better get down here on the double/before she gets her pretty little self in trouble/She's so fine". Goffin and King's "Star Collector" is worse, a song about a groupie with lines like "How can I love her, if I just don't respect her?" and "It won't take much time, before I get her off my mind" But as is so often the way, these rather nasty messages were wrapped up in some incredibly catchy music, and that was even more the case with "Cuddly Toy", a song which at least is more overtly unpleasant -- it's very obvious that Nilsson doesn't intend the protagonist of the song to be at all sympathetic, which is possibly not the case in "She Hangs Out" or "Star Collector". But the character Jones is singing is *viciously* cruel here, mocking and taunting a girl who he's coaxed to have sex with him, only to scorn her as soon as he's got what he wanted: [Excerpt: The Monkees, "Cuddly Toy"] It's a great song if you like the cruelest of humour combined with the cheeriest of music, and the royalties from the song allowed Nilsson to quit the job at the bank. "Cuddly Toy", and Chip Douglas and Bill Martin's song "The Door Into Summer", were recorded the same way as Headquarters, with the group playing *as a group*, but as recordings for the album progressed the group fell into a new way of working, which Peter Tork later dubbed "mixed-mode". They didn't go back to having tracks cut for them by session musicians, apart from Jones' song "Hard to Believe", for which the entire backing track was created by one of his co-writers overdubbing himself, but Dolenz, who Tork always said was "incapable of repeating a triumph", was not interested in continuing to play drums in the studio. Instead, a new hybrid Monkees would perform most of the album. Nesmith would still play the lead guitar, Tork would provide the keyboards, Chip Douglas would play all the bass and add some additional guitar, and "Fast" Eddie Hoh, the session drummer who had been a touring drummer with the Modern Folk Quartet and the Mamas and the Papas, among others, would play drums on the records, with Dolenz occasionally adding a bit of acoustic guitar. And this was the lineup that would perform on the hit single from Pisces. "Pleasant Valley Sunday" was written by Gerry Goffin and Carole King, who had written several songs for the group's first two albums (and who would continue to provide them with more songs). As with their earlier songs for the group, King had recorded a demo: [Excerpt: Carole King, "Pleasant Valley Sunday (demo)"] Previously -- and subsequently -- when presented with a Carole King demo, the group and their producers would just try to duplicate it as closely as possible, right down to King's phrasing. Bob Rafelson has said that he would sometimes hear those demos and wonder why King didn't just make records herself -- and without wanting to be too much of a spoiler for a few years' time, he wasn't the only one wondering that. But this time, the group had other plans. In particular, they wanted to make a record with a strong guitar riff to it -- Nesmith has later referenced their own "Last Train to Clarksville" and the Beatles' "Day Tripper" as two obvious reference points for the track. Douglas came up with a riff and taught it to Nesmith, who played it on the track: [Excerpt: The Monkees, "Pleasant Valley Sunday"] The track also ended with the strongest psychedelic -- or "psycho jello" as the group would refer to it -- freak out that they'd done to this point, a wash of saturated noise: [Excerpt: The Monkees, "Pleasant Valley Sunday"] King was unhappy with the results, and apparently glared at Douglas the next time they met. This may be because of the rearrangement from her intentions, but it may also be for a reason that Douglas later suspected. When recording the track, he hadn't been able to remember all the details of her demo, and in particular he couldn't remember exactly how the middle eight went. This is the version on King's demo: [Excerpt: Carole King, "Pleasant Valley Sunday (demo)"] While here's how the Monkees rendered it, with slightly different lyrics: [Excerpt: The Monkees, "Pleasant Valley Sunday"] I also think there's a couple of chord changes in the second verse that differ between King and the Monkees, but I can't be sure that's not my ears deceiving me. Either way, though, the track was a huge success, and became one of the group's most well-known and well-loved tracks, making number three on the charts behind "All You Need is Love" and "Light My Fire". And while it isn't Dolenz drumming on the track, the fact that it's Nesmith playing guitar and Tork on the piano -- and the piano part is one of the catchiest things on the record -- meant that they finally had a proper major hit on which they'd played (and it seems likely that Dolenz contributed some of the acoustic rhythm guitar on the track, along with Bill Chadwick, and if that's true all three Monkee instrumentalists did play on the track). Pisces is by far and away the best album the group ever made, and stands up well against anything else that came out around that time. But cracks were beginning to show in the group. In particular, the constant battle to get some sort of creative input had soured Nesmith on the whole project. Chip Douglas later said "When we were doing Pisces Michael would come in with three songs; he knew he had three songs coming on the album. He knew that he was making a lot of money if he got his original songs on there. So he'd be real enthusiastic and cooperative and real friendly and get his three songs done. Then I'd say 'Mike, can you come in and help on this one we're going to do with Micky here?' He said 'No, Chip, I can't. I'm busy.' I'd say, 'Mike, you gotta come in the studio.' He'd say 'No Chip, I'm afraid I'm just gonna have to be ornery about it. I'm not comin' in.' That's when I started not liking Mike so much any more." Now, as is so often the case with the stories from this period, this appears to be inaccurate in the details -- Nesmith is present on every track on the album except Jones' solo "Hard to Believe" and Tork's spoken-word track "Peter Percival Patterson's Pet Pig Porky", and indeed this is by far the album with *most* Nesmith input, as he takes five lead vocals, most of them on songs he didn't write. But Douglas may well be summing up Nesmith's *attitude* to the band at this point -- listening to Nesmith's commentaries on episodes of the TV show, by this point he felt disengaged from everything that was going on, like his opinions weren't welcome. That said, Nesmith did still contribute what is possibly the single most innovative song the group ever did, though the innovations weren't primarily down to Nesmith: [Excerpt: The Monkees, "Daily Nightly"] Nesmith always described the lyrics to "Daily Nightly" as being about the riots on Sunset Strip, but while they're oblique, they seem rather to be about streetwalking sex workers -- though it's perhaps understandable that Nesmith would never admit as much. What made the track innovative was the use of the Moog synthesiser. We talked about Robert Moog in the episode on "Good Vibrations" -- he had started out as a Theremin manufacturer, and had built the ribbon synthesiser that Mike Love played live on "Good Vibrations", and now he was building the first commercially available easily usable synthesisers. Previously, electronic instruments had either been things like the clavioline -- a simple monophonic keyboard instrument that didn't have much tonal variation -- or the RCA Mark II, a programmable synth that could make a wide variety of sounds, but took up an entire room and was programmed with punch cards. Moog's machines were bulky but still transportable, and they could be played in real time with a keyboard, but were still able to be modified to make a wide variety of different sounds. While, as we've seen, there had been electronic keyboard instruments as far back as the 1930s, Moog's instruments were for all intents and purposes the first synthesisers as we now understand the term. The Moog was introduced in late spring 1967, and immediately started to be used for making experimental and novelty records, like Hal Blaine's track "Love In", which came out at the beginning of June: [Excerpt: Hal Blaine, "Love In"] And the Electric Flag's soundtrack album for The Trip, the drug exploitation film starring Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper and written by Jack Nicholson we talked about last time, when Arthur Lee moved into a house used in the film: [Excerpt: The Electric Flag, "Peter's Trip"] In 1967 there were a total of six albums released with a Moog on them (as well as one non-album experimental single). Four of the albums were experimental or novelty instrumental albums of this type. Only two of them were rock albums -- Strange Days by the Doors, and Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn, & Jones Ltd by the Monkees. The Doors album was released first, but I believe the Monkees tracks were recorded before the Doors overdubbed the Moog on the tracks on their album, though some session dates are hard to pin down exactly. If that's the case it would make the Monkees the very first band to use the Moog on an actual rock record (depending on exactly how you count the Trip soundtrack -- this gets back again to my old claim that there's no first anything). But that's not the only way in which "Daily Nightly" was innovative. All the first seven albums to feature the Moog featured one man playing the instrument -- Paul Beaver, the Moog company's West Coast representative, who played on all the novelty records by members of the Wrecking Crew, and on the albums by the Electric Flag and the Doors, and on The Notorious Byrd Brothers by the Byrds, which came out in early 1968. And Beaver did play the Moog on one track on Pisces, "Star Collector". But on "Daily Nightly" it's Micky Dolenz playing the Moog, making him definitely the second person ever to play a Moog on a record of any kind: [Excerpt: The Monkees, "Daily Nightly"] Dolenz indeed had bought his own Moog -- widely cited as being the second one ever in private ownership, a fact I can't check but which sounds plausible given that by 1970 less than thirty musicians owned one -- after seeing Beaver demonstrate the instrument at the Monterey Pop Festival. The Monkees hadn't played Monterey, but both Dolenz and Tork had attended the festival -- if you watch the famous film of it you see Dolenz and his girlfriend Samantha in the crowd a *lot*, while Tork introduced his friends in the Buffalo Springfield. As well as discovering the Moog there, Dolenz had been astonished by something else: [Excerpt: The Jimi Hendrix Experience, "Hey Joe (Live at Monterey)"] As Peter Tork later put it "I didn't get it. At Monterey Jimi followed the Who and the Who busted up their things and Jimi bashed up his guitar. I said 'I just saw explosions and destruction. Who needs it?' But Micky got it. He saw the genius and went for it." Dolenz was astonished by Hendrix, and insisted that he should be the support act on the group's summer tour. This pairing might sound odd on paper, but it made more sense at the time than it might sound. The Monkees were by all accounts a truly astonishing live act at this point -- Frank Zappa gave them a backhanded compliment by saying they were the best-sounding band in LA, before pointing out that this was because they could afford the best equipment. That *was* true, but it was also the case that their TV experience gave them a different attitude to live performance than anyone else performing at the time. A handful of groups had started playing stadiums, most notably of course the Beatles, but all of these acts had come up through playing clubs and theatres and essentially just kept doing their old act with no thought as to how the larger space worked, except to put their amps through a louder PA. The Monkees, though, had *started* in stadiums, and had started out as mass entertainers, and so their live show was designed from the ground up to play to those larger spaces. They had costume changes, elaborate stage sets -- like oversized fake Vox amps they burst out of at the start of the show -- a light show and a screen on which film footage was projected. In effect they invented stadium performances as we now know them. Nesmith later said "In terms of putting on a show there was never any question in my mind, as far as the rock 'n' roll era is concerned, that we put on probably the finest rock and roll stage show ever. It was beautifully lit, beautifully costumed, beautifully produced. I mean, for Christ sakes, it was practically a revue." The Monkees were confident enough in their stage performance that at a recent show at the Hollywood Bowl they'd had Ike and Tina Turner as their opening act -- not an act you'd want to go on after if you were going to be less than great, and an act from very similar chitlin' circuit roots to Jimi Hendrix. So from their perspective, it made sense. If you're going to be spectacular yourselves, you have no need to fear a spectacular opening act. Hendrix was less keen -- he was about the only musician in Britain who *had* made disparaging remarks about the Monkees -- but opening for the biggest touring band in the world isn't an opportunity you pass up, and again it isn't such a departure as one might imagine from the bills he was already playing. Remember that Monterey is really the moment when "pop" and "rock" started to split -- the split we've been talking about for a few months now -- and so the Jimi Hendrix Experience were still considered a pop band, and as such had played the normal British pop band package tours. In March and April that year, they'd toured on a bill with the Walker Brothers, Cat Stevens, and Englebert Humperdinck -- and Hendrix had even filled in for Humperdinck's sick guitarist on one occasion. Nesmith, Dolenz, and Tork all loved having Hendrix on tour with them, just because it gave them a chance to watch him live every night (Jones, whose musical tastes were more towards Anthony Newley, wasn't especially impressed), and they got on well on a personal level -- there are reports of Hendrix jamming with Dolenz and Steve Stills in hotel rooms. But there was one problem, as Dolenz often recreates in his live act: [Excerpt: Micky Dolenz, "Purple Haze"] The audience response to Hendrix from the Monkees' fans was so poor that by mutual agreement he left the tour after only a handful of shows. After the summer tour, the group went back to work on the TV show and their next album. Or, rather, four individuals went back to work. By this point, the group had drifted apart from each other, and from Douglas -- Tork, the one who was still keenest on the idea of the group as a group, thought that Pisces, good as it was, felt like a Chip Douglas album rather than a Monkees album. The four band members had all by now built up their own retinues of hangers-on and collaborators, and on set for the TV show they were now largely staying with their own friends rather than working as a group. And that was now reflected in their studio work. From now on, rather than have a single producer working with them as a band, the four men would work as individuals, producing their own tracks, occasionally with outside help, and bringing in session musicians to work on them. Some tracks from this point on would be genuine Monkees -- plural -- tracks, and all tracks would be credited as "produced by the Monkees", but basically the four men would from now on be making solo tracks which would be combined into albums, though Dolenz and Jones would occasionally guest on tracks by the others, especially when Nesmith came up with a song he thought would be more suited to their voices. Indeed the first new recording that happened after the tour was an entire Nesmith solo album -- a collection of instrumental versions of his songs, called The Wichita Train Whistle Sings, played by members of the Wrecking Crew and a few big band instrumentalists, arranged by Shorty Rogers. [Excerpt: Michael Nesmith, "You Told Me"] Hal Blaine in his autobiography claimed that the album was created as a tax write-off for Nesmith, though Nesmith always vehemently denied it, and claimed it was an artistic experiment, though not one that came off well. Released alongside Pisces, though, came one last group-recorded single. The B-side, "Goin' Down", is a song that was credited to the group and songwriter Diane Hildebrand, though in fact it developed from a jam on someone else's song. Nesmith, Tork, Douglas and Hoh attempted to record a backing track for a version of Mose Allison's jazz-blues standard "Parchman Farm": [Excerpt: Mose Allison, "Parchman Farm"] But after recording it, they'd realised that it didn't sound that much like the original, and that all it had in common with it was a chord sequence. Nesmith suggested that rather than put it out as a cover version, they put a new melody and lyrics to it, and they commissioned Hildebrand, who'd co-written songs for the group before, to write them, and got Shorty Rogers to write a horn arrangement to go over their backing track. The eventual songwriting credit was split five ways, between Hildebrand and the four Monkees -- including Davy Jones who had no involvement with the recording, but not including Douglas or Hoh. The lyrics Hildebrand came up with were a funny patter song about a failed suicide, taken at an extremely fast pace, which Dolenz pulls off magnificently: [Excerpt: The Monkees, "Goin' Down"] The A-side, another track with a rhythm track by Nesmith, Tork, Douglas, and Hoh, was a song that had been written by John Stewart of the Kingston Trio, who you may remember from the episode on "San Francisco" as being a former songwriting partner of John Phillips. Stewart had written the song as part of a "suburbia trilogy", and was not happy with the finished product. He said later "I remember going to bed thinking 'All I did today was write 'Daydream Believer'." Stewart used to include the song in his solo sets, to no great approval, and had shopped the song around to bands like We Five and Spanky And Our Gang, who had both turned it down. He was unhappy with it himself, because of the chorus: [Excerpt: John Stewart, "Daydream Believer"] Stewart was ADHD, and the words "to a", coming as they did slightly out of the expected scansion for the line, irritated him so greatly that he thought the song could never be recorded by anyone, but when Chip Douglas asked if he had any songs, he suggested that one. As it turned out, there was a line of lyric that almost got the track rejected, but it wasn't the "to a". Stewart's original second verse went like this: [Excerpt: John Stewart, "Daydream Believer"] RCA records objected to the line "now you know how funky I can be" because funky, among other meanings, meant smelly, and they didn't like the idea of Davy Jones singing about being smelly. Chip Douglas phoned Stewart to tell him that they were insisting on changing the line, and suggesting "happy" instead. Stewart objected vehemently -- that change would reverse the entire meaning of the line, and it made no sense, and what about artistic integrity? But then, as he later said "He said 'Let me put it to you this way, John. If he can't sing 'happy' they won't do it'. And I said 'Happy's working real good for me now.' That's exactly what I said to him." He never regretted the decision -- Stewart would essentially live off the royalties from "Daydream Believer" for the rest of his life -- though he seemed always to be slightly ambivalent and gently mocking about the song in his own performances, often changing the lyrics slightly: [Excerpt: John Stewart, "Daydream Believer"] The Monkees had gone into the studio and cut the track, again with Tork on piano, Nesmith on guitar, Douglas on bass, and Hoh on drums. Other than changing "funky" to "happy", there were two major changes made in the studio. One seems to have been Douglas' idea -- they took the bass riff from the pre-chorus to the Beach Boys' "Help Me Rhonda": [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, "Help Me Rhonda"] and Douglas played that on the bass as the pre-chorus for "Daydream Believer", with Shorty Rogers later doubling it in the horn arrangement: [Excerpt: The Monkees, "Daydream Believer"] And the other is the piano intro, which also becomes an instrumental bridge, which was apparently the invention of Tork, who played it: [Excerpt: The Monkees, "Daydream Believer"] The track went to number one, becoming the group's third and final number one hit, and their fifth of six million-sellers. It was included on the next album, The Birds, The Bees, and the Monkees, but that piano part would be Tork's only contribution to the album. As the group members were all now writing songs and cutting their own tracks, and were also still rerecording the odd old unused song from the initial 1966 sessions, The Birds, The Bees, and the Monkees was pulled together from a truly astonishing amount of material. The expanded triple-CD version of the album, now sadly out of print, has multiple versions of forty-four different songs, ranging from simple acoustic demos to completed tracks, of which twelve were included on the final album. Tork did record several tracks during the sessions, but he spent much of the time recording and rerecording a single song, "Lady's Baby", which eventually stretched to five different recorded versions over multiple sessions in a five-month period. He racked up huge studio bills on the track, bringing in Steve Stills and Dewey Martin of the Buffalo Springfield, and Buddy Miles, to try to help him capture the sound in his head, but the various takes are almost indistinguishable from one another, and so it's difficult to see what the problem was: [Excerpt: The Monkees, "Lady's Baby"] Either way, the track wasn't finished by the time the album came out, and the album that came out was a curiously disjointed and unsatisfying effort, a mixture of recycled old Boyce and Hart songs, some songs by Jones, who at this point was convinced that "Broadway-rock" was going to be the next big thing and writing songs that sounded like mediocre showtunes, and a handful of experimental songs written by Nesmith. You could pull together a truly great ten- or twelve-track album from the masses of material they'd recorded, but the one that came out was mediocre at best, and became the first Monkees album not to make number one -- though it still made number three and sold in huge numbers. It also had the group's last million-selling single on it, "Valleri", an old Boyce and Hart reject from 1966 that had been remade with Boyce and Hart producing and their old session players, though the production credit was still now given to the Monkees: [Excerpt: The Monkees, "Valleri"] Nesmith said at the time he considered it the worst song ever written. The second season of the TV show was well underway, and despite -- or possibly because of -- the group being clearly stoned for much of the filming, it contains a lot of the episodes that fans of the group think of most fondly, including several episodes that break out of the formula the show had previously established in interesting ways. Tork and Dolenz were both also given the opportunity to direct episodes, and Dolenz also co-wrote his episode, which ended up being the last of the series. In another sign of how the group were being given more creative control over the show, the last three episodes of the series had guest appearances by favourite musicians of the group members who they wanted to give a little exposure to, and those guest appearances sum up the character of the band members remarkably well. Tork, for whatever reason, didn't take up this option, but the other three did. Jones brought on his friend Charlie Smalls, who would later go on to write the music for the Broadway musical The Wiz, to demonstrate to Jones the difference between Smalls' Black soul and Jones' white soul: [Excerpt: Davy Jones and Charlie Smalls] Nesmith, on the other hand, brought on Frank Zappa. Zappa put on Nesmith's Monkee shirt and wool hat and pretended to be Nesmith, and interviewed Nesmith with a false nose and moustache pretending to be Zappa, as they both mercilessly mocked the previous week's segment with Jones and Smalls: [Excerpt: Michael Nesmith and Frank Zappa] Nesmith then "conducted" Zappa as Zappa used a sledgehammer to "play" a car, parodying his own appearance on the Steve Allen Show playing a bicycle, to the presumed bemusement of the Monkees' fanbase who would not be likely to remember a one-off performance on a late-night TV show from five years earlier. And the final thing ever to be shown on an episode of the Monkees didn't feature any of the Monkees at all. Micky Dolenz, who directed and co-wrote that episode, about an evil wizard who was using the power of a space plant (named after the group's slang for dope) to hypnotise people through the TV, chose not to interact with his guest as the others had, but simply had Tim Buckley perform a solo acoustic version of his then-unreleased song "Song to the Siren": [Excerpt: Tim Buckley, "Song to the Siren"] By the end of the second season, everyone knew they didn't want to make another season of the TV show. Instead, they were going to do what Rafelson and Schneider had always wanted, and move into film. The planning stages for the film, which was initially titled Changes but later titled Head -- so that Rafelson and Schneider could bill their next film as "From the guys who gave you Head" -- had started the previous summer, before the sessions that produced The Birds, The Bees, and the Monkees. To write the film, the group went off with Rafelson and Schneider for a short holiday, and took with them their mutual friend Jack Nicholson. Nicholson was at this time not the major film star he later became. Rather he was a bit-part actor who was mostly associated with American International Pictures, the ultra-low-budget film company that has come up on several occasions in this podcast. Nicholson had appeared mostly in small roles, in films like The Little Shop of Horrors: [Excerpt: The Little Shop of Horrors] He'd appeared in multiple films made by Roger Corman, often appearing with Boris Karloff, and by Monte Hellman, but despite having been a working actor for a decade, his acting career was going nowhere, and by this point he had basically given up on the idea of being an actor, and had decided to start working behind the camera. He'd written the scripts for a few of the low-budget films he'd appeared in, and he'd recently scripted The Trip, the film we mentioned earlier: [Excerpt: The Trip trailer] So the group, Rafelson, Schneider, and Nicholson all went away for a weekend, and they all got extremely stoned, took acid, and talked into a tape recorder for hours on end. Nicholson then transcribed those recordings, cleaned them up, and structured the worthwhile ideas into something quite remarkable: [Excerpt: The Monkees, "Ditty Diego"] If the Monkees TV show had been inspired by the Marx Brothers and Three Stooges, and by Richard Lester's directorial style, the only precursor I can find for Head is in the TV work of Lester's colleague Spike Milligan, but I don't think there's any reasonable way in which Nicholson or anyone else involved could have taken inspiration from Milligan's series Q.  But what they ended up with is something that resembles, more than anything else, Monty Python's Flying Circus, a TV series that wouldn't start until a year after Head came out. It's a series of ostensibly unconnected sketches, linked by a kind of dream logic, with characters wandering from one loose narrative into a totally different one, actors coming out of character on a regular basis, and no attempt at a coherent narrative. It contains regular examples of channel-zapping, with excerpts from old films being spliced in, and bits of news footage juxtaposed with comedy sketches and musical performances in ways that are sometimes thought-provoking, sometimes distasteful, and occasionally both -- as when a famous piece of footage of a Vietnamese prisoner of war being shot in the head hard-cuts to screaming girls in the audience at a Monkees concert, a performance which ends with the girls tearing apart the group and revealing that they're really just cheap-looking plastic mannequins. The film starts, and ends, with the Monkees themselves attempting suicide, jumping off a bridge into the ocean -- but the end reveals that in fact the ocean they're in is just water in a glass box, and they're trapped in it. And knowing this means that when you watch the film a second time, you find that it does have a story. The Monkees are trapped in a box which in some ways represents life, the universe, and one's own mind, and in other ways represents the TV and their TV careers. Each of them is trying in his own way to escape, and each ends up trapped by his own limitations, condemned to start the cycle over and over again. The film features parodies of popular film genres like the boxing film (Davy is supposed to throw a fight with Sonny Liston at the instruction of gangsters), the Western, and the war film, but huge chunks of the film take place on a film studio backlot, and characters from one segment reappear in another, often commenting negatively on the film or the band, as when Frank Zappa as a critic calls Davy Jones' soft-shoe routine to a Harry Nilsson song "very white", or when a canteen worker in the studio calls the group "God's gift to the eight-year-olds". The film is constantly deconstructing and commenting on itself and the filmmaking process -- Tork hits that canteen worker, whose wig falls off revealing the actor playing her to be a man, and then it's revealed that the "behind the scenes" footage is itself scripted, as director Bob Rafelson and scriptwriter Jack Nicholson come into frame and reassure Tork, who's concerned that hitting a woman would be bad for his image. They tell him they can always cut it from the finished film if it doesn't work. While "Ditty Diego", the almost rap rewriting of the Monkees theme we heard earlier, sets out a lot of how the film asks to be interpreted and how it works narratively, the *spiritual* and thematic core of the film is in another song, Tork's "Long Title (Do I Have to Do This All Over Again?)", which in later solo performances Tork would give the subtitle "The Karma Blues": [Excerpt: The Monkees, "Long Title (Do I Have To Do This All Over Again?)"] Head is an extraordinary film, and one it's impossible to sum up in anything less than an hour-long episode of its own. It's certainly not a film that's to everyone's taste, and not every aspect of it works -- it is a film that is absolutely of its time, in ways that are both good and bad. But it's one of the most inventive things ever put out by a major film studio, and it's one that rightly secured the Monkees a certain amount of cult credibility over the decades. The soundtrack album is a return to form after the disappointing Birds, Bees, too. Nicholson put the album together, linking the eight songs in the film with collages of dialogue and incidental music, repurposing and recontextualising the dialogue to create a new experience, one that people have compared with Frank Zappa's contemporaneous We're Only In It For The Money, though while t

Episode 88 The Theremin Part 1: From the Beginning to 1970 Playlist Leon Theremin, “Deep Night” (1930 Les Actualités françaises). Soundtrack from a short, early sound film of Leon Theremin playing an RCA production model Theremin. Zinaida Hanenfeldt, Nathaniel Shilkret, Victor Salon Orchestra, “Love (Your Spell is Everywhere)” (1930 Victor). RCA theremin, Zinaida Hanenfeldt; Victor Salon Orchestra conducted by Nathaniel Shilkret. The earliest records made with the Theremin were recorded in 1930 to highlight the release of the RCA Theremin. This was one of the first. This recording session dates from January 17, 1930 and was made in New York at the 28 West 44th St. studio. Billed as a recording of “Orchestra, with theremin soloist,” this was most likely made as a demonstration of the newly introduced RCA Theremin. Seven months later, Lennington Shewell (see next listing) took up making several demonstration records produced by his father, RCA VP G. Dunbar Shewell in the Camden, NJ recording studios. Lennington H. Shewell, “Dancing with Tears in My Eyes” (1930 Victor). Recorced on July 21, 1930, in Camden, NJ Studio 1. Theremin solo, Lennington H. Shewell; piano accompaniment, Edward C. Harsch. Noted as "R.C.A. theremin: Instructions and exercises for playing" and "G. Dunbar Shewell, present." Lennington H. Shewell, “In a Monastery Garden” from “Love Sends A Gift Of Roses” / “In A Monastery Garden” (1935 Victor). Shewell was an American pianist songwriter and Thereminist. He recorded several discs for RCA . Shewell was employed by RCA to travel around the USA demonstrating the Theremin as part of its marketing campaign. His father was George Dunbar Shewell, who was a vice-president of RCA for a time. Clara Rockmore, “The Swan” from Theremin (1977 Delos). Piano, Nadia Reisenberg; Produced by Robert Moog, Shirleigh Moog; Theremin, Clara Rockmore. Rockmore, of course, was the key master of the Theremin back in the 1930s and 40s, having originally learned from Leon Theremin himself. These recordings were later produced by the Moogs in the 1970s and feature some dazzling, virtuoso performances by Rockmore as she interprets many of her favorite classical works. “The Swan” was composed in by Camille Saint-Saëns (1983-1921) that was usually a showcase for a cellist and, with Rockmore's brilliant interpretation, became a much-loved work by Thereminists. Even Samuel Hoffman made a recording of it. Clara Rockmore, “Berceuse” from Theremin (1977 Delos). Piano, Nadia Reisenberg; Produced by Robert Moog, Shirleigh Moog; Theremin, Clara Rockmore. Here Rockmore interprets a piece by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840-1893). Lucie Bigelow Rosen, “Concerto in F” b Mortimer Browning (1940, privately recorded practice session). Ms. Rosen recorded this rehearsal in preparation for a live performance. Of great interest is that you can hear her speaking at the beginning and end of the session, and her playing is quite sophisticated. Lucie Bigelow Rosen, “The Old Refrain” by Fritz Kreisler (circa 1940 privately recorded session). Another privately recorded session by Ms. Rosen. Miklós Rózsa, Suite from The Lost Weekend (excerpt) from The Lost Weekend (The Classic Film Score) (1945 privately issued). Conducted, composed by Miklós Rózsa; Theremin, Dr. Samuel J. Hoffman. “This is a limited-edition recording, produced for the promotional purposes of the composer and is not licensed for public sale. The music was transferred to tape from the original acetate masters.” This was not a score released on a conventional soundtrack. This recording comes from a privately issued disc commissioned by the composer and I date it to around 1970. I wanted to include it because it a notably obscure soundtrack recording Theremin playing by Hoffman from the same era as the more famous and widely distributed Spellbound soundtrack. Harry Revel and Leslie Baxter with Dr. Samuel J. Hoffman, “Lunar Rhapsody” from Music Out Of The Moon: Music Unusual Featuring The Theremin (1947 Capitol). Hoffman, a foot doctor by profession, was one of the best-known Theremin players of his time. Not as persnickety as Rockmore about playing “spooky sounds,” he basically filled a gap in Theremin playing in popular music that Clara Rockmore refused to fill. He played one of the RCA production model Theremins from 1930. His most famous contributions included collaborations with Les Baxter, Miklos Rozsa, Harry Revel, and Bernard Herrmann, and his momentous movie music for Spellbound (1945) and The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951). He was initially a classically trained violinist, and at age 14 he began playing the violin professionally in New York City. By 1936, he had taken up the Theremin and begun featuring it in publicity for his engagements. He quickly gained notoriety using the electronic instrument and he became one of the world's most famous Theremin players. Harry Revel and Leslie Baxter with Dr. Samuel J. Hoffman, “Radar Blues” from Music Out Of The Moon: Music Unusual Featuring The Theremin (1947 Capitol). Harry Revel, Leslie Baxter & Dr. Samuel J. Hoffman, “Fame” from Perfume Set to Music (1948 RCA Victor). Composed by Harry Revel; Orchestra Chorus conducted by Leslie Baxter; Theremin, Dr. Samuel J. Hoffman. "As interpreted by the British-born composer, Harry Revel, in a musical suite describing six exotic Corday fragrances." Harry Revel, Leslie Baxter & Dr. Samuel J. Hoffman, “Obsession” from Perfume Set to Music (1948 RCA Victor). Composed by Harry Revel; Orchestra Chorus conducted by Leslie Baxter; Theremin, Dr. Samuel J. Hoffman. "As interpreted by the British-born composer, Harry Revel, in a musical suite describing six exotic Corday fragrances." Elliot Lawrence and His Orchestra, featuring Lucie Bigelow Rosen, “Gigolette” (1949 Columbia). An attempt to bring the Theremin into popular music, this recording by Elliot Lawrence and his Orchestra made at the Columbia 30th Street Studio in Midtown Manhattan features Lucie Bigelow Rosen. Ms. Rosen and her husband Walter were instrumental in providing offices for Leon Theremin to work in New York during the 1930s. The inventor personally made two instruments for her. She was a practiced enthusiast and did much concertizing with the Theremin from about 1935 to 1940. Samuel J. Hoffman, “Remembering Your Lips” from Music for Peace of Mind (1950 Capitol). Orchestra conducted by Billy May; composed by Harry Revel; Theremin, Dr. Samuel J. Hoffman. “Music for PEACE OF MIND featuring the THEREMIN with orchestra.” Samuel J. Hoffman, “This Room Is My Castle of Quiet” from Music for Peace of Mind (1950 Capitol). Orchestra conducted by Billy May; composed by Harry Revel; Theremin, Dr. Samuel J. Hoffman. “Music for PEACE OF MIND featuring the THEREMIN with orchestra.” Bernard Herrmann, Dr. Samuel J. Hoffman, “Gort,” “The Visor,” “The Telescope” from The Day the Earth Stood Still (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack) (1951 20th Century Fox). Soundtrack recorded at the Twentieth Century Fox Scoring Stage August 1951, reissued in 1993. Composed by Bernard Herrmann; Conducted by Alfred Newman, Bernard Herrmann, Lionel Newman; Theremin by Dr. Samuel J. Hoffman. Hoffmnan played one of the RCA production model Theremins from 1930 but by this time around 1950 had modified it to include an external speaker connection for improved recording of the instrument during studio sessions. Samuel J. Hoffman, “Moonlight Sonata” (Theremin Solo with Piano Accompaniment) (1951 Capitol). Eddie Layton, “Laura”, from Organ Moods in Hi-Fi (1955 Mercury). This song is noted as including the “Ethereal sound of the theremin.” Layton was a popular Hammond organ player, later on in his career he played the organ at old Yankee Stadium for nearly 40 years, earning him membership in the New York Sports Hall of Fame. This is his first album, one many, and is notable for using some early organ electronics. “It must be stated that all of the sounds in this album were created by Eddie Layton solely on the Hammond Organ including the rhythm sounds of the bass and guitar, by means of special imported electronic recording devices and microphones.” With the exception of the Theremin, I would add. An unknown Theremin model, most likely vacuum-tube driven, possibly an original RCA model. Monty Kelly And His Orchestra with Dr. Samuel J. Hoffman, “Blue Mirage” from “Blue Mirage”/ “That Sweetheart of Mine” (1955 Essex). Single release from this Orchestra led by Monty Kelly and featuring Hoffman on Theremin. Unknown Artist, “The Fiend Who Walked the West” lobby recording (1958). Theremin or musical saw? This is from an LP recording I have that was used in movie lobbies to entice people to come and see the horror film, The Fiend Who Walked the West (1958). Could this be a Theremin, or a musical saw? I think the latter. I have no information on who played the instrument, but it makes for some curious listening from days gone by while acknowledging one of the key sources of confusion for those who collect Theremin recordings. Sonny Moon And His Orchestra, “Countdown” from “Rememb'ring”/ “Countdown” (1958 Warner Brothers). A 45-RPM single from this short-lived group od the late 1950s. Includes an uncredited Theremin performance. Milton Grayson and Dr. Samuel J. Hoffman Theremin and Orchestra, “I Paid the Penalty” (1960 Royalty Recording Co.). A 45-RPM single about capital punishment. On one side of the record a San Francisco Attorney speaks about capital punishment. On the other side is this vocal by Grayson that dramatizes the subject. This appears to be some sort of public service announcement, but the disc itself bears no clues. This is the only release on this label. The vocal by Grayson is part sermon, part monolog, part song, with the threatening aura of the Theremin provided by Dr. Hoffman. It is undated, so I'm guessing around 1960 when Grayson was most active. Lew Davies And His Orchestra, “Riders in the Sky” from Strange Interlude (1961 Command). From the early sixties comes this wonderful amalgamation of exotica and space-age instruments. The Theremin is played by none other than Walter Sear, later the manager of the Sear Sound Studio in New York and an influential programmer (and sometimes player) of the Moog Modular Synthesizer. Several members of this band also became associated with the Moog Modular, including Bobby Byrne, Sy Mann, and producer Enoch Light. Bass, Bob Haggart, Jack Lesberg; Cimbalom, Michael Szittai; Drums, George Devens, Phil Kraus; Executive Producer, Enoch Light; French Horn, Paul Faulise, Tony Miranda; Guitar, Tony Mottola; Reeds, Al Klink, Ezelle Watson, Phil Bodner, Stanley Webb; Ondioline, Sy Mann; Theremin, Paul Lippman, Walter Sear; Trombone, Bobby Byrne, Dick Hixon, Urbie Green. Yusef Lateef, “Sound Wave,” from A Flat, G Flat And C (1966 Impulse!). An innovative first from Mr. Lateef who foresaw the possibilities of the Theremin for new jazz. Lateef was known for his multi-instrumental talent on Tenor Saxophone, Alto Saxophone, Flute, Oboe and a variety of wooden flutes. Using the Theremin on this one track—I've never heard anything else he recorded with the Theremin—shows how a skilled jazz improviser can use the Theremin for self-expression. I would guess that this Theremin was made by Moog. Theremin, Yusef Lateef; Bass, Reggie Workman; Drums, Roy Brooks; Piano, Hugh Lawson; Produced by Bob Thiele. Captain Beefheart And His Magic Band, “Electricity” from Safe as Milk (1967 Buddah). The Theremin in this case was played by none other than Samuel J. Hoffman using his souped-up RCA Theremin model Theremin. It was perhaps the last appearance on record by Hoffman, who died later in 1967. Apparently, the record company hated the track so much that it led to their being dropped from the label, at which point Frank Zappa came to the rescue. Fifty Foot Hose, “War is Over” (1967) from Ingredients (1997 compilation Del Val). Psychedelic rock group from San Francisco, formed in 1967, disbanded in 1970 and re-formed in 1995. Drums, Gary Duos; Guitar, David Blossom; Theremin, Electronics, Audio Generator, Siren, Cork Marcheschi. Recorded in 1966 in San Francisco. Dorothy Ashby, “Soul Vibrations” from Afro-Harping (1968 Cadet Concept). Unknown Theremin player, although the producers at Cadet/Chess were known to add the instrument to a session, such as those by Rotary Connection. Recorded at Ter Mar Studios, Chicago, February 1968. The song was written by producer Richard Evans, then the go-to producer and de facto label head for Chess Records' jazz imprint Cadet. Perhaps he also played the Theremin, which was probably a Moog Troubadour. The First Theremin Era, “The Barnabas Theme from Dark Shadows" / “Sunset In Siberia” (1969 Epic). "Dark Shadows" was super-popular daytime drama about a vampire on ABC-TV. This record was not an official release of the television show, but an interpretation of the theme that is seldom heard. I thought it's exotic funky treatment was especially worth hearing. The soundtrack for the TV show also included Theremin, possibly played by composer Robert Cobert, but in its more traditional spooky role. This record was produced and arranged by Charlie Calello, a well-known producer who had worked with the Four Seasons (singing group) and later would produce such super stars as Frank Sinatra, Neil Diamond, Bruce Springsteen, Laura Nyro, and Barbra Streisand. Mutantes, “Banho De Lua (Tintarella Di Luna)” from Mutantes (1969 Polydor). Brazilian folk-rock-psychedelic group that featured the Theremin blended with many other instruments, both acoustic and electronic. Arranged by, Mutantes; Drums, Sir Ronaldo I. Du Rancharia; Theremin, electronic Instruments, Claudio Régulus. This innovative pop trio from Brazil also collaborated with other artists such as Caetano Veloso and Gilberto Gil and were threatened by the military government of Brazil. What Theremin did they use? Several Moog models would have been available, but they also may have built their own. One photo I've seen suggested that they built their own. Lothar and the Hand People, “It Comes on Anyhow” from Machines: Amherst 1969 (2020 Modern Harmonic). Live recording from 1969 featuring the Moog Modular Synthesizer played by Paul Conly and the Moog Theremin played by vocalist John Emelin. On this track, the synthesizer and Theremin sounds are intermingled, making it a fun challenge to distinguish between the two of them. Bass, Rusty Ford; Drums, Tom Flye; Guitar, Kim King; Keyboards, Moog Modular Synthesizer, Paul Conly; Vocals, Moog Troubadour Theremin (“Lothar”), John Emelin. Lothar and the Hand People, “Today Is Only Yesterday's Tomorrow” from Machines: Amherst 1969 (2020 Modern Harmonic). This track was recorded live in 1969. John Emelin starts by introducing the Moog Theremin, called “Lothar.” Bass, Rusty Ford; Drums, Tom Flye; Guitar, Kim King; Keyboards, Moog Modular Synthesizer, Paul Conly; Vocals, Moog Troubadour Theremin (“Lothar”), John Emelin. Opening background tracks: Bernard Herrmann, Dr. Samuel J. Hoffman, “Prelude, Outer Space” (excerpt), from The Day the Earth Stood Still (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack) (1951 20th Century Fox). Soundtrack recorded at the Twentieth Century Fox Scoring Stage August 1951, reissued in 1993. Composed by Bernard Herrmann; Conducted by Alfred Newman, Bernard Herrmann, Lionel Newman; Theremin by Dr. Samuel J. Hoffman. Zinaida Hanenfeldt, Nathaniel Shilkret, Victor Salon Orchestra, “(I'm a dreamer) Aren't we all?” (1930 Victor). “Orchestra, with theremin soloist.” Theremin, Zinaida Hanenfeldt. Recorded January 17, 1930 in New York at the 28 West 44th St. studio. Samuel J. Hoffman, “The Swan”( Saint-Saens) from “Moonlight Sonata” / “The Swan” (1951 Capitol). Arranged and performed on the Theremin by “Dr. Hoffman.” Orchestra and Chorus Under the Direction Of Leslie Baxter, Dr. Samuel Hoffman, “Struttin' with Clayton” from “Jet” / “Struttin' With Clayton” (1950 RCA Victor). Theremin, Dr. Samuel J. Hoffman. Miklós Rózsa, “Dementia” from The Lost Weekend (The Classic Film Score) (1945 privately issued). Conducted, composed by Miklós Rózsa; Theremin, Dr. Samuel J. Hoffman. This podcast is not intended as a thorough history of the Theremin itself. There are many excellent resources that provide that, including my own book on the history of electronic music, the Bob Moog Foundation website, Albert Glinsky's wonderful book about Leon Theremin, and the entire Theremin World website that is devoted to everything Theremin. I urgently suggest that you consult those resources for more detail on the actual history of the instrument and the people behind it. Opening and closing sequences voiced by Anne Benkovitz. Additional opening, closing, and other incidental music by Thom Holmes. See my companion blog that I write for the Bob Moog Foundation: For additional notes, please see my blog, Noise and Notations.

This week Adam and Charlotte jump way outside of the box to examine the exceptional life of film composer Wendy Carlos. They dive deep into her contributions to electronic music at large, through her development of the the synthesizer and vocoder with Robert Moog to her invention of ambient music and her obsession with alternative tunings. Wendy's avid Eclipse chasing sparks a conversation about Adam and Charlotte's own experience with a total solar eclipse.Contact Us At:www.perfdamage.comEmail : perfdamagepodcast@gmail.comTwitter (X) : @perfdamageInstagram : @perf_damageLetterboxd : Perf DamageCheck Out our Youtube Channel:https://www.youtube.com/@PerfDamagePodcast

In the 1960s, Bob Moog and Don Buchla built synthesizers that changed the world. But by the early 80s, they faced a new challenger who threatened to bring it all crumbling down: the digital synthesizer. To defeat this opponent, they'd have to recruit a new ally… and maybe even join forces. Featuring Bob's daughter Michelle Moog-Koussa, Don's collaborator Ami Radunskaya, and journalist Ryan Gaston. Watch Welcome to Synth, our first original Youtube video. Follow the show on Twitter, Facebook, & Reddit. Sign up for Twenty Thousand Hertz+ to get our entire catalog ad-free + our bonus show MicroHertz. If you know what this week's mystery sound is, tell us at mystery.20k.org. Read Ryan Gaston's tech & music articles on Perfect Circuit's SIGNAL blog. Find out more about Robert Moog's work at the Moogseum. To start hiring now, visit indeed.com/hertz. Find the right doctor, right now with at zocdoc.com/20k. Episode transcript, music, and credits can be found here: https://www.20k.org/episodes/digitaldoom Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Pour ce nouvel épisode du podcast, Salman et Daz reçoivent le génial Laurent de Wilde. Pianiste de jazz, animateur radio et écrivain, Laurent est passionné par les instruments électroniques et leurs histoires. C'était donc l'invité idéal pour interroger le rapport entre l'art et la technique, et pour se pencher sur "Les fous du son", ces inventeurs fascinants dont Laurent raconte la vie et l'oeuvre dans son dernier livre. De Thomas Edison à Robert Moog, en passant par Maurice Martenot, Léon Thérémine et Laurens Hammond, vous allez découvrir des destins incroyables.

DescriptionFor this bonus interview episode, I chatted with world-renowned theremin player Pamelia Stickney (formerly known as Pamelia Kurstin). She has performed and recorded with many artists including David Byrne, Yoko Ono, Béla Fleck and the Flecktones, David Garland, Seb Rochford, Otto Lechner and Simone Dinnerstein, and was instrumental in the final design of Robert Moog's Etherwave Pro Theremin, for which she was the primary test musician.I was also joined by composer, Sasha Rapoport, who has written several works for the theremin, performed by his good friend Pamelia Stickney. Among other things, he chatted and played a clip from his 3rd Sonata, march and minuet. Sasha's principal compositions include works for Jamie Sommerville (Waldberauscht, 2016) Pamelia Stickney (Sonata for Theremin and Piano no. 1, 2014 and no. 2, 2018) The Talisker Players (And Hast Thou Glossed the Jabberwock? 2011, and The Pilgrimage of Henry Pyne, 2009), The Canadian Children's Opera Company (Dragon in the Rocks, 2008), The Windermere Quartet (String Quartet no. 1, 2006 and no. 2, 2017), Valerie Tryon (Variations on a Theme of Chopin for Piano and Orchestra, 1999) and Judy Loman (Hymn to the Redeemer of the Nations, 1986). He is an associate professor, teaching stream, in composition and music theory at the University of Toronto. Read about the documentary film: Theremin: An Electronic OdysseyAbout Steven, HostSteven is a Canadian composer living in Toronto. He creates a range of works, with an emphasis on the short-form genre—his muse being to offer the listener both the darker and more satiric shades of human existence. If you're interested, please check out his website for more. Member of the Canadian League Of Composers.A Note To Music Students et al.All recordings and sheet music are available on my site. I encourage you to take a look and play through some. Give me a shout if you have any questions.Got a topic? Pop me off an email at: TCMMPodcast@Gmail.com Support the show

DescriptionThe theremin was the first electronic musical instrument invented purely by accident by a physicist and trained cellist. Join me, Steven Hobé, as we take a minute to get the scoop!Fun FactThe theremin became the go-to noise for an alien encounter, most famously in the classic 1951 movie The Day the Earth Stood Still (scored by Bernard Herrmann). Other high-profile credits, alongside lots of B-Movies, include The Lost Weekend and the Biblical blockbuster The Ten Commandments.About StevenSteven is a Canadian composer living in Toronto. He creates a range of works, with an emphasis on the short-form genre—his muse being to offer the listener both the darker and more satiric shades of human existence. If you're interested, please check out his website for more.A Note To Music Students et al.All recordings and sheet music are available on my site. I encourage you to take a look and play through some. Give me a shout if you have any questions.Got a topic? Pop me off an email at: TCMMPodcast@Gmail.com Support the show

Episode one hundred and forty-six of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “Good Vibrations” by the Beach Boys, and the history of the theremin. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a ten-minute bonus episode available, on "You're Gonna Miss Me" by the Thirteenth Floor Elevators. Tilt Araiza has assisted invaluably by doing a first-pass edit, and will hopefully be doing so from now on. Check out Tilt's irregular podcasts at http://www.podnose.com/jaffa-cakes-for-proust and http://sitcomclub.com/ Resources There is no Mixcloud this week, because there were too many Beach Boys songs in the episode. I used many resources for this episode, most of which will be used in future Beach Boys episodes too. It's difficult to enumerate everything here, because I have been an active member of the Beach Boys fan community for twenty-four years, and have at times just used my accumulated knowledge for this. But the resources I list here are ones I've checked for specific things. Stephen McParland has published many, many books on the California surf and hot-rod music scenes, including several on both the Beach Boys and Gary Usher.  His books can be found at https://payhip.com/CMusicBooks Andrew Doe's Bellagio 10452 site is an invaluable resource. Jon Stebbins' The Beach Boys FAQ is a good balance between accuracy and readability. And Philip Lambert's Inside the Music of Brian Wilson is an excellent, though sadly out of print, musicological analysis of Wilson's music from 1962 through 67. I have also referred to Brian Wilson's autobiography, I Am Brian Wilson, and to Mike Love's, Good Vibrations: My Life as a Beach Boy. As a good starting point for the Beach Boys' music in general, I would recommend this budget-priced three-CD set, which has a surprisingly good selection of their material on it, including the single version of "Good Vibrations". Oddly, the single version of "Good Vibrations" is not on the The Smile Sessions box set. But an entire CD of outtakes of the track is, and that was the source for the session excerpts here. Information on Lev Termen comes from Theremin: Ether Music and Espionage by Albert Glinsky Transcript In ancient Greece, the god Hermes was a god of many things, as all the Greek gods were. Among those things, he was the god of diplomacy, he was a trickster god, a god of thieves, and he was a messenger god, who conveyed messages between realms. He was also a god of secret knowledge. In short, he was the kind of god who would have made a perfect spy. But he was also an inventor. In particular he was credited in Greek myth as having invented the lyre, an instrument somewhat similar to a guitar, harp, or zither, and as having used it to create beautiful sounds. But while Hermes the trickster god invented the lyre, in Greek myth it was a mortal man, Orpheus, who raised the instrument to perfection. Orpheus was a legendary figure, the greatest poet and musician of pre-Homeric Greece, and all sorts of things were attributed to him, some of which might even have been things that a real man of that name once did. He is credited with the "Orphic tripod" -- the classification of the elements into earth, water, and fire -- and with a collection of poems called the Rhapsodiae. The word Rhapsodiae comes from the Greek words rhaptein, meaning to stitch or sew, and ōidē, meaning song -- the word from which we get our word "ode", and  originally a rhapsōdos was someone who "stitched songs together" -- a reciter of long epic poems composed of several shorter pieces that the rhapsōdos would weave into one continuous piece. It's from that that we get the English word "rhapsody", which in the sixteenth century, when it was introduced into the language, meant a literary work that was a disjointed collection of patchwork bits, stitched together without much thought as to structure, but which now means a piece of music in one movement, but which has several distinct sections. Those sections may seem unrelated, and the piece may have an improvisatory feel, but a closer look will usually reveal relationships between the sections, and the piece as a whole will have a sense of unity. When Orpheus' love, Eurydice, died, he went down into Hades, the underworld where the souls of the dead lived, and played music so beautiful, so profound and moving, that the gods agreed that Orpheus could bring the soul of his love back to the land of the living. But there was one condition -- all he had to do was keep looking forward until they were both back on Earth. If he turned around before both of them were back in the mortal realm, she would disappear forever, never to be recovered. But of course, as you all surely know, and would almost certainly have guessed even if you didn't know because you know how stories work, once Orpheus made it back to our world he turned around and looked, because he lost his nerve and didn't believe he had really achieved his goal. And Eurydice, just a few steps away from her freedom, vanished back into the underworld, this time forever. [Excerpt: Blake Jones and the Trike Shop: "Mr. Theremin's Miserlou"] Lev Sergeyevich Termen was born in St. Petersburg, in what was then the Russian Empire, on the fifteenth of August 1896, by the calendar in use in Russia at that time -- the Russian Empire was still using the Julian calendar, rather than the Gregorian calendar used in most of the rest of the world, and in the Western world the same day was the twenty-seventh of August. Young Lev was fascinated both by science and the arts. He was trained as a cellist from an early age, but while he loved music, he found the process of playing the music cumbersome -- or so he would say later. He was always irritated by the fact that the instrument is a barrier between the idea in the musician's head and the sound -- that it requires training to play. As he would say later "I realised there was a gap between music itself and its mechanical production, and I wanted to unite both of them." Music was one of his big loves, but he was also very interested in physics, and was inspired by a lecture he saw from the physicist Abram Ioffe, who for the first time showed him that physics was about real, practical, things, about the movements of atoms and fields that really existed, not just about abstractions and ideals. When Termen went to university, he studied physics -- but he specifically wanted to be an experimental physicist, not a theoretician. He wanted to do stuff involving the real world. Of course, as someone who had the misfortune to be born in the late 1890s, Termen was the right age to be drafted when World War I started, but luckily for him the Russian Army desperately needed people with experience in the new invention that was radio, which was vital for wartime communications, and he spent the war in the Army radio engineering department, erecting radio transmitters and teaching other people how to erect them, rather than on the front lines, and he managed not only to get his degree in physics but also a diploma in music. But he was also becoming more and more of a Marxist sympathiser, even though he came from a relatively affluent background, and after the Russian Revolution he stayed in what was now the Red Army, at least for a time. Once Termen's Army service was over, he started working under Ioffe, working with him on practical applications of the audion, the first amplifying vacuum tube. The first one he found was that the natural capacitance of a human body when standing near a circuit can change the capacity of the circuit. He used that to create an invisible burglar alarm -- there was an antenna sending out radio waves, and if someone came within the transmitting field of the antenna, that would cause a switch to flip and a noise to be sounded. He was then asked to create a device for measuring the density of gases, outputting a different frequency for different densities. Because gas density can have lots of minor fluctuations because of air currents and so forth, he built a circuit that would cut out all the many harmonics from the audions he was using and give just the main frequency as a single pure tone, which he could listen to with headphones. That way,  slight changes in density would show up as a slight change in the tone he heard. But he noticed that again when he moved near the circuit, that changed the capacitance of the circuit and changed the tone he was hearing. He started moving his hand around near the circuit and getting different tones. The closer his hand got to the capacitor, the higher the note sounded. And if he shook his hand a little, he could get a vibrato, just like when he shook his hand while playing the cello. He got Ioffe to come and listen to him, and Ioffe said "That's an electronic Orpheus' lament!" [Excerpt: Blake Jones and the Trike Shop, "Mr. Theremin's Miserlou"] Termen figured out how to play Massenet's "Elegy" and Saint-Saens' "The Swan" using this system. Soon the students were all fascinated, telling each other "Termen plays Gluck on a voltmeter!" He soon figured out various refinements -- by combining two circuits, using the heterodyne principle, he could allow for far finer control. He added a second antenna, for volume control, to be used by the left hand -- the right hand would choose the notes, while the left hand would change the volume, meaning the instrument could be played without touching it at all. He called the instrument the "etherphone",  but other people started calling it the termenvox -- "Termen's voice". Termen's instrument was an immediate sensation, as was his automatic burglar alarm, and he was invited to demonstrate both of them to Lenin. Lenin was very impressed by Termen -- he wrote to Trotsky later talking about Termen's inventions, and how the automatic burglar alarm might reduce the number of guards needed to guard a perimeter. But he was also impressed by Termen's musical invention. Termen held his hands to play through the first half of a melody, before leaving the Russian leader to play the second half by himself -- apparently he made quite a good job of it. Because of Lenin's advocacy for his work, Termen was sent around the Soviet Union on a propaganda tour -- what was known as an "agitprop tour", in the familiar Soviet way of creating portmanteau words. In 1923 the first piece of music written specially for the instrument was performed by Termen himself with the Leningrad Philharmonic, Andrey Paschenko's Symphonic Mystery for Termenvox and Orchestra. The score for that was later lost, but has been reconstructed, and the piece was given a "second premiere" in 2020 [Excerpt: Andrey Paschenko, "Symphonic Mystery for Termenvox and Orchestra" ] But the musical instrument wasn't the only scientific innovation that Termen was working on. He thought he could reverse death itself, and bring the dead back to life.  He was inspired in this by the way that dead organisms could be perfectly preserved in the Siberian permafrost. He thought that if he could only freeze a dead person in the permafrost, he could then revive them later -- basically the same idea as the later idea of cryogenics, although Termen seems to have thought from the accounts I've read that all it would take would be to freeze and then thaw them, and not to have considered the other things that would be necessary to bring them back to life. Termen made two attempts to actually do this, or at least made preliminary moves in that direction. The first came when his assistant, a twenty-year-old woman, died of pneumonia. Termen was heartbroken at the death of someone so young, who he'd liked a great deal, and was convinced that if he could just freeze her body for a while he could soon revive her. He talked with Ioffe about this -- Ioffe was friends with the girl's family -- and Ioffe told him that he thought that he was probably right and probably could revive her. But he also thought that it would be cruel to distress the girl's parents further by discussing it with them, and so Termen didn't get his chance to experiment. He was even keener on trying his technique shortly afterwards, when Lenin died. Termen was a fervent supporter of the Revolution, and thought Lenin was a great man whose leadership was still needed -- and he had contacts within the top echelons of the Kremlin. He got in touch with them as soon as he heard of Lenin's death, in an attempt to get the opportunity to cryopreserve his corpse and revive him. Sadly, by this time it was too late. Lenin's brain had been pickled, and so the opportunity to resurrect him as a zombie Lenin was denied forever. Termen was desperately interested in the idea of bringing people back from the dead, and he wanted to pursue it further with his lab, but he was also being pushed to give demonstrations of his music, as well as doing security work -- Ioffe, it turned out, was also working as a secret agent, making various research trips to Germany that were also intended to foment Communist revolution. For now, Termen was doing more normal security work -- his burglar alarms were being used to guard bank vaults and the like, but this was at the order of the security state. But while Termen was working on his burglar alarms and musical instruments and attempts to revive dead dictators, his main project was his doctoral work, which was on the TV. We've said before in this podcast that there's no first anything, and that goes just as much for inventions as it does for music. Most inventions build on work done by others, which builds on work done by others, and so there were a lot of people building prototype TVs at this point. In Britain we tend to say "the inventor of the TV" was John Logie Baird, but Baird was working at the same time as people like the American Charles Francis Jenkins and the Japanese inventor Kenjiro Takayanagi, all of them building on earlier work by people like Archibald Low. Termen's prototype TV, the first one in Russia, came slightly later than any of those people, but was created more or less independently, and was more advanced in several ways, with a bigger screen and better resolution. Shortly after Lenin's death, Termen was invited to demonstrate his invention to Stalin, who professed himself amazed at the "magic mirror". [Excerpt: Blake Jones and the Trike Shop, "Astronauts in Trouble"] Termen was sent off to tour Europe giving demonstrations of his inventions, particularly his musical instrument. It was on this trip that he started using the Romanisation "Leon Theremin", and this is how Western media invariably referred to him. Rather than transliterate the Cyrillic spelling of his birth name, he used the French spelling his Huguenot ancestors had used before they emigrated to Russia, and called himself Leo or Leon rather than Lev. He was known throughout his life by both names, but said to a journalist in 1928 "First of all, I am not Tair-uh-MEEN. I wrote my name with French letters for French pronunciation. I am Lev Sergeyevich Tair-MEN.". We will continue to call him Termen, partly because he expressed that mild preference (though again, he definitely went by both names through choice) but also to distinguish him from the instrument, because while his invention remained known in Russia as the termenvox, in the rest of the world it became known as the theremin. He performed at the Paris Opera, and the New York Times printed a review saying "Some musicians were extremely pessimistic about the possibilities of the device, because at times M. Theremin played lamentably out of tune. But the finest Stradivarius, in the hands of a tyro, can give forth frightful sounds. The fact that the inventor was able to perform certain pieces with absolute precision proves that there remains to be solved only questions of practice and technique." Termen also came to the UK, where he performed in front of an audience including George Bernard Shaw, Arnold Bennett, Henry Wood and others. Arnold Bennett was astonished, but Bernard Shaw, who had very strong opinions about music, as anyone who has read his criticism will be aware, compared the sound unfavourably to that of a comb and paper. After performing in Europe, Termen made his way to the US, to continue his work of performance, propagandising for the Soviet Revolution, and trying to license the patents for his inventions, to bring money both to him and to the Soviet state. He entered the US on a six-month visitor's visa, but stayed there for eleven years, renewing the visa every six months. His initial tour was a success, though at least one open-air concert had to be cancelled because, as the Communist newspaper the Daily Worker put it, "the weather on Saturday took such a counter-revolutionary turn". Nicolas Slonimsky, the musicologist we've encountered several times before, and who would become part of Termen's circle in the US, reviewed one of the performances, and described the peculiar audiences that Termen was getting -- "a considerable crop of ladies and gentlemen engaged in earnest exploration of the Great Beyond...the mental processes peculiar to believers in cosmic vibrations imparted a beatific look to some of the listeners. Boston is a seat of scientific religion; before he knows it Professor Theremin may be proclaimed Krishnamurti and sanctified as a new deity". Termen licensed his patents on the invention to RCA, who in 1929 started mass-producing the first ever theremins for general use. Termen also started working with the conductor Leopold Stokowski, including developing a new kind of theremin for Stokowski's orchestra to use, one with a fingerboard played like a cello. Stokowski said "I believe we shall have orchestras of these electric instruments. Thus will begin a new era in music history, just as modern materials and methods of construction have produced a new era of architecture." Possibly of more interest to the wider public, Lennington Sherwell, the son of an RCA salesman, took up the theremin professionally, and joined the band of Rudy Vallee, one of the most popular singers of the period. Vallee was someone who constantly experimented with new sounds, and has for example been named as the first band leader to use an electric banjo, and Vallee liked the sound of the theremin so much he ordered a custom-built left-handed one for himself. Sherwell stayed in Vallee's band for quite a while, and performed with him on the radio and in recording sessions, but it's very difficult to hear him in any of the recordings -- the recording equipment in use in 1930 was very primitive, and Vallee had a very big band with a lot of string and horn players, and his arrangements tended to have lots of instruments playing in unison rather than playing individual lines that are easy to differentiate. On top of that, the fashion at the time when playing the instrument was to try and have it sound as much like other instruments as possible -- to duplicate the sound of a cello or violin or clarinet, rather than to lean in to the instrument's own idiosyncracies. I *think* though that I can hear Sherwell's playing in the instrumental break of Vallee's big hit "You're Driving Me Crazy" -- certainly it was recorded at the time that Sherwell was in the band, and there's an instrument in there with a very pure tone, but quite a lot of vibrato, in the mid range, that seems only to be playing in the break and not the rest of the song. I'm not saying this is *definitely* a theremin solo on one of the biggest hits of 1930, but I'm not saying it's not, either: [Excerpt: Rudy Vallee, "You're Driving Me Crazy" ] Termen also invented a light show to go along with his instrument -- the illumovox, which had a light shining through a strip of gelatin of different colours, which would be rotated depending on the pitch of the theremin, so that lower notes would cause the light to shine a deep red, while the highest notes would make it shine a light blue, with different shades in between. By 1930, though, Termen's fortunes had started to turn slightly. Stokowski kept using theremins in the orchestra for a while, especially the fingerboard models to reinforce the bass, but they caused problems. As Slonimsky said "The infrasonic vibrations were so powerful...that they hit the stomach physically, causing near-nausea in the double-bass section of the orchestra". Fairly soon, the Theremin was overtaken by other instruments, like the ondes martenot, an instrument very similar to the theremin but with more precise control, and with a wider range of available timbres. And in 1931, RCA was sued by another company for patent infringement with regard to the Theremin -- the De Forest Radio Company had patents around the use of vacuum tubes in music, and they claimed damages of six thousand dollars, plus RCA had to stop making theremins. Since at the time, RCA had only made an initial batch of five hundred instruments total, and had sold 485 of them, many of them as promotional loss-leaders for future batches, they had actually made a loss of three hundred dollars even before the six thousand dollar damages, and decided not to renew their option on Termen's patents. But Termen was still working on his musical ideas. Slonimsky also introduced Termen to the avant-garde composer and theosophist Henry Cowell, who was interested in experimental sounds, and used to do things like play the strings inside the piano to get a different tone: [Excerpt: Henry Cowell, "Aeolian Harp and Sinister Resonance"] Cowell was part of a circle of composers and musicologists that included Edgard Varese, Charles Ives, and Charles Seeger and Ruth Crawford, who Cowell would introduce to each other. Crawford would later marry Seeger, and they would have several children together, including the folk singer Peggy Seeger, and Crawford would also adopt Seeger's son Pete. Cowell and Termen would together invent the rhythmicon, the first ever drum machine, though the rhythmicon could play notes as well as rhythms. Only two rhythmicons were made while Termen was in the US. The first was owned by Cowell. The second, improved, model was bought by Charles Ives, but bought as a gift for Cowell and Slonimsky to use in their compositions. Sadly, both rhythmicons eventually broke down, and no recording of either is known to exist. Termen started to get further and further into debt, especially as the Great Depression started to hit, and he also had a personal loss -- he'd been training a student and had fallen in love with her, although he was married. But when she married herself, he cut off all ties with her, though Clara Rockmore would become one of the few people to use the instrument seriously and become a real virtuoso on it. He moved into other fields, all loosely based around the same basic ideas of detecting someone's distance from an object. He built electronic gun detectors for Alcatraz and Sing-Sing prisons, and he came up with an altimeter for aeroplanes. There was also a "magic mirror" -- glass that appeared like a mirror until it was backlit, at which point it became transparent. This was put into shop windows along with a proximity detector -- every time someone stepped close to look at their reflection, the reflection would disappear and be replaced with the objects behind the mirror. He was also by this point having to spy for the USSR on a more regular basis. Every week he would meet up in a cafe with two diplomats from the Russian embassy, who would order him to drink several shots of vodka -- the idea was that they would loosen his inhibitions enough that he would not be able to hide things from them -- before he related various bits of industrial espionage he'd done for them. Having inventions of his own meant he was able to talk with engineers in the aerospace industry and get all sorts of bits of information that would otherwise not have been available, and he fed this back to Moscow. He eventually divorced his first wife, and remarried -- a Black American dancer many years his junior named Lavinia Williams, who would be the great love of his life. This caused some scandal in his social circle, more because of her race than the age gap. But by 1938 he had to leave the US. He'd been there on a six-month visa, which had been renewed every six months for more than a decade, and he'd also not been paying income tax and was massively in debt. He smuggled himself back to the USSR, but his wife was, at the last minute, not allowed on to the ship with him. He'd had to make the arrangements in secret, and hadn't even told her of the plans, so the first she knew was when he disappeared. He would later claim that the Soviets had told him she would be sent for two weeks later, but she had no knowledge of any of this. For decades, Lavinia would not even know if her husband was dead or alive. [Excerpt: Blake Jones and the Trike Shop, "Astronauts in Trouble"] When Termen got back to the USSR, he found it had changed beyond recognition. Stalin's reign of terror was now well underway, and not only could he not find a job, most of the people who he'd been in contact with at the top of the Kremlin had been purged. Termen was himself arrested and tortured into signing a false confession to counter-revolutionary activities and membership of fascist organisations. He was sentenced to eight years in a forced labour camp, which in reality was a death sentence -- it was expected that workers there would work themselves to death on starvation rations long before their sentences were up -- but relatively quickly he was transferred to a special prison where people with experience of aeronautical design were working. He was still a prisoner, but in conditions not too far removed from normal civilian life, and allowed to do scientific and technical work with some of the greatest experts in the field -- almost all of whom had also been arrested in one purge or another. One of the pieces of work Termen did was at the direct order of Laventy Beria, Stalin's right-hand man and the architect of most of the terrors of the Stalinist regime. In Spring 1945, while the USA and USSR were still supposed to be allies in World War II, Beria wanted to bug the residence of the US ambassador, and got Termen to design a bug that would get past all the normal screenings. The bug that Termen designed was entirely passive and unpowered -- it did nothing unless a microwave beam of a precise frequency was beamed at it, and only then did it start transmitting. It was placed in a wooden replica of the Great Seal of the United States, presented to the ambassador by a troupe of scouts as a gesture of friendship between the two countries. The wood in the eagle's beak was thin enough to let the sound through. It remained there for seven years, through the tenures of four ambassadors, only being unmasked when a British radio operator accidentally tuned to the frequency it was transmitting on and was horrified to hear secret diplomatic conversations. Upon its discovery, the US couldn't figure out how it worked, and eventually shared the information with MI5, who took eighteen months to reverse-engineer Termen's bug and come up with their own, which remained the standard bug in use for about a decade. The CIA's own attempts to reverse-engineer it failed altogether. It was also Termen who came up with that well-known bit of spycraft -- focussing an infra-red beam on a window pane, to use it to pick up the sound of conversations happening in the room behind it. Beria was so pleased with Termen's inventions that he got Termen to start bugging Stalin himself, so Beria would be able to keep track of Stalin's whims. Termen performed such great services for Beria that Beria actually allowed him to go free not long after his sentence was served. Not only that, but Beria nominated Termen for the Stalin Award, Class II, for his espionage work -- and Stalin, not realising that Termen had been bugging *him* as well as foreign powers, actually upgraded that to a Class I, the highest honour the Soviet state gave. While Termen was free, he found himself at a loose end, and ended up volunteering to work for the organisation he had been working for -- which went by many names but became known as the KGB from the 1950s onwards. He tried to persuade the government to let Lavinia, who he hadn't seen in eight years, come over and join him, but they wouldn't even allow him to contact her, and he eventually remarried. Meanwhile, after Stalin's death, Beria was arrested for his crimes, and charged under the same law that he had had Termen convicted under. Beria wasn't as lucky as Termen, though, and was executed. By 1964, Termen had had enough of the KGB, because they wanted him to investigate obvious pseudoscience -- they wanted him to look into aliens, UFOs, ESP... and telepathy. [Excerpt, The Beach Boys, "Good Vibrations (early version)" "She's already working on my brain"] He quit and went back to civilian life.  He started working in the acoustics lab in Moscow Conservatory, although he had to start at the bottom because everything he'd been doing for more than a quarter of a century was classified. He also wrote a short book on electronic music. In the late sixties an article on him was published in the US -- the first sign any of his old friends had that he'd not  died nearly thirty years earlier. They started corresponding with him, and he became a minor celebrity again, but this was disapproved of by the Soviet government -- electronic music was still considered bourgeois decadence and not suitable for the Soviet Union, and all his instruments were smashed and he was sacked from the conservatory. He continued working in various technical jobs until the 1980s, and still continued inventing refinements of the theremin, although he never had any official support for his work. In the eighties, a writer tried to get him some sort of official recognition -- the Stalin Prize was secret -- and the university at which he was working sent a reply saying, in part, "L.S. Termen took part in research conducted by the department as an ordinary worker and he did not show enough creative activity, nor does he have any achievements on the basis of which he could be recommended for a Government decoration." By this time he was living in shared accommodation with a bunch of other people, one room to himself and using a shared bathroom, kitchen, and so on. After Glasnost he did some interviews and was asked about this, and said "I never wanted to make demands and don't want to now. I phoned the housing department about three months ago and inquired about my turn to have a new flat. The woman told me that my turn would come in five or six years. Not a very reassuring answer if one is ninety-two years old." In 1989 he was finally allowed out of the USSR again, for the first time in fifty-one years, to attend a UNESCO sponsored symposium on electronic music. Among other things, he was given, forty-eight years late, a letter that his old colleague Edgard Varese had sent about his composition Ecuatorial, which had originally been written for theremin. Varese had wanted to revise the work, and had wanted to get modified theremins that could do what he wanted, and had asked the inventor for help, but the letter had been suppressed by the Soviet government. When he got no reply, Varese had switched to using ondes martenot instead. [Excerpt: Edgard Varese, "Ecuatorial"] In the 1970s, after the death of his third wife, Termen had started an occasional correspondence with his second wife, Lavinia, the one who had not been able to come with him to the USSR and hadn't known if he was alive for so many decades. She was now a prominent activist in Haiti, having established dance schools in many Caribbean countries, and Termen still held out hope that they could be reunited, even writing her a letter in 1988 proposing remarriage. But sadly, less than a month after Termen's first trip outside the USSR, she died -- officially of a heart attack or food poisoning, but there's a strong suspicion that she was murdered by the military dictatorship for her closeness to Jean-Bertrand Aristide, the pro-democracy activist who later became President of Haiti. Termen was finally allowed to join the Communist Party in the spring of 1991, just before the USSR finally dissolved -- he'd been forbidden up to that point because of his conviction for counter-revolutionary crimes. He was asked by a Western friend why he'd done that when everyone else was trying to *leave* the Communist Party, and he explained that he'd made a promise to Lenin. In his final years he was researching immortality, going back to the work he had done in his youth, working with biologists, trying to find a way to restore elderly bodies to youthful vigour. But sadly he died in 1993, aged ninety-seven, before he achieved his goal. On one of his last trips outside the USSR, in 1991, he visited the US, and in California he finally got to hear the song that most people associate with his invention, even though it didn't actually feature a theremin: [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, "Good Vibrations"] Back in the 1930s, when he was working with Slonimsky and Varese and Ives and the rest, Termen had set up the Theremin Studio, a sort of experimental arts lab, and in 1931 he had invited the musicologist, composer, and theoretician Joseph Schillinger to become a lecturer there. Schillinger had been one of the first composers to be really interested in the theremin, and had composed a very early piece written specifically for the instrument, the First Airphonic Suite: [Excerpt: Joseph Schillinger, "First Airphonic Suite"] But he was most influential as a theoretician. Schillinger believed that all of the arts were susceptible to rigorous mathematical analysis, and that you could use that analysis to generate new art according to mathematical principles, art that would be perfect. Schillinger planned to work with Termen to try to invent a machine that could compose, perform, and transmit music. The idea was that someone would be able to tune in a radio and listen to a piece of music in real time as it was being algorithmically composed and transmitted. The two men never achieved this, but Schillinger became very, very, respected as someone with a rigorous theory of musical structure -- though reading his magnum opus, the Schillinger System of Musical Composition, is frankly like wading through treacle. I'll read a short excerpt just to give an idea of his thinking: "On the receiving end, phasic stimuli produced by instruments encounter a metamorphic auditory integrator. This integrator represents the auditory apparatus as a whole and is a complex interdependent system. It consists of two receivers (ears), transmitters, auditory nerves, and a transformer, the auditory braincenter.  The response to a stimulus is integrated both quantitatively and selectively. The neuronic energy of response becomes the psychonic energy of auditory image. The response to stimuli and the process of integration are functional operations and, as such, can be described in mathematical terms , i.e., as  synchronization, addition, subtraction, multiplication, etc. But these integrative processes alone do not constitute the material of orchestration either.  The auditory image, whether resulting from phasic stimuli of an excitor or from selfstimulation of the auditory brain-center, can be described only in Psychological terms, of loudness, pitch, quality, etc. This leads us to the conclusion that the material of orchestration can be defined only as a group of conditions under which an integrated image results from a sonic stimulus subjected to an auditory response.  This constitutes an interdependent tripartite system, in which the existence of one component necessitates the existence of two others. The composer can imagine an integrated sonic form, yet he cannot transmit it to the auditor (unless telepathicaliy) without sonic stimulus and hearing apparatus." That's Schillinger's way of saying that if a composer wants someone to hear the music they've written, the composer needs a musical instrument and the listener needs ears and a brain. This kind of revolutionary insight made Schillinger immensely sought after in the early 1930s, and among his pupils were the swing bandleaders Benny Goodman and Tommy Dorsey, and the songwriter George Gershwin, who turned to Schillinger for advice when he was writing his opera Porgy and Bess: [Excerpt: Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong, "Here Come De Honey Man"] Another of his pupils was the trombonist and arranger Glenn Miller, who at that time was a session player working in pickup studio bands for people like Red Nichols. Miller spent some time studying with him in the early thirties, and applied those lessons when given the job of putting together arrangements for Ray Noble, his first prominent job. In 1938 Glenn Miller walked into a strip joint to see a nineteen-year-old he'd been told to take a look at. This was another trombonist, Paul Tanner, who was at the time working as a backing musician for the strippers. Miller had recently broken up his first big band, after a complete lack of success, and was looking to put together a new big band, to play arrangements in the style he had worked out while working for Noble. As Tanner later put it "he said, `Well, how soon can you come with me?' I said, `I can come right now.' I told him I was all packed, I had my toothbrush in my pocket and everything. And so I went with him that night, and I stayed with him until he broke the band up in September 1942." The new band spent a few months playing the kind of gigs that an unknown band can get, but they soon had a massive success with a song Miller had originally written as an arranging exercise set for him by Schillinger, a song that started out under the title "Miller's Tune", but soon became known worldwide as "Moonlight Serenade": [Excerpt: Glenn Miller, "Moonlight Serenade"] The Miller band had a lot of lineup changes in the four and a bit years it was together, but other than Miller himself there were only four members who were with that group throughout its career, from the early dates opening for  Freddie Fisher and His Schnickelfritzers right through to its end as the most popular band in America. They were piano player Chummy MacGregor, clarinet player Wilbur Schwartz, tenor sax player Tex Beneke, and Tanner. They played on all of Miller's big hits, like "In the Mood" and "Chattanooga Choo-Choo": [Excerpt: Glenn Miller, "Chattanooga Choo-Choo"] But in September 1942, the band broke up as the members entered the armed forces, and Tanner found himself in the Army while Miller was in the Air Force, so while both played in military bands, they weren't playing together, and Miller disappeared over the Channel, presumed dead, in 1944. Tanner became a session trombonist, based in LA, and in 1958 he found himself on a session for a film soundtrack with Dr. Samuel Hoffman. I haven't been able to discover for sure which film this was for, but the only film on which Hoffman has an IMDB credit for that year is that American International Pictures classic, Earth Vs The Spider: [Excerpt: Earth Vs The Spider trailer] Hoffman was a chiropodist, and that was how he made most of his living, but as a teenager in the 1930s he had been a professional violin player under the name Hal Hope. One of the bands he played in was led by a man named Jolly Coburn, who had seen Rudy Vallee's band with their theremin and decided to take it up himself. Hoffman had then also got a theremin, and started his own all-electronic trio, with a Hammond organ player, and with a cello-style fingerboard theremin played by William Schuman, the future Pulitzer Prize winning composer. By the 1940s, Hoffman was a full-time doctor, but he'd retained his Musicians' Union card just in case the odd gig came along, and then in 1945 he received a call from Miklos Rozsa, who was working on the soundtrack for Alfred Hitchcock's new film, Spellbound. Rozsa had tried to get Clara Rockmore, the one true virtuoso on the theremin playing at the time, to play on the soundtrack, but she'd refused -- she didn't do film soundtrack work, because in her experience they only wanted her to play on films about ghosts or aliens, and she thought it damaged the dignity of the instrument. Rozsa turned to the American Federation of Musicians, who as it turned out had precisely one theremin player who could read music and wasn't called Clara Rockmore on their books. So Dr. Samuel Hoffman, chiropodist, suddenly found himself playing on one of the most highly regarded soundtracks of one of the most successful films of the forties: [Excerpt: Miklos Rozsa, "Spellbound"] Rozsa soon asked Hoffman to play on another soundtrack, for the Billy Wilder film The Lost Weekend, another of the great classics of late forties cinema. Both films' soundtracks were nominated for the Oscar, and Spellbound's won, and Hoffman soon found himself in demand as a session player. Hoffman didn't have any of Rockmore's qualms about playing on science fiction and horror films, and anyone with any love of the genre will have heard his playing on genre classics like The Five Thousand Fingers of Dr T, The Thing From Another World, It Came From Outer Space, and of course Bernard Hermann's score for The Day The Earth Stood Still: [Excerpt: The Day The Earth Stood Still score] As well as on such less-than-classics as The Devil's Weed, Voodoo Island, The Mad Magician, and of course Billy The Kid Vs Dracula. Hoffman became something of a celebrity, and also recorded several albums of lounge music with a band led by Les Baxter, like the massive hit Music Out Of The Moon, featuring tracks like “Lunar Rhapsody”: [Excerpt: Samuel Hoffman, "Lunar Rhapsody”] [Excerpt: Neil Armstrong] That voice you heard there was Neil Armstrong, on Apollo 11 on its way back from the moon. He took a tape of Hoffman's album with him. But while Hoffman was something of a celebrity in the fifties, the work dried up almost overnight in 1958 when he worked at that session with Paul Tanner. The theremin is a very difficult instrument to play, and while Hoffman was a good player, he wasn't a great one -- he was getting the work because he was the best in a very small pool of players, not because he was objectively the best there could be. Tanner noticed that Hoffman was having quite some difficulty getting the pitching right in the session, and realised that the theremin must be a very difficult instrument to play because it had no markings at all. So he decided to build an instrument that had the same sound, but that was more sensibly controlled than just waving your hands near it. He built his own invention, the electrotheremin, in less than a week, despite never before having had any experience in electrical engineering. He built it using an oscillator, a length of piano wire and a contact switch that could be slid up and down the wire, changing the pitch. Two days after he finished building it, he was in the studio, cutting his own equivalent of Hoffman's forties albums, Music For Heavenly Bodies, including a new exotica version of "Moonlight Serenade", the song that Glenn Miller had written decades earlier as an exercise for Schillinger: [Excerpt: Paul Tanner, "Moonlight Serenade"] Not only could the electrotheremin let the player control the pitch more accurately, but it could also do staccato notes easily -- something that's almost impossible with an actual theremin. And, on top of that, Tanner was cheaper than Hoffman. An instrumentalist hired to play two instruments is paid extra, but not as much extra as paying for another musician to come to the session, and since Tanner was a first-call trombone player who was likely to be at the session *anyway*, you might as well hire him if you want a theremin sound, rather than paying for Hoffman. Tanner was an excellent musician -- he was a professor of music at UCLA as well as being a session player, and he authored one of the standard textbooks on jazz -- and soon he had cornered the market, leaving Hoffman with only the occasional gig. We will actually be seeing Hoffman again, playing on a session for an artist we're going to look at in a couple of months, but in LA in the early sixties, if you wanted a theremin sound, you didn't hire a theremin player, you hired Paul Tanner to play his electrotheremin -- though the instrument was so obscure that many people didn't realise he wasn't actually playing a theremin. Certainly Brian Wilson seems to have thought he was when he hired him for "I Just Wasn't Made For These Times": [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, "I Just Wasn't Made For These Times"] We talked briefly about that track back in the episode on "God Only Knows",   but three days after recording that, Tanner was called back into the studio for another session on which Brian Wilson wanted a theremin sound. This was a song titled "Good, Good, Good Vibrations", and it was inspired by a conversation he'd had with his mother as a child. He'd asked her why dogs bark at some people and not at others, and she'd said that dogs could sense vibrations that people sent out, and some people had bad vibrations and some had good ones. It's possible that this came back to mind as he was planning the Pet Sounds album, which of course ends with the sound of his own dogs barking. It's also possible that he was thinking more generally about ideas like telepathy -- he had been starting to experiment with acid by this point, and was hanging around with a crowd of people who were proto-hippies, and reading up on a lot of the mystical ideas that were shared by those people. As we saw in the last episode, there was a huge crossover between people who were being influenced by drugs, people who were interested in Eastern religion, and people who were interested in what we now might think of as pseudo-science but at the time seemed to have a reasonable amount of validity, things like telepathy and remote viewing. Wilson had also had exposure from an early age to people claiming psychic powers. Jo Ann Marks, the Wilson family's neighbour and the mother of former Beach Boy David Marks, later had something of a minor career as a psychic to the stars (at least according to obituaries posted by her son) and she would often talk about being able to sense "vibrations". The record Wilson started out making in February 1966 with the Wrecking Crew was intended as an R&B single, and was also intended to sound *strange*: [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, "Good Vibrations: Gold Star 1966-02-18"] At this stage, the song he was working on was a very straightforward verse-chorus structure, and it was going to be an altogether conventional pop song. The verses -- which actually ended up used in the final single, are dominated by organ and Ray Pohlman's bass: [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, "Good Vibrations: Gold Star 1966-02-18"] These bear a strong resemblance to the verses of "Here Today", on the Pet Sounds album which the Beach Boys were still in the middle of making: [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, "Here Today (instrumental)"] But the chorus had far more of an R&B feel than anything the Beach Boys had done before: [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, "Good Vibrations: Gold Star 1966-02-18"] It did, though, have precedent. The origins of the chorus feel come from "Can I Get a Witness?", a Holland-Dozier-Holland song that had been a hit for Marvin Gaye in 1963: [Excerpt: Marvin Gaye, "Can I Get a Witness?"] The Beach Boys had picked up on that, and also on its similarity to the feel of Lonnie Mack's instrumental cover version of Chuck Berry's "Memphis, Tennessee", which, retitled "Memphis", had also been a hit in 1963, and in 1964 they recorded an instrumental which they called "Memphis Beach" while they were recording it but later retitled "Carl's Big Chance", which was credited to Brian and Carl Wilson, but was basically just playing the "Can I Get a Witness" riff over twelve-bar blues changes, with Carl doing some surf guitar over the top: [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, "Carl's Big Chance"] The "Can I Get a Witness" feel had quickly become a standard piece of the musical toolkit – you might notice the resemblance between that riff and the “talking 'bout my generation” backing vocals on “My Generation” by the Who, for example. It was also used on "The Boy From New York City", a hit on Red Bird Records by the Ad-Libs: [Excerpt: The Ad-Libs, "The Boy From New York City"] The Beach Boys had definitely been aware of that record -- on their 1965 album Summer Days... And Summer Nights! they recorded an answer song to it, "The Girl From New York City": [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, "The Girl From New York City"] And you can see how influenced Brian was by the Ad-Libs record by laying the early instrumental takes of the "Good Vibrations" chorus from this February session under the vocal intro of "The Boy From New York City". It's not a perfect match, but you can definitely hear that there's an influence there: [Excerpt: "The Boy From New York City"/"Good Vibrations"] A few days later, Brian had Carl Wilson overdub some extra bass, got a musician in to do a jaw harp overdub, and they also did a guide vocal, which I've sometimes seen credited to Brian and sometimes Carl, and can hear as both of them depending on what I'm listening for. This guide vocal used a set of placeholder lyrics written by Brian's collaborator Tony Asher, which weren't intended to be a final lyric: [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, "Good Vibrations (first version)"] Brian then put the track away for a month, while he continued work on the Pet Sounds album. At this point, as best we can gather, he was thinking of it as something of a failed experiment. In the first of the two autobiographies credited to Brian (one whose authenticity is dubious, as it was largely put together by a ghostwriter and Brian later said he'd never even read it) he talks about how he was actually planning to give the song to Wilson Pickett rather than keep it for the Beach Boys, and one can definitely imagine a Wilson Pickett version of the song as it was at this point. But Brian's friend Danny Hutton, at that time still a minor session singer who had not yet gone on to form the group that would become Three Dog Night, asked Brian if *he* could have the song if Brian wasn't going to use it. And this seems to have spurred Brian into rethinking the whole song. And in doing so he was inspired by his very first ever musical memory. Brian has talked a lot about how the first record he remembers hearing was when he was two years old, at his maternal grandmother's house, where he heard the Glenn Miller version of "Rhapsody in Blue", a three-minute cut-down version of Gershwin's masterpiece, on which Paul Tanner had of course coincidentally played: [Excerpt: The Glenn Miller Orchestra, "Rhapsody in Blue"] Hearing that music, which Brian's mother also played for him a lot as a child, was one of the most profoundly moving experiences of Brian's young life, and "Rhapsody in Blue" has become one of those touchstone pieces that he returns to again and again. He has recorded studio versions of it twice, in the mid-nineties with Van Dyke Parks: [Excerpt: Brian Wilson and Van Dyke Parks, "Rhapsody in Blue"] and in 2010 with his solo band, as the intro and outro of an album of Gershwin covers: [Excerpt: Brian Wilson, "Rhapsody in Blue"] You'll also often see clips of him playing "Rhapsody in Blue" when sat at the piano -- it's one of his go-to songs. So he decided he was going to come up with a song that was structured like "Rhapsody in Blue" -- what publicist Derek Taylor would later describe as a "pocket symphony", but "pocket rhapsody" would possibly be a better term for it. It was going to be one continuous song, but in different sections that would have different instrumentation and different feelings to them -- he'd even record them in different studios to get different sounds for them, though he would still often have the musicians run through the whole song in each studio. He would mix and match the sections in the edit. His second attempt to record the whole track, at the start of April, gave a sign of what he was attempting, though he would not end up using any of the material from this session: [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, "Good Vibrations: Gold Star 1966-04-09" around 02:34] Nearly a month later, on the fourth of May, he was back in the studio -- this time in Western Studios rather than Gold Star where the previous sessions had been held, with yet another selection of musicians from the Wrecking Crew, plus Tanner, to record another version. This time, part of the session was used for the bridge for the eventual single: [Excerpt: The Beach Boys: "Good Vibrations: Western 1966-05-04 Second Chorus and Fade"] On the twenty-fourth of May the Wrecking Crew, with Carl Wilson on Fender bass (while Lyle Ritz continued to play string bass, and Carol Kaye, who didn't end up on the finished record at all, but who was on many of the unused sessions, played Danelectro), had another attempt at the track, this time in Sunset Studios: [Excerpt: The Beach Boys: "Good Vibrations: Sunset Sound 1966-05-24 (Parts 2&3)"] Three days later, another group of musicians, with Carl now switched to rhythm guitar, were back in Western Studios recording this: [Excerpt: The Beach Boys: "Good Vibrations: Western 1966-05-27 Part C" from 2:52] The fade from that session was used in the final track. A few days later they were in the studio again, a smaller group of people with Carl on guitar and Brian on piano, along with Don Randi on electric harpsichord, Bill Pitman on electric bass, Lyle Ritz on string bass and Hal Blaine on drums. This time there seems to have been another inspiration, though I've never heard it mentioned as an influence. In March, a band called The Association, who were friends with the Beach Boys, had released their single "Along Comes Mary", and by June it had become a big hit: [Excerpt: The Association, "Along Comes Mary"] Now the fuzz bass part they were using on the session on the second of June sounds to my ears very, very, like that intro: [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, "Good Vibrations (Inspiration) Western 1966-06-02" from 01:47] That session produced the basic track that was used for the choruses on the final single, onto which the electrotheremin was later overdubbed as Tanner wasn't at that session. Some time around this point, someone suggested to Brian that they should use a cello along with the electrotheremin in the choruses, playing triplets on the low notes. Brian has usually said that this was Carl's idea, while Brian's friend Van Dyke Parks has always said that he gave Brian the idea. Both seem quite certain of this, and neither has any reason to lie, so I suspect what might have happened is that Parks gave Brian the initial idea to have a cello on the track, while Carl in the studio suggested having it specifically play triplets. Either way, a cello part by Jesse Erlich was added to those choruses. There were more sessions in June, but everything from those sessions was scrapped. At some point around this time, Mike Love came up with a bass vocal lyric, which he sang along with the bass in the choruses in a group vocal session. On August the twenty-fourth, two months after what one would think at this point was the final instrumental session, a rough edit of the track was pulled together. By this point the chorus had altered quite a bit. It had originally just been eight bars of G-flat, four bars of B-flat, then four more bars of G-flat. But now Brian had decided to rework an idea he had used in "California Girls". In that song, each repetition of the line "I wish they all could be California" starts a tone lower than the one before. Here, after the bass hook line is repeated, everything moves up a step, repeats the line, and then moves up another step: [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, "Good Vibrations: [Alternate Edit] 1966-08-24"] But Brian was dissatisfied with this version of the track. The lyrics obviously still needed rewriting, but more than that, there was a section he thought needed totally rerecording -- this bit: [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, "Good Vibrations: [Alternate Edit] 1966-08-24"] So on the first of September, six and a half months after the first instrumental session for the song, the final one took place. This had Dennis Wilson on organ, Tommy Morgan on harmonicas, Lyle Ritz on string bass, and Hal Blaine and Carl Wilson on percussion, and replaced that with a new, gentler, version: [Excerpt: The Beach Boys: "Good Vibrations (Western 1966-09-01) [New Bridge]"] Well, that was almost the final instrumental session -- they called Paul Tanner in to a vocal overdub session to redo some of the electrotheremin parts, but that was basically it. Now all they had to do was do the final vocals. Oh, and they needed some proper lyrics. By this point Brian was no longer working with Tony Asher. He'd started working with Van Dyke Parks on some songs, but Parks wasn't interested in stepping into a track that had already been worked on so long, so Brian eventually turned to Mike Love, who'd already come up with the bass vocal hook, to write the lyrics. Love wrote them in the car, on the way to the studio, dictating them to his wife as he drove, and they're actually some of his best work. The first verse grounds everything in the sensory, in the earthy. He makes a song originally about *extra* -sensory perception into one about sensory perception -- the first verse covers sight, sound, and smell: [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, "Good Vibrations"] Carl Wilson was chosen to sing the lead vocal, but you'll notice a slight change in timbre on the line "I hear the sound of a" -- that's Brian stepping into double him on the high notes. Listen again: [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, "Good Vibrations"] For the second verse, Love's lyric moves from the sensory grounding of the first verse to the extrasensory perception that the song has always been about, with the protagonist knowing things about the woman who's the object of the song without directly perceiving them. The record is one of those where I wish I was able to play the whole thing for you, because it's a masterpiece of structure, and of editing, and of dynamics. It's also a record that even now is impossible to replicate properly on stage, though both its writers in their live performances come very close. But while someone in the audience for either the current touring Beach Boys led by Mike Love or for Brian Wilson's solo shows might come away thinking "that sounded just like the record", both have radically different interpretations of it even while sticking close to the original arrangement. The touring Beach Boys' version is all throbbing strangeness, almost garage-rock, emphasising the psychedelia of the track: [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, "Good Vibrations (live 2014)"] While Brian Wilson's live version is more meditative, emphasising the gentle aspects: [Excerpt Brian Wilson, "Good Vibrations (live at the Roxy)"] But back in 1966, there was definitely no way to reproduce it live with a five-person band. According to Tanner, they actually asked him if he would tour with them, but he refused -- his touring days were over, and also he felt he would look ridiculous, a middle-aged man on stage with a bunch of young rock and roll stars, though apparently they offered to buy him a wig so he wouldn't look so out of place. When he wouldn't tour with them, they asked him where they could get a theremin, and he pointed them in the direction of Robert Moog. Moog -- whose name is spelled M-o-o-g and often mispronounced "moog", had been a teenager in 1949, when he'd seen a schematic for a theremin in an electronic hobbyist magazine, after Samuel Hoffman had brought the instrument back into the limelight. He'd built his own, and started building others to sell to other hobbyists, and had also started branching out into other electronic instruments by the mid-sixties. His small company was the only one still manufacturing actual theremins, but when the Beach Boys came to him and asked him for one, they found it very difficult to control, and asked him if he could do anything simpler. He came up with a ribbon-controlled oscillator, on the same principle as Tanner's electro-theremin, but even simpler to operate, and the Beach Boys bought it and gave it to Mike Love to play on stage. All he had to do was run his finger up and down a metallic ribbon, with the positions of the notes marked on it, and it would come up with a good approximation of the electro-theremin sound. Love played this "woo-woo machine" as he referred to it, on stage for several years: [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, "Good Vibrations (live in Hawaii 8/26/67)"] Moog was at the time starting to build his first synthesisers, and having developed that ribbon-control mechanism he decided to include it in the early models as one of several different methods of controlling the Moog synthesiser, the instrument that became synonymous with the synthesiser in the late sixties and early seventies: [Excerpt: Gershon Kingsley and Leonid Hambro, "Rhapsody in Blue" from Switched-On Gershwin] "Good Vibrations" became the Beach Boys' biggest ever hit -- their third US number one, and their first to make number one in the UK. Brian Wilson had managed, with the help of his collaborators, to make something that combined avant-garde psychedelic music and catchy pop hooks, a truly experimental record that was also a genuine pop classic. To this day, it's often cited as the greatest single of all time. But Brian knew he could do better. He could be even more progressive. He could make an entire album using the same techniques as "Good Vibrations", one where themes could recur, where sections could be edited together and songs could be constructed in the edit. Instead of a pocket symphony, he could make a full-blown teenage symphony to God. All he had to do was to keep looking forward, believe he could achieve his goal, and whatever happened, not lose his nerve and turn back. [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, "Smile Promo" ]

"Remember, pronounce it Mohg rather than Mooog. Robert Moog did not invent the synthesizer. He just made it so that it was in the reach of the regular musician. This week is the anniversary of his releasing the MiniMoog so here is an hour on how his invention worked and how it came to be part of modern music."

"Remember, pronounce it Mohg rather than Mooog. Robert Moog did not invent the synthesizer. He just made it so that it was in the reach of the regular musician. This week is the anniversary of his releasing the MiniMoog so here is an hour on how his invention worked and how it came to be part of modern music."

Playlist ARP demonstration. Roger Powell and Harry Coon, the ARP 2600—How it Works, side 1 from The Electronic Sounds Of The Arp Synthesizer 2600 And 2500 (1972 ARP Instruments). Vinyl, 7", 33 ⅓ RPM. Narrated and all music by Roger Powell. 7:38 ARP demonstration. Roger Powell and Harry Coon, the ARP 2500—How it Sounds, side 2 from The Electronic Sounds Of The Arp Synthesizer 2600 And 2500 (1972 ARP Instruments). Vinyl, 7", 33 ⅓ RPM. Music by Harry Coon and an improvisation by Roger Powell. 6:20 ARP demonstration, Dave Fredericks, “I Can See Clearly Now” from The ARP Pro Soloist Synthesizer (1973 ARP Instruments). Vinyl, 7", 33 ⅓ RPM, EP. 2:24 ARP demonstration, unknown artists, The First Symphonic Keyboard - ARP Omni (1976 ARP Instruments). Flexi-disc, 7", Promo, 33 ⅓ RPM, Single Sided. 5:05 ARP demonstration, Dave Fredericks, “Zarathustra” from The ARP Pro Soloist Synthesizer (1973 ARP Instruments). Vinyl, 7", 33 ⅓ RPM, EP. 2:58 ARP demonstration, Music and Narration By Roger Powell from side 1 of The ARP Family Of Synthesizers (1973 ARP Instruments). Vinyl, 7", 33 ⅓ RPM, Stereo Music By Dave Fredericks, Harry Coon. The narrator is credited as being musician Roger Powell, but I don't think that's true. Powell was an ARP sponsored artist around this time and some of his works from Cosmic Furnace are played on the disc, though. 7:08 PAiA Synthesizers demonstration. “Selections From Epsilon Boötis” by Richard Bugg from PAiA Synthesizers (1974 PAiA Electronics, Inc.). Flexi-disc, 7", 33 ⅓ RPM, Single Sided, Promo, Red.Uses the Paia 2720 and Paia 4700 synthesizers. Interesting demonstration that also includes instruments being processed through PAiA modules. PAiA demonstration record which included an 18-page booklet with pictures and schematics of the featured composition. 6:17 Electro-Harmonix demonstration of guitar pedals and effects. The Electro-Harmonix Work Band. “Fame and Fortune” from State-Of-The-Art Electronic Devices (1976 Electro-Harmonix). Vinyl LP. Directed by Elliott Randall who organized a band of studio musicians recruited to play a variety of Electro-Harmonix effects boxes and pedals. Bass, Will Lee; Drums, Gary Mure; Engineer, Joe Vanneri; Guitar, Dan White, Jim Miller; Producers, Dan Gershon, Elliott Randall, Mike Matthews; Vocals, Piano, Philip Namanworth. Record was basically made to feature and promote high-end electronic guitar/bass/voice effect devices by Electro-Harmonix. Detailed explanations of each device and its role in each given track are given in the liner notes on the sleeve. This track features the Golden Throat, a mouth filter device running guitar sound through a tube into the player's mouth; and Octave Multiplexer, a downward octave displacer with tone control possibilities, used here on voice. 5:08 Electro-Harmonix demonstration of guitar pedals and effects. The Electro-Harmonix Work Band. “I Am Not a Synthesizer” from State-Of-The-Art Electronic Devices (1976 Electro-Harmonix). Vinyl LP. Directed by Elliott Randall who organized a band of studio musicians recruited to play a variety of Electro-Harmonix effects boxes and pedals. Bass, Will Lee; Drums, Gary Mure; Engineer, Joe Vanneri; Guitar, Dan White, Jim Miller; Producers, Dan Gershon, Elliott Randall, Mike Matthews; Vocals, Piano, Philip Namanworth. This track features the Hot Foot universal pedal, “allowing real-time foot control of any potentiometer (knob) on any other device; Frequency Analyzer, or ring modulator; Memory Man, a solid state echo/analog delay line; Electric Mistress, a flanger; Doctor Q, an envelope follower and voltage controlled filter; and Big Muff Pi, a harmonic distortion and sustain device. Not synthesizer was used in the making of these sounds. 8:19 The Elektor Music Synthesiser demonstration , no artist, (1977 ESS). Flexi-disc, 7", 33 ⅓ RPM, Single Sided. This was a small, analog synthesizer with 3 VCO's, 1 VCF, and a dual VCA.The Elektor Formant had a three octave keyboard and was made in the Netherlands and available by kit. From the manual: “Formant is not a suitable project for the beginner. The complexity of the synthesiser demands a high degree of competency in soldering p.c. boards and interwiring if an unacceptably large number of faults are not to arise.” 7:35 RMI Keyboard Computer demonstration. Mike Mandel, “Mandel Does it” from RMI Harmonic Synthesizer And Keyboard Computer (1976 Rocky Mount Instruments, Inc.). Vinyl LP. Mike Mandel, RMI Keyboard Computer. 1:58 RMI Keyboard Computer demonstration. Clark Ferguson, “Voices” from RMI Harmonic Synthesizer And Keyboard Computer (1976 Rocky Mount Instruments, Inc.). Vinyl LP. Clark Ferguson, RMI Keyboard Computer. 1:38 RMI Keyboard Computer demonstration. Clark Ferguson, “Strings” from RMI Harmonic Synthesizer And Keyboard Computer (1976 Rocky Mount Instruments, Inc.). Vinyl LP. Clark Ferguson, RMI Keyboard Computer. 3:00 Prophet 5 demonstration. Part 1, Performed by John Bowen from The Prophet (1978 Sequential Circuits). Flexi-disc, 7", 33 ⅓ RPM, Two Sided. Recorded at Music Annex, Menio Park, CA. 3:27 Prophet 5 demonstration. Part 2, “Sinfonia No. 11 in G minor” (Bach) performed by Dan Wyman from The Prophet (1978 Sequential Circuits). Flexi-disc, 7", 33 ⅓ RPM, Two Sided. John Bowen, Recorded at Sound Arts, Los Angeles, CA. 2:23 Synclavier demonstration. Denny Jaeger and Patrick Gleeson, side 1 from The Incredible Sounds Of Synclavier II (1981 New England Digital Corp.). Vinyl, LP, Compilation, Stereo, Blue Translucent. Demonstration disc for Synclavier sampling system. Includes “Untitled,” composed, programmed, and performed by Denny Jaeger; additional programming, composition, and performances by Bill Keenan. 14:23 Equinox 380 MusiComputer demonstration , Bob Snyder, “Heaven Came Down” from Equinox - Featuring The Amazing Equinox 380 MusiComputer Electronic Keyboard (1982 CBS). Vinyl LP. Equinox 380.” All selections were recorded 'Live" with a standard production model of the Gulbransen Equinox 380 MusiComputer. No "over-dubbing" was utilized in the production of this album.” Snyder himself recorded the following demo tracks that are different than the album I am sourcing for this podcast, Here is that recording of a YouTube video that demos this organ synthesizer with added narration and audience clapping. 2:46 Equinox 380 MusiComputer demonstration, Danny Saliba, “Runaway” from Equinox - Featuring The Amazing Equinox 380 MusiComputer Electronic Keyboard (1982 CBS). Vinyl LP. Equinox 380.”All selections were recorded 'Live" with a standard production model of the Gulbransen Equinox 380 MusiComputer.” 2:18 LinnDrum demonstration. Side 1 from The Ultimate Drum Machine (1982 Linn Electronics, Inc.). Red Flexi-disc, 7", 33 ⅓ RPM, Single Sided, Promo. 2:25 Emulator Demonstration, Side 1, “The Andrew Wilson Emulator Demo” (written by Andrew Thomas Wilson); and “Batteries Not Included” (written by Marco Alpert); narrated by Marcus Hale from Emulator Demonstration (1982 E-mu Systems, Inc.). Flexi-disc, 8.” Featuring the E-mu Emulator sampler. 6:51 Fairlight Computer Music Instrument demonstration. Don Blacke, narrator. Side 1 of the cassette, Just Fairlight - Number Three (1982 Fairlight Instruments Pty Ltd). Cassette. “Cassette released by Fairlight Instruments Pty Ltd promoting the Fairlight Computer Musical Instrument - the first polyphonic digital sampling synthesizer. Cassette was available when purchasing the synthesizer from the company. Printed information and tracklisting included on a separate sheet of paper. Side A includes informative narration explaining the Fairlight CMI and features various samples and short compositions. The last quarter of Side A includes recording of a presentation by Dr Robert Moog commenting on the Fairlight CMI. Side B contains all musical extracts from Side A, though without the commentary.” 20:02 Yamaha Electone demonstration. Claude Dupras, “Pulstar” from Interface Yamaha FX-1 (1983 Yamaha). Vinyl LP. Dupras, a longtime Yamaha Electone user, recorded this album for Yamaha to showcase the features of the latest model, the digital Electone FX-1. Here he plays the Vangelis piece “Pulstar.” 3:21 Yamaha DX7 demonstration. Side 1 from DX7 Sound Sensation (1983 Yamaha). Flexi-disc, 33 ⅓ RPM, Stereo. Tracks: Bell, Female Voice (2); Bagpipe, Snare Drum, Footsteps (3); Stardust (1); Harp, Cello (2); Electric Guitar (2); Church Organ (1); Violin (1); Train, Banjo, Fiddle, Honky-Tonk Piano (4); Volcano (1); Pan-Flute, Timpani, Shimmer, Chinese Organ (4). Notes on DX7 settings per track: (1) Signal processors used on this recording: Reverb, Delay, Graphic Equalizer, Parametric Equalizer, Flanger (used on 'Guitar'); (2) Number in parentheses indicate the number of overdubs used for the corresponding voice; (3) The entire recording was made with a single Yamaha DX7." 6:37 Background Music Excerpts from the Moog 900, RCA Music Synthesizer, Sound of Moog, ARP family of instruments, E-mu Emulator, demonstration recordings. Blue Marvin, “Release Time” from the album With Arp Sinthesyzer 2600 (1973 Joker). Blue Marvin is Alberto Baldan Bembo in this Italian release of ARP Odyssey tracks. Opening and closing sequences voiced by Anne Benkovitz. Additional opening, closing, and other incidental music by Thom Holmes. For additional notes, please see my blog Noise and Notations.

It's the 77th episode of the Truth About Vintage Amps Podcast, where amp tech Skip Simmons makes pizza on english muffins, crushes the dreams of young blues aficionados and fields your questions on all things tube amp.   This week's episode is sponsored by Jupiter Condenser Co., Amplified Parts and Grez Guitars.  Some of the topics discussed this week:  :23 Skip has no electricity  3:52 Jason does a video shoot with David Grisman  4:17 The “Amigo SoCal” vintage guitar show (August 28-29, 2021); a Massey amp with reverb and tremolo     6:06 Alamo Paragon Special  8:01 Skip's tips: Vintage guitar show wheeling & dealing 10:23 Grez Guitars 12:10 Amplified Parts, ProCo guitar cords 12:57 Jupiter Caps: Bumblebees, Red Astrons, Cosmos caps 20:45 The TAVA Patreon page  25:17 The TAVA Index on Tableau!, Goldentone Amp book  28:51 Cleaning the crusty corrosion on a Fender silverface faceplate 31:34 Making a lower-power Vox clone?  35:21 Grid bias vs cathode bias on a pre-amp tube   38:50 Why does Skip have an oscilloscope and why doesn't he raise his prices?  41:14 Can you use a field coil speaker to drive speaker-driven reverb; voicecoils on a field coil speaker 45:07 Will the bigger vintage Fender amps ever go up in value?  49:32 Pinpointing note-triggered noise / rumble in an amp cabinet 52:55 A Lab Series L3 goes to a good home; Robert Moog; English muffin pizzas 55:12 What's up with the Fender Tremolux Model 6G9 with EL84 power tubes? Aspen Pittman's 'The Tube Amp' book (Amazon link) 58:15 A 1955 Montgomery Ward-branded amp with a wire from the speaker frame to the chassis  1:01:14 A one-way speaker mismatch on solid state amps?  1:02:54 Water kefir (recipe here) 1:04:30 Replacing the multi-cap can on a Fender Bassman 20 1:06:54 Using a pressure cooker for dried beans or potatoes  1:08:40 Poking a hole instead of solder wick  1:09:01 Vintage pencil sharpeners; Nelson Riddle  1:11:32 Any grads from the Red Wing Electronic Music Technology class? 1:12:32 The magic behind an early 1960s Ampeg M-15, vintage Jensen P15N speakers 1:15:30 What to do with a cheap Aerco-branded PA amp built by Atomite Electronic & Radio Corp? 1:21:35 Midwesterners: Skip is seeking Heileman's Special Export, Augsburger or Little Kings beer  There is also a TAVA Big Index page located here.  Co-hosted by the Fretboard Journal's Jason Verlinde. Email or send us a voice memo to: podcast@fretboardjournal.com or leave us a voicemail or text at 509-557-0848. And don't forget to share the show with friends. 

If you're listening to this podcast on Apple or Spotify, you're seriously missing out. The Trumpet Dynamics mobile app has content and exclusive bonuses you won't find on a third-party application. To access the mobile app, visit trumpetdynamics.com. https://podcastartistry.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/mutantrumpet.jpg (Click or tap here to see a photo of the mutantrumpet.) Composer/performer https://benneill.com (Ben Neill) is the inventor of the Mutantrumpet, a hybrid electro-acoustic instrument, and is widely recognized as a musical innovator through his recordings, performances and installations. Neill’s music blends influences from electronic, jazz, and minimalist music, blurring the lines between digital media and acoustic instrument performance. Neill has recorded eleven albums of his music on labels including Universal/Verve, Thirsty Ear, Astralwerks, and Six Degrees. Currently he is an Artist in Residence at Nokia Bell Labs where he is exploring new modes of emotion transfer and communication between people using music, visual media, and hybrid instruments. Performances include BAM Next Wave Festival, Big Ears Festival, Lincoln Center, Whitney Museum of American Art, Bing Concert Hall at Stanford, Getty Museum, Cite de la Musique Paris, Moogfest, Spoleto Festival, Umbria Jazz, Bang On A Can Festival, ICA London, Istanbul Jazz Festival, Vienna Jazz Festival, and the Edinburgh Festival, among many others. Neill has worked closely with many musical innovators including La Monte Young, John Cage, John Cale, Pauline Oliveros, Rhys Chatham, DJ Spooky, David Berhman, Mimi Goese, King Britt, and Nicolas Collins. Neill also leads concerts of La Monte Young’s The Second Dream of the High Tension Stepdown Line Transformer with an international brass ensemble; performances have recently been presented in New York, Amsterdam, Paris, Amsterdam, Huddersfield, Den Bosch, Oslo, Krems, Koln, Los Angeles, and Warsaw. Neill began developing the Mutantrumpet in the early 1980s. Initially an acoustic instrument (a combination of 3 trumpets and a trombone combined into one), he collaborated with synthesizer Robert Moog to integrate electronics. In 1992, while in residency at the STEIM research and development lab for new instruments in Amsterdam, Neill made the mutantrumpet fully computer interactive. In 2008 he created a new version of his instrument at STEIM, and returned there in 2016-17 to design Version 4.0 which made its debut 2019. See a more detailed history of the instrument https://benneill.com/portfolio/mutantrumpethistory/ (here). Other current projects include a collaboration with vocalist/composer Mimi Goese that explores the musical and poetic qualities of mathematics and science through collaborations with chaos mathematician Ralph Abraham and the Beacon Institute for Rivers and Estuaries. The new songs combine the interplay of Goese’s captivating vocals and the electroacoustic explorations of Neill’s self-designed mutantrumpet with sounds created from fractal mathematics and Hudson River environmental data. A native of North Carolina, Neill holds a Doctorate of Musical Arts degree from Manhattan School of Music. He studied composition with La Monte Young and was also mentored by composer/performer Jon Hassell in the early 1980’s. Since 2008 he has been a music professor at Ramapo College of New Jersey. BEN NEILL PRESS QUOTES “Ben Neill is using a schizophrenic trumpet to create art music for the people.” Wired Magazine “Ben Neill performs the Mutantrumpet, a super-instrument of his own design that he also uses to control lights and other elements in the show. The music is a dense, continously-shifting tapestry of electronic beats.” Wired Magazine “The avant-garde and EDM come together in music by Ben Neill & his mutantrumpet.” WNYC New Sounds/John Schaefer “A creative composer, genius performer, and inventor of the mutantrumpet.” Time Out NY “Ben Neill...

Marc Bonilla discusses the Keith Emerson tribute concert DVD and CD release.

The Famous Computer Cafe This is a podcast episode featuring three interviews with people who created a radio show that did hundreds of interviews. The Famous Computer Cafe was -- not a restaurant -- but a radio program that aired from 1983 through the first quarter of 1986. The program included computer news, product reviews, and interviews. The program was created by three people — who were not only the on-air voices, but did all the work around the program: getting advertisers, buying air time, researching each day's computer news, booking interviews -- everything. Those three people were Andrew Velcoff, Michael Walker (now Michael FireWalker), and Ellen Lubin (later Ellen Walker, now Ellen Fields.) For this episode of Antic, I got to talk with all three of The Famous Computer Cafe's proprietors. There were several versions of the show, which aired on several radio stations, primarily in California. A live, daily half-hour version allowed phone calls from listeners. Taped versions (running a half-hour and up to two hours) also aired daily. The show started in 1983 on two stations in the Los Angeles area: KFOX 93.5 FM and KIEV 870 AM. In 1985 it began airing in the California Bay Area: on KXLR 1260 AM in San Francisco and KCSM 91.1 FM in San Matro, and KSDO 1130 AM in San Diego. Also in 1985 a nationally syndicated, half-hour non-commercial version of The Famous Computer Cafe was available via satellite to National Public Radio stations around the United States, though it's not clear today which stations ran it. To me, the most exciting thing about the show was the interviews. The list of people that the show interviewed is a who's-who of tech luminaries of the early 1980s.  But not just computer people: they interviewed anyone whose work was touched by personal computer technology. musicians, professors, publishers, philosophers, journalists, astrologers. The cafe aired interviews with Philip Estridge, the IBM vice president who was responsible for developing the PC; Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates; Atari Chairman Jack Tramiel; Bill Atkinson, developer of MacPaint; Infocom's Joel Berez; Gene Roddenberry, creator of Star Trek; musician Herbie Hancock; Trip Hawkins, founder of Electronic Arts; author Douglas Adams; Stewart Brand, editor of the Whole Earth Catalog; psychologist Timothy Leary; science fiction writer Ray Bradbury; synthesizer pioneer Robert Moog; and pop star Donny Osmond. The list goes on and on and on. By mid-1985, the show had run more than 300 half-hour interviews. Here's the bad news. Those episodes, those interviews, are lost. Today, a recording of only one Cafe episode is known to exist. That show, which aired January 2, 1986, includes an interview with Rich Gold, creator of the Activision simulation Little Computer People; a call-in from tech journalist John Dvorak; and commercials for Elephant Floppy Disks and Microsoft Word. The entire 29-minute episode is available at Internet Archive, with the gracious permission of the show's creators. It's an amazing time capsule -- which survived because Rich Gold, interviewed on the program, saved a cassette of that show. Perhaps, somewhere, there are hundreds more episodes waiting to be re-discovered — if someone has the recordings. If you do, contact me at antic@ataripodcast.com. The good news is that transcripts of six interviews do exist (and are now online): Timothy Leary, Donny Osmond, Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy's Douglas Adams and Steve Meretzky; Frank Herbert, author of the Dune series; Tom Mahon, author of Charged Bodies; and Jack Nilles, head of the University of Southern California Center for Futures Research. Check this episode's show notes, at AtariPodcast.com, for links to the one episode, the six transcripts, and the cool Famous Computer Cafe logo. You'll hear the interviews in the order in which I recorded them. First up is Michael FireWalker, then Ellen Fields, then Andrew Velcoff. The interview with Michael FireWalker took place on May 27, 2020. The interview with Ellen Fields took place on June 1, 2020. The interview with Andrew Velcoff took place on July 3, 2020. Special thanks to fellow researcher Devin Monnens, and the Department of Special Collections at Stanford University. This podcast used excerpts from the one The Famous Computer Cafe episode that is known to exist. That episode, now available at Internet Archive, was digitized by Stanford University (the physical tape is in their special collections located in the Stanford Series 9 of the Rich Gold Collection (M1510), Box 2.) If you have any other recordings of any Famous Computer Cafe episodes, please contact me at antic@ataripodcast.com. The Famous Computer Cafe 1986-01-02 episode The Famous Computer Cafe interview transcripts The Famous Computer Cafe ads, photos, articles

Chapters00:32 - Introduction02:11 - Cyril Lance / The Claravox16:44 - Dorit Chrysler25:26 - Bruce Woolley32:08 - Katia Isakoff 45:40 - EndingMusic credits:Rachmaninov Vocalise - Clara Rockmore, theremin. Nadia Reisenberg, piano.From: “Clara Rockmore – The Art of the Theremin”. Delos Productions CD. Courtesy of The Nadia Reisenberg / Clara Rockmore FoundationSchneeleichen - by Dorit Chrysler - unreleased extract from M - eine stadt sucht einen moerder - with kind permission of Dorit ChryslerBeat Monjune - by Dorit Chrysler - unreleased extract from M - eine stadt sucht einen moerder - with kind permission of Dorit ChryslerTherexotica - by Peg Ming - with kind permission of Dorit Chrysler (a track on the Theremin 100 compilation produced by The NY Theremin Society)Peace Song to Other Worlds (2 extracts) - by Radio Science Orchestra - with kind permission of Bruce WoolleyTheremini solo - by Katia Isakoff - with kind permission of Katia IsakoffClara Rockmore BiogClara (Reisenberg) Rockmore holds a unique place in music history as the star performer of the theremin. Born in Russia, in 1911, at four, she was accepted as the youngest ever violin student at the St. Petersburg Imperial Conservatory. As conditions deteriorated after the Revolution, the Reisenberg family left Russia and travelled across Europe for several years until 1921 when they succeeded in gaining passage on a steamship bound for America. In New York, Clara resumed her studies with Leopold Auer, but shortly before she was to make her American debut (playing the Beethoven Concerto), she developed an arthritic problem with her bow arm, and had to give up the violin.Fortunately, she had met Leon Theremin (an Americanisation of Lev Termen, as he was known in Russia), the inventor of the world's first electronic instrument. “I was fascinated by the aesthetic part of it, the visual beauty, the idea of playing in the air,” Clara recalled, “and I loved the sound. I tried it, and apparently showed some kind of immediate ability to manipulate it. Soon Lev Sergeyevich gave me, for a present, the RCA model theremin.”She convinced Leon Theremin to build her a far more precise and responsive instrument than the RCA model, one with a five-octave range, instead of three. Over the years she performed extensively but it was not until 1977 that she saw the release of her first commercial LP, performances with Nadia Reisenberg (recorded by Robert Moog) titled ‘The Art Of The Theremin'.In 1989, Steve M. Martin, long fascinated by the instrument, embarked upon the documentary Theremin - An Electronic Odyssey, a film including some of Clara's last public performances (videotaped at a 1989 Nadia Reisenberg tribute concert in Merkin Hall), and the New York reunion of Clara and Leon Theremin (then aged 95). Premiered in New York at Alice Tully Hall, the film in large measure revitalised interest in both the theremin itself and Clara Rockmore's unique accomplishments. She died in 1998.Cyril Lance BiogCyril Lance is the Chief Technical Officer at Moog Music and lead designer of the Moog Claravox Centennial Theremin. Cyril first met Bob Moog in January 2005 during an informal visit to Moog factory.  When Bob was diagnosed with cancer in April of 2005, Cyril was asked to come up and take over the engineering effort.  Since then, Cyril has been at the helm of engineering and product development and, along with the dedicated and passionate team at Moog Music, has helped to continue Moog's legacy of designing and producing beautifully crafted electronic instruments aimed at inspiring artists world-wide to explore and expand their personal sonic vocabularies.  Cyril strives daily to continue Bob Moog's legacy and to have a lot of fun along the way.  “It's truly a blessing to have the opportunity to contribute in one small-way to the transformative powers of music to bring joy and connect people on the deepest levels through-out the world”.https://www.moogmusic.com/Dorit Chrysler BiogDorit Chrysler has been dubbed a superior wizard of the theremin. An Austrian-born, New York based composer and performer, Chrysler is the co-founder of the NY Theremin Society and started the first international school for Theremin, KidCoolThereminSchool and L'Ecole Theremine with branches in NY and Paris. She is also one of the most visible Thereminists spreading the gospel of this mysterious sounding instrument. Most recently she finished her analog soundtrack for a remake of “M” by Fritz Lang and was featured on the soundtrack of the HBO documentary “Going Clear”. Chrysler received her master's degree of musicology in Vienna and has notably collaborated with Anders Trentemøller, Cluster, Adult., CERN, Carsten Nicolai, Elliot Sharp and Laurie Spiegel. She has performed with the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra, had her work commissioned by MoMA and the Venice Biennale, and is the founder of “Dame Electric,” a festival dedicated to female | pioneers in Analog Music. As the director of the NY Theremin Society, Chrysler is promoting the application of theremin in different art disciplines and has produced the THEREMIN100 compilation release, commemorating the 100th birthday of the Theremin in 2020.http://www.doritchrysler.com/toc.htmlhttps://www.nythereminsociety.org/Bruce Woolley BiogIn 1969 Bruce Woolley bought a Futurama electric guitar, formed a school band, and dreamed of being a professional musician. After years of experimentation, and unsuccessful attempts at becoming a famous jazz-rock guitarist, he decided to concentrate on writing pop songs. In 1979 he co-wrote “Video Killed the Radio Star”.  After a stint fronting cult New Wave unit The Camera Club, Woolley moved back into songwriting and production, forming a creative partnership with Grace Jones. In 1994, Woolley discovered Exotica and formed The Radio Science Orchestra, a theremin-led group that defined retrofuturism before people were talking about retrofuturism. A sonic time machine travelling along the whole history of electronic music, the Orchestra has collaborated with the world's leading theremin virtuosi including Lydia Kavina, Carolina Eyck and Charlie Draper. Notable guest artists include Grace Jones, Polly Scattergood, Ken Hollings, Dr. Robert Moog, Steve Dub and Thomas Dolby.http://www.brucewoolleyhq.com/https://www.radioscienceorchestra.com/Katia Isakoff BiogKatia Isakoff is a composer and multi-instrumentalist music producer whose compositions, performances and productions first appeared in the Add N To (X) album Loud Like Nature (Mute Records).  She has since collaborated on numerous albums and projects including John Foxx and Steve D'Agostino's Evidence of Time Travel which was composed and produced at her London studio. Having contributed synths and co-mixed EOTT, she went on to join them for a live concert performance at Electri_City Conference Dusseldorf, adding Moog Theremini and synths to the sonic architecture of this ever evolving and expansive Karborn graphic novel, which premiered with a live performance at the British Film Institute UK and Sonic Acts Festival, Amsterdam.  She has since spent much of her time between London and Berlin working on her forthcoming album She's Not Here.In 2019, Katia launched !N_K o L // B a new and innovative composer producer series bringing together pioneering, established and emerging composer producers to collaborate in various iconic studios and pop-up locations. Each series sees a new guest pioneer and group joining her; together, they embark on the journey of making an album through improvisation and exploration of the studio as an instrument, building a global network through musical collaborations – one album and city at a time.The first IN_KoLAB series was hosted by British Grove Studios. The group spent two days recording and filming what would become an immersive four-movement quadrophonic piece called IN_KoLAB Making Waves with Suzanne Ciani.  The album and accompanying short will be released in 2021 and plans are in motion for the next series.https://www.katiaisakoff.com/ | https://inkolab.orgCaro C BiogCaro C is an artist, engineer and teacher specialising in electronic music. She started making music thanks to being laid up whilst living in a double decker bus and listening to Warp Records in the late 1990's. This "sonic enchantress" (BBC Radio 3) has now played in most of the cultural hotspots of her current hometown of Manchester, UK. Caro is also the instigator and project manager of electronic music charity Delia Derbyshire Day.URL: http://carocsound.com/Twitter: @carocsoundInst: @carocsoundFB: https://www.facebook.com/carocsound/Delia Derbyshire Day Charity: https://deliaderbyshireday.com

Robert Moog changed the face of modern music with his engineering genius. Not only did he create the most iconic synthesizer of all time, the Minimoog Model D, but he innovated the synthesizer landscape in numerous ways, inventing concepts such as voltage control, the pitch wheel, enveloppe generators, and many more. His legacy will live on forever through the musical classics his inventions made possible. In this episode, we pay hommage to the great Bob Moog. from the early beginnings of his company, to the multiple roadblocks he faced.Support the show (https://delicatebeats.com/collections/all)

This week we look at the dark beginnings of post punk band Devo with the US Kent State massacre and celebrate the synth wonders of Wendy Carlos. Our hot new music picks of the week come from the incredibly talented Aimee Steven with her new single, Darling and the exciting hard rock sounds of Hawxx.We love to hear from our listeners, so if you have a song you want us to hear, a story you want us to cover or just want to say hi, drop us an email at rockpoprambles@gmail.com or find us on twitter @bugeyeband of facebook @bugeyemusic.Check out the official Rock, Pop, Rambles Playlist to hear music by the artists that we discuss in our shows:https://open.spotify.com/playlist/3nf6IWOjDkhGWOchl03fDi?si=5ttXPpLjSpy2YOkNi1pW9ALike what you hear? Join us on Patreon for bonus content: https://www.patreon.com/BugeyeRESEARCH:Amy StevenTwitter: @AimeeStevenFacebook: @AimeeStevenInstagram: @aimeestevenHawxxTwitter: @hawxxmusicFacebook: @hawxxmusicInstagram: @hawxxmusicDEVOTreble Zine: 10 Essential Albums Produced by Brian Enohttps://www.treblezine.com/28807-10-essential-albums-produced-by-brian-eno/Wiki: Devohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DevoStereogum: Best Devo Covershttps://www.stereogum.com/2012071/best-devo-covers/franchises/list/gotcha-covered/Nirvana Devo Cover: Turnaroundhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rlnL_iwzu9IUltimate Classic Rock: Top Ten Devo Songshttps://ultimateclassicrock.com/devo-songs/Devo - Whip It Official Videohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RidtrSCogg0Devo - I can't get no satisfactionhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jadvt7CbH1oKent State Shootingshttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kent_State_shootingsThe Guardian: Kent State Massacre Marked Start of Americas Polarizationhttps://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/may/04/kent-state-massacre-marked-start-of-americas-polarizationMy Favourite Murderhttps://myfavoritemurder.com/219-219-small-pillow-to-scream-in/Wendy CarlosBBC Radio 6 Music: 1989 (Horizon: Wendy Carlos):https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z3cab5IcCy8Music Revolutionaries: Robert Moog & Wendy Carlos:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AtPJtSBBycoBBC Archive Tomorrow's World Moog Synthesiser:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=usl_TvIFtG0&list=PLeC2WeKvjXcVMeMTBBe4qrOPy8fLfw-RpWendy Carlos, Trans Queen of the Synthesiser (LGBT+ History Month):https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D5uEWrot0ggWendy Carlos Website: http://www.wendycarlos.com/Robert Moog: https://www.theguardian.com/film/2005/feb/11/2Irish Times Article :https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/music/switched-on-bach-how-a-transgender-synth-pioneer-changed-music-1.3699133Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/bugeyes-rock-pop-rambles. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

In this discussion, the generous spirit of Todd Barton shines. This life-long musician, synthesist, composer, sound designer and national treasure shares how he really has spent his whole life following the sound. Featuring exclusive tracks and a great jouney into the mind of one of the most active and deep listeners I have ever known, this is a discussion I had only dreamed of when I started this podcast. You're going to love this. Find Todd Barton here: Personal Website (https://toddbarton.com/) Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/synthtodd) Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/synthtodd/) YouTube (https://www.instagram.com/synthtodd/) Soundcloud (https://soundcloud.com/user7621213) Vimeo (https://vimeo.com/user2359061)

Richard Maxwell has created and runs one of the most unique and inspiring creative musical arts and sciences program in the nation. For me, it reminds me of the entry level sound recording program I went through in college, only Richard's students get into the creative process early because of what he had the guts to create. This program happens in an area of the school campus where they have their own section of rooms that is their facility. It's made up of a larger classroom if you will that doubles as a performance room plus they have 15 Pro Tools stations and Pro Tools running in their A and B recording studios. They learn how to be expressive without fear of judgement, they write songs, they mutually assist and critique each others work in a helpful, loving way and it's magical to see what happens on a daily basis. Richard is a loving, caring person who, by his own efforts and fortitude, has created a platform where he can give the students, his very best in regards to guidance, ideas and processes.If you love music, talking about music, the process of making music, what music looks like in today's world, interested in how music could be handled in schools or always wondered how a single person can make a huge change in our education system, these episodes split into Part 1 and Part 2, are for you! Enjoy, share and spread the musical love. Richard Maxwell's Links: Richard's Website: https://sites.google.com/view/richardmaxwell CMAS Program: https://sites.google.com/view/arcadiacmas YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/RichardMaxwellMusic/videos Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/richard.maxwell.3538 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/rchrdmxwll/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/rchrdmxwll LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/richard-maxwell-235ab513/ https://youtu.be/KPMuQNW9GL4 ********** Podcast Music By: Andy Galore, Album: "Out and About", Song: "Chicken & Scotch" 2014 Andy's Links: http://andygalore.com/ https://www.facebook.com/andygalorebass/ ********** If you enjoy the podcast, would you please consider leaving a short review on Apple Podcasts/iTunes? It takes less than 60 seconds, and it really makes a difference in helping to convince hard-to-get guests. 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I'm glad you could come on the show. And as you know, I'm a huge fan and when I reached out, I figured, you know, while we're all in this COVID-19 thing, you aren't quite as busy as you usually are. So I'm glad Richard: Different Joe: I was able to Richard: And Joe: Get you in here. Richard: Different, busy? No, I'm I'm I am as I'm I'm as big of a fan of yours as you are always so kind to me as well. So Joe: I Richard: I think Joe: Appreciate Richard: A Joe: It. Richard: Mutual admiration society. But that's Joe: Awesome. Richard: A Joe: Yeah. Richard: That's a good thing. I'm flattered to be here. Joe: So I know just from my own personal experience with you that you are a multi instrumentalist because I know that you and I have a kinship with drums for sure. Richard: Yes, we do. Joe: But that's pretty much where my talent starts and stops. And then you go on to songwriting and playing guitar. And I'm sure you play the keys. Richard: Yeah, but. Joe: So. Richard: Yeah. But to be fair, your skill you have in, like your little finger in drums eclipses my entire rhythmic independence and abilities beyond belief. Joe: Now that you talk about being too kind, that's too kind. Right. Richard: Well, no. I mean, you are a masterful musician in your own right. Absolutely. Joe: Well, Richard: I am Joe: Thank you. Richard: A jack of all trades, master of none in some ways. But I think that I mean, for what it's worth, the multi instrumentalist thing is partially due to the control freak nature of my personality, I think. I've had time to analyze this over the years and some of that I'd like you know, I'd like to be able to sort of be like, yes, I love playing all these instruments and I do. But some of it is because somewhere along the line, it was hard to find people that I felt like I could say, hey, let's do it this way, you know, and some of that was because I was probably not probably I was really difficult to work with. I think myself. So I started just kind of trying to figure out ways to do it on my own. On the other hand, you do learn a lot when you explore other instruments. So there's a lot of instruments that I will pick up and play badly just for the sort of joy of seeing what it does. What's that? But I like that. I think I think I think musically, there's something about process for me. You know, I'm I'm at an age where, you know, there's a lot of "what ifs" in my life and in my career musically. So now, you know, it's interesting because, like, I think you're, you're in, you're at a point in your thirties where you like all of those things are sort of like, oh, man, if only I had. If only I had. And then, weirdly enough, you get to a point where you're like, wait a minute, I actually now this actually means like artistic freedom. Which has been fascinating for me, and I know we also want to talk about, you know, the program at the school and stuff, but it sort of relates to it like, like you start to realize, like sometimes that's actually more valuable. Like there's a ya know, there obviously we all want to be Springsteen or Taylor Swift or whoever is that, you know, that that A-list group. Of course. I mean, who wouldn't want Joe: Yeah. Richard: That lifestyle and and those opportunities and I think that anybody who says they don't, is probably not being entirely honest. On the other hand, you know, I remember, I've been biking through this COVID stuff as much as I can so I, I have one ear with a couple different podcasts that I listen to and when John Prine died, when and if you know who he was or Joe: Yeah, Richard: Not, is Joe: Absolutely. Richard: Really a brilliant songwriter. So there was this one podcast that was talking about him that had said something that just stuck with me. I was never a huge John Prine fan. I mean, I respected the guy, but they were saying how he looked at his career and at one point, the fact that he never had, like, that top 10 smash hit was a detriment. But then the music critic who, who's pretty, pretty brilliant guy, he goes, yeah, but on the other hand, when you talk to people about his entire catalog, everybody's like, yeah, but everything's brilliant and not having that hit, like, he wasn't identified by a particular sound or of particular time and he could always kind of do what he artistically wanted. I've become more fascinated by, by that than, than anything else. And I talk a lot about that with my students, you know, in their process to like, you know, that thing that you love is wonderful. But what's like, what's the step before and maybe what's the step after? And are you and frankly, are you allowed to even take it? You know, we get very critical of artists and what we see on TV and on, you know, any video and YouTube now and everything else, but sometimes I wonder, you know, man, it's that the pressure to sustain that, whatever that thing is for them. I don't know. I know it sounds weird to maybe people would say, oh, he's just copping out for whatever. I don't know if I'd want it at this point in my life. Joe: Yes Richard: You don't. I mean. Joe: That's funny because I've had the same conversation with myself. I totally in my heart and in my soul and to be truthful to myself, that's all I ever wanted. And then it took me until I don't think it was that long ago that I actually was able to look myself in the mirror and go, you just didn't put in the work. You didn't put in that extra thing to allow yourself to rise above to be noticed. It just, it didn't and I know that, you know, I just I just never went that last whatever it was Richard: Sure. Joe: To get Richard: But then, Joe: It done. Richard: On the other hand, you know that what's the cliche about, you know, one. One door opens and another and one closes and another opens. I mean, you just you know, I've come to realize that. That that. Things happen for a reason like, like, you know, along the lines of what you're talking about. So, like, I never took the risk to, like, go out to, I've been to L.A. enough times that I kind of have a love hate relationship with that city in some respect, I think, like everybody does. And places that nature in terms of the industry. But I never when I was in my early 20s, you know, I didn't do the stereotype I wanted to but the thing of it is, is that I know now, looking back, if I'm like you're saying, being truly honest with yourself, I'm truly honest with myself, I know for a fact that if I had gone out and done that, then, it wouldn't, I would have, I would have destroyed myself, probably like I wasn't going to hit it, like it wasn't going to happen then. It Joe: That's Richard: Just Joe: Interesting. Richard: It just wasn't I wasn't ready. Joe: The. Richard: I wasn't you know, I am a very slow process learner. It takes me a long time. I guess I'm not OK with it, you know? I mean, I'm sitting in this, you know, not to sound funny, but on the other hand, I'm this is everyday for me where I am right now. Like, Joe: Right. Richard: This is you know, I was I was in a position we were able to get a house built. And it's not like it's that fancy. And I'm not going to show you. I could show you what I'm looking at out my window. But like, if you saw like, there's just gear and stuff everywhere, it's a mess in the studio. But the fact that I'm able to sit in a studio every day, I have opportunities where I can make music on my own terms. You know, I'm thinking about everybody I grew up with and stuff like that, that's, that's not so bad. You know, I mean, I'm not like like taking a, like, sort of second place on that either, I mean, you know, I have I have friends, I have students who tour, former students who tour all over the world now. And I'm so proud of them. And it but it's brutal, I mean, it's just I mean, not even I'm not even talking about, like, the COVID stuff. I mean, just that lifestyle in general and trying to maintain that, I mean, it, it I did I did some of that, you know, like one hundred years ago. But, you know, it's I guess, I guess maybe I feel lucky we live in a time where I can feel fulfilled in some ways. Joe: Yeah, yeah, and it's so funny because I just the last guests that I had on it, we actually talked for two and a half hours and I won't do that to you. And it was I'm going to actually blame it on him because he's such a great storyteller. But I had Nate Morton on who is the drummer for The Voice, and him and I have become good friends over the past few years. And, you know, we went through his early childhood then, you know, going to engineering school, of all things, and quitting it because it was he knew it wasn't in his heart. Going to Berklee and then the connection that I'm making here was you talking about L.A., is he said that I knew I had to go where the gigs were of of the caliber that I wanted. I know I could have stayed in Boston, but I wanted to play on a hit TV show or I wanted to tour with the best of the best. And so he said, I just knew that that's the only move that I had with the two things that he he points out the two biggest things, decisions he's ever made in his life, even to this day was, number one, going to Berklee and number two, going to L.A. And without those combination of those two things, you wouldn't be where he is today. Richard: Sure, sure, Which Joe: So, Richard: Totally makes sense. Joe: Yeah. Richard: Which makes sense and for everybody, you know, and you've got to find your place in it. I don't know. Who knows? I mean, we're not that old. You never know. It's, I mean, to me, mean and the industry is different now. And there's, you know. I mean, because I work obviously I work with a lot of teenagers and a lot of 20 somethings and they're all and they're wonderful. But it is interesting how, like, you really can almost you can almost like feel the sort of like flash in the pan kind of vibe of whatever they're, they're currently into. Joe: Yeah. Richard: Which I don't see that as a criticism. I just mean, you know. Sometimes you, you know, I wonder, like, yhere are certain artists or certain bands and, you know, they used to get like, you know, the joke was like the oldies circuit kind of thing. But at the same time, you look at what those musicians are doing and there's something about the fact that they're that they're playing like, like I feel like that state, even with all the technology and I am a technology guy, let's not kid ourselves. Joe: Right. Richard: At the end of the day, it can't be about the technology. And I feel like there's something, you know, like. And I know they have all kinds of ups and downs with personnel and issues of personality. But like journey of all the, you know, sort of like stereotypical cliche kind of bands in a way. But it is interesting to me that decades on, when you see them play they're play like they're actually are playing Joe: All right. Richard: Late. And I think that's the right partially think that that's a big part of the reason I think that people go and see the Rolling Stones play. Because they're playing like like it's not tracks, it's not you don't you know, you don't go into their show going, well, they're going to produce it this way or produce it that way. And I don't think that has so much to do with age. I think that has to do with approach. I've become a big fan of all crazy things. I tell my students I always find this funny. I found myself a few years ago and I couldn't figure out what it was. At first I would I would be in here like in the studio and just kind of like I'd be doing like paperwork or like just whatever, like just I wasn't working on something, but I'd want happened in the background and I would find myself streaming from YouTube, live bluegrass. And I could not for the life of me, I don't like, I'm not like a country guy, I don't, what in the world is happening? You know, that's like my having, like, some sort of, like, long, weird dystopian out of body midlife musical crisis... Richard: I mean, like because I mean, I was, you know, my first musical love was classical and in prog rock. And then I got into rock and anything else. So like bluegrass is is just. We're, we're, we're moving on in a chain that was so bizarre and then I finally figured it out and it was because it was pure, like it's a bunch of guys and girls sitting with acoustic instruments, basically, and they have to play them. The instrument has to respond. You don't get the benefit of, you know, all the other stuff if you don't do it, it doesn't happen. And I have that has become incredibly compelling for me. And now so I've been spending years and I don't know if you want to get into this part of it or not. But I've been spending years trying to figure out a way to marry the two. How can you like my big thing right now is. How do you take like I love loopers, for example? The textures you can create. I really dislike the lack of in the moment control you have, though, with a looper, because once you do a loop, you're basically stuck with it. Joe: Right. Richard: You know, you can stop it. You can start it and sign. But in real time, I want to sit down like, like when you sit down behind a kit, you know, I want the high hat to respond as I'm playing it, not in some prefabricated way that I can no longer alter in any way. So I've been working on trying to figure out a way to play with all of the layers, but have them respond to me like I was sitting down behind the kit and doing it organically or at a piano or on a guitar or just, you know, a kazoo. I don't care what the instrument is but the idea that it responds immediately to me, that's a more interesting use of all of this. So anyway. Joe: What are you doing? Yeah. Not to go too far because we know, but it's interesting now, what are you doing to do that? Richard: So a lot of it has to do with um, figuring out ways to like, look what makes up the layer that you need. Do you know what I mean? So like like a loop for me, when I was like, you know, you there's there's people that are brilliant data. I mean, and that's the other thing, too. You know, you're you know, Ed Sheeran is a brilliant songwriter. He is gifted on so many levels and he's kind of perfected the looping thing. You know, Tash Sultana, I don't know who she is or not. Joe: I don't Richard: You should definitely look her up. She Joe: Work. Richard: Is. Oh, my gosh. She is about the most organic looper I've ever seen in my life to the point where you can tell that something glitched or made a mistake. And it's like she does it, it doesn't stop. She's so in the moment about the music she's making and it's it's just frickin' brilliant. It's unbelievable. But the point is, is that, you know, you start to look at all these textures and you start to see some commonalities. And then funny enough, I, I started looking at, well, what do I really need? Like like when when I when a singer songwriter starts a loop performance, a lot of times, you know, they start with like a drumbeat kind of thing, right? And, you know, they've got their acoustic guitar and they're doing all kinds of stuff. And there's not I mean, it's cool. But then it's like, well, what is that really about? You know? And so I had gotten really heavy into Mumford and Sons, of all things. And I'm watching Marcus Mumford, especially when it's just the four guys. Sorry, four guys [shows fingers]. And, you know, and the and he's doing you know, he's just got that kick drum and he's got that weird little pedal mechanism for the tambourine. But it's essentially he's doing all that momentum off of a kick drum. And because it's so well played organically, you can hear the rest of the drumkit, but you don't actually need it. I know for a fact that you in studio work because, you know, I've talked about this. You have a less is more kind of approach. You know, you don't have to you know, don't get me wrong, we're all fans of Neil Peart. I mean, Joe: Yes. Richard: You know, God rest his soul. The man was a genius on so many levels, but we're not gonna be able to pull that off. Like, I mean, he he could he could fill the space and you didn't go "Well, that was gratuitous." Joe: Yeah. Richard: You know, that's a I mean, you know, he's like he's not the only drummer. I think that could really get away with that consistently. Simon Phillips may be another one. But that's just and that's just just my opinion. But my point being, what I've basically been doing is I'm looking at the layers of what can you actually do and then essentially it's a variation on voice splitting. So if I take a tone and I branch it out and I noodle with it and essentially process it in a certain way, you don't necessarily know what it is that I'm playing from. But then it goes even further, and I promise we won't stay too long on this. But just because this is where my brain goes, Joe: That's right. Richard: Still, I had developed this hole and there's some video and stuff you can I mean, I'll send you some links and stuff of early, like prototypes of what I was doing and it's fun. But it's are real, first, I was a real pain to get a song prepped. Like the irony of the amount of time it would take me to get a song prep so that it could feel natural and organic was just like killing me. Like it, it became so creatively so, so I went back, I've gone back and I've read redressed it. And the crazy thing is, is so I started looking at instead of for the drum kit, I started looking at the relationship between the kick drum and the bass drum. And part of that was because at one point years ago, I had developed this really cool way to simulate what sounded like drums off of an acoustic guitar without having to play it as a loop like it was coming essentially off the strings, believe it or not. And it sounded really cool. And then I would do like some coffeehouse gigs or some, you know, whatever, some small shows and things, theater kind of gigs and stuff. And I realized that people like if they knew what I was doing, they'd be all over it. But just as a listener, it was like, oh yeah, he's got backing tracks. An I'm like, no wait, you've missed the whole point. And then I realize. And then. And then you like and I know, you know, you perform all the time. You can't really blame your audience if they if they don't get what you're doing, that's on you. You know, there's only so far you can go. Oh yeah. They didn't understand like Joe: Right. Richard: I mean, it's just, you Joe: Right. Richard: Know, you can't play that game successfully. I don't think anybody can. So I've gone back now and I've started to look at what really is required for momentum. And can I treat like for some reason, hearing a bass line off of a guitar? We'll make that jump. I'm still trying to figure out how far do I go with the actual percussion sounds and things, but that's also to me, part of it is I'm a big process guy. I come back to that all the time. This, to me is fascinating. I've been playing with this concept since before my oldest son was born. And I'm really, really freakin old. It's been a long time, Joe: No, Richard: But Joe: I Richard: I. Joe: Really friggin old. Richard: Fair enough... Joe: I Richard: Off. Joe: Don't. Richard: Fair enough, now you're not. And it's just a number anyway, Joe: Right. Richard: Even if you were. And even if I was. No. But seriously, you know, to me, it's the process. I think that. That's the fascinating part. I am reminded Mick Jagger has been asked how many times what you know, "How do you write a hit song?" And I love his response in certain in one interview. He's like, "I don't know and as soon as I figure it out, I'm probably done." Joe: Yeah, Richard: Like, I don't want to know Joe: Yeah, it's interesting. Richard: Why it looked like it. It kind of ruins the magic of it. Joe: Right. Richard: I think there's great merit in, you know, I think art in all of its forms. And for me, it's music is its own, kind of like its own living, breathing entity. And you communicate with it. And, you know, if you if it's if you're working with it collaboratively, it's there's some way, you know, these amazing things will happen. And if you piss it off, it's like it takes its toys and goes home and then you're stuck. And I don't know what to do anymore. I mean, that's but that's that's literally my my thing. Which maybe I don't like I said, I can talk for like I went two and a half hours. I can so beat that Joe. I have. Oh my gosh. I love Joe: So Richard: The sound of my own voice. Joe: That Richard: I'm not going do that. I won't do that to you. Joe: No. Richard: But I know what it's like about the program. Joe: Well, no but, but because we talked about a couple of things here, I'm just going to put. Just add my own two cents based on, you know, the whole looping thing for me. I also love and I'm enamored when I watch it done. The problem that I have when it's in a live situation and I deal with it with the people that, you know, my other persona is being the owner of Onstage Entertainment, right? So booking a lot of entertainment in here in both Arizona and Colorado. I, I have to ask some of them that, OK, I don't mind you looping, but you have to get into the song within the first, like, minute to loop the layer, you know, the layers. And there's I don't know, I don't loop I mean, I don't do it. So I don't, I can't tell them what to do and I can't feel their pain. But if you're going to do it, you got to be quick at it and you got to figure out how to get into the song quickly because people whose interest it just. Richard: Well, you're not wrong. I mean, that's the other thing. I mean, you know, mostly, you know, you do the looping thing and it's like the first time, the first song. That's really a two and a half minute song that takes you 12 minutes to perform. And the audience is like, okay, that was cool. Three songs in and I can tell you this from experience. Some of this is because I don't have the gift that certain people do for looping, which is probably why I gave up on looping in some respects, and now but now I mean, like again a door closes. This is so much more creatively interesting for me. But, you know, three or four songs in the audience is always like we've seen this trick before. We know. We know they. They don't know what's gonna happen specifically, but they kind of know where it's headed. And I think some of that's the lack of interaction in all honesty, I think that's why you see some people like, you know, time. But the looping thing I've I. The one thing that fascinates me about Ed Sheeran is genius level songwriter, brilliant performer. Albums sound nothing like the live show albums are basically a band. Then he goes out by himself, which is very fascinating to me, you know, but on the other hand, I kind of respect it because that kind of I absolutely respect it because to me that's using looping in an effective way, using technology in an effective way. But I'm with you. I, I can imagine, you know, that battle. You're right, people don't, but especially, you know, bars and clubs and stuff. There's Joe: Yeah. Richard: Only so they that you can go and. And again, I think one of the things I know I deal with this a lot with my students is, you know, there is a line that you have you have to accept the fact that if you're going to go off on those musical tangents, that may be incredibly invigorating for you personally, you have to be willing to accept the fact that, you know, you may not get all the gigs you want. You know, or you may not get the type of gig that you think you deserve because people are going to you know, if that's you know, if that's not what the listener wants, that's not what the listener wants. And then, then and then that needs to, but that has to be OK, too. I mean, I think, you know, I firmly believe it's kind of like there's two music industries in a way. There's the industry that we see on TV that, you know, is, you know, is is the big influencers and stuff. And the award shows and everything else. And God love him for it. I like I said, I would love to have their problems, but then there's all this other stuff, but isn't going to make it beyond, you know, it's going to play the smaller clubs and it's going to be in in more intimate settings. Richard: But that's OK, you know what I mean? Like, that's OK. And at least now that's when you and I were growing up. You know, we were we were still of the generation where if it did come on the radio, you didn't hear it. You know, or you had to really I mean, I can remember you would spend hours at a record store. Because you couldn't return it. You know, I mean, you really chose carefully, you know, those, those you know that 10 bucks or 20 bucks or whatever it happened to be, you know, before we really got into the whole Napster opens up streaming for us. You know, world. You know, it's a totally different thing in it's interesting talking to my students about that, because some of them... It's that they are still very careful and they'll tell me they're like, my time is valuable to me. And they'll stay, but, but there's still even with them, there's still a sense of acceptable risk. You know, for, whatever, 10 bucks a month or whatever you spend for whatever streaming platform. I mean, that's like, ya know, that's insane to me. Joe: Yeah, Richard: I mean, Joe: Yeah. Richard: That you can get pretty much every recording that exists for 10 bucks a month. Which Joe: Yeah, Richard: Then also Joe: It's. Richard: Begs the begs the question, is it worth being worried about signing the big record deal anyway? Because you're not gonna make any money for it anyway. Maybe just go make what your heart wants you to make artistically. You know, 50 percent of not much. OK, now you are getting that much in the first place. But. Joe: Yeah, yeah, and it's, it's for them, you know, for all of us these days with the streaming part of it, it's like drinking water through a firehose when it comes to the amount of content you can actually take in. Where you? Yeah, and you and I are talking. It's like, yeah. Go to the right. You know, you you mowed for lawns. You have ten bucks to go buy the one album that you've been waiting to get Richard: Exactly. Joe: In. Richard: Exactly, exactly. But Joe: Yeah. Richard: It made it so much more, you know, I cannot remember buying an album and not sitting down and listening to it, track for track, multiple times all the way through. Joe: Reading all the liner notes, Richard: Exactly. Joe: Knowing Richard: Exact. Joe: Everybody who played on it every yeah, Richard: Yep, yep, Joe: Yeah. Richard: Or like I can remember. I can't remember what album it was, but I can remember buying an album, taking it home to listen to and then we like I remember my parents were like, we have we have something to go to in like 20 minutes or something. And I can remember sitting there thinking, ok do I put on listen, like the first two tracks or do I wait till I get homesick and listen to the whole thing? And I waited. You know, because there was something about that experience. And even now I find myself, you know, fast forward and, you know, I mean, it just did it. It's I find myself with some of those bad habits a little bit that I wish I didn't, necessarily...but it is what it is. Joe: Yes. Well, and two other things you touched upon that I know you. You brought it up and it's something that I deal with. But I took a position a long time ago and I started Onstage, that I actually don't hire anyone that runs tracks. And I did it purely for the fact that I didn't want any musicians being put out of work on basically my watch for lack of a better term. Richard: Oh, that's awesome. Joe: So that's just the position I took. And I don't have anything, you know, like there's a like I had a corporate gig. So when I say that, it's really like the local type stuff. So I'm not going to, I'm not going to put a single guy in a resort and put a bass player and drummer out of work because he walks in with bass and drums on tracks and back and backup vocals. And, you know, these other people are sitting home and not working. But the caveat with that is if I there's a corporate band that I hired out of Montreal, Canada, who had amazing tracks that they had built from scratch for themselves. Now, the difference between them is that every single track that they had, there was literally an instrument onstage playing it. So all it was for was for the thickness of the sound. Richard: Sure, sure. Right. Joe: There was literally not one sound on those tracks that did not exist as a human being on the stage. Richard: Right. See, and I think that you're hitting on something to me that's really important, which is intent. Like, I think that gets lost in all of this because we're so we're so caught up in the spectacle. Or the site. You know, I was just at a wedding not too long ago for for one of my nephews and it was interesting because the band, the band was they were good. This is back in Ohio where I grew up, but it was lots of tracks. And it was interesting the way, you know, I'm sitting there picking the thing apart because that's where my head goes. But the rest of my family's just enjoying the sound. You know, almost to the point where, like I've seen deejay's lately, do a thing, oh, sorry, my son's come in and Joe: Hmm Richard: Interrupt Joe: Hmm, hmm, Richard: Here Joe: Hmm, Richard: For a second. Joe: That's Richard: We have Joe: Totally Richard: To Joe: Fine. Richard: Apologize. My apologies, Joe. Joe: No, Richard: That's Joe: It's all Richard: My Joe: Good. Richard: Ex, Gray. He's gone and he's gone in for your drumming job. Joe: All right, perfect. Richard: His no, but I think I'm, you know, like deejay's lately, you see them like they'll travel with a drummer. And I actually think that's a really good thing. You know, it's, it's, it is a little bit in the other direction, because I actually I respect that decision you've made and I actually I did not realize that that's awesome. And I think, I think the world of professional musicians would be better off if more of the owners of these companies, such as yourself, took a stance like you do. But on the other hand, you come from this as a player. So you have a you know, I think some of this is, you know, that battle. You know what that's, you understand on a different level. And nothing against promoters, managers and anybody else out there but a lot of them don't. Is my as a you know, they're well-meaning, but they don't you know, they don't get it. You know. Joe: Yeah, we've talked about this a lot. You know that the success of what happened with my booking agency is the fact that I take the position and I also have the business acumen part of it. So I'm kind of a hybrid in a way where I can understand what I have to deliver to the end client and how professional all of that has to be and at the same time, I have to put my self in the position of the performers or performer, either one. And that, you know, when it's really hot outside, they need shade and if it's too hot, it's just impossible to perform outside in Arizona. And yet, because we live in Arizona and it's the desert, you know what? It gets freaking cold in the wintertime. So, and the fact that other than a singer who then has to worry about catching some sort of cold or bronchitis or something, that all the musicians use their fingers and as soon as your fingers freeze up, the performance goes downhill and everyone's upset and it just doesn't make for a good... So in our contracts, it's very in-depth about, you know, needing shade and needing heaters in the winter and then if it's too hot or too cold, that has to be moved inside. And we, had ad nauseum, I could talk about all Richard: No, Joe: This, Richard: Of course. Joe: You know, circumstances, but that's the approach that I took. Richard: But it's interesting, too, because like as you're as you're describing all of us, I keep coming to the word legacy like like like your own sort of personal legacy and all of this like, you know, and I've known you now for years. So I kind of I feel like I, I. I can say this maybe with a little bit of insight, if you like. I know you to be like you need to be able to sleep at night like you don't like it. But that's important. Like, look, I know that, you know, some of that's just because you couldn't send somebody on a gig that you yourself wouldn't feel comfortable taking, which I think is important, because, again, I think, you know, again, I deal with a lot of younger musicians, you know, a lot of teenagers, lot of 20 somethings with, you know, with the the college stuff folks that I work with, too. And, you know, you do have to kind of be aware, you know, the pay to play thing that goes on a lot. I see a lot of younger musicians that get really excited over gonna get this gig at blah blah, blah, blah plays. That's awesome! Can you buy a ticket? Because we have to sell 200 of them Joe: Yeah, Richard: To get Joe: Yeah. Richard: The opening spot. I'm thinking to myself, I know I get it. I mean, I you know, I understand there are costs and everybody needs to be able to make a living and provide for themselves and their families. And I really do understand that. But it's, there's something off putting about like, like to me, I feel like art's disposable enough, like it's treated almost like a fast food meal sometimes that, that going into that world, I don't know. I just, I just feel like, you know, one of the things I'm always telling kids is, you know. To me and this is this has always been my approach, and if I ever decide that I want to get myself out of this studio environment here where I noodle around, which I might, you know, in my midlife extended crisis of who knows what the heck's going on right now. I actually had plans and then the COVID thing kind of hit. But that's a separate conversation, I suppose. But no, but to think about, you know. We look at gigs, I think, especially younger musicians, they look at gigs in this context of, I have to get the gig for the exposure and the, quote, "fame." But I also equally need the money from the gig, and I think that that's in some ways, the problem. Everybody's got to eat, everybody needs to. I get, I understand that. But I do think that when you can eliminate either one or the other from the equation, you actually give yourself more opportunities. Joe: Yeah, it's. Richard: You know, like if you can, you know, and now I realize I'm in a very unique situation. I could take a gig or not just for the joy of the gig. And then one of the reasons why I started to think about I should really start playing out again just for my own sense of self and to noodle around with this not looping looper thing, to be perfectly honest with you in front of people, was because I realized I don't really care if I make any money doing a gig. Of course, I would love to get some cash, you know, some money in my pocket for for for performing. But at the same time, it's like you priority, you know what what matters? And I think that that's part of it, you know, especially now, you know, because there isn't you know, it's really tough. As you know, being a gigging musician is really brutal and obviously right now it's basically impossible, Joe: All right. Richard: You know, with with the situation we're in. But I do think. Like, it's funny, like I've had a lot of conversations with a lot of my, my students about the fact that I know and just a lot of people in general. There are some you know, this is horrible right now. I mean, it just it is devastating the live music industry, which is like, what, eight billion dollars annually or something at a minimum is just devastated right now. And all of the ripple effect of it is, is just it's gutting. But I do think there is also some good possibly to come out of this. The number of people I talk to, younger people that are so excited at the notion of when I can go see another show, like the appreciation for it. You know, like when you're younger and like you can go to any show you want, anytime you want, basically because you've got all your income is basically disposable and, you know, whatever else or even if it's not but you can you can seriously prioritize it. You know, you not to worry about house and car and bubble on food. And I know some kids do, I'm, I'm speaking generalities, but just in general. Joe: Yeah. Richard: When that's been removed now. It is so interesting, the number of conversations I've had with kids that are like, WOW!, I'm just so appreciative of when I'll be able to do that again. Or, or the realization that that because we would we talk about it all the time and might within my classes, like, OK, you go to that show. I don't care what show it is. That person onstage, even if it's a soloist, isn't the only person involved in you seeing that show. They just aren't. There's no circumstance where it's just them. And you start to really now understand how it all changes, you know? You know, or not changes but how, I mean, it's gone right now, you know, and they're talking about 2021 before major tours happen again, major festivals and things like that. I want to get all the pressing and down on stuff. But but Joe: Oh, Richard: I think. But I mean, it's like you don't already know this. I'm sure you. Joe: I have. I have tickets to see the Doobie Brothers and the Eagles. Yeah. And and that the Eagles, I think, was supposed to happen in April. That's been delayed, I think, until October or December and you know, there's a good chance they're all going to be moved until 2021 to just Richard: Yeah, Joe: Me. Richard: It. Joe: No one's gonna want to go to a concert and sit, you know, six feet apart from the person they went with and sit, you know, have every other row with someone, it's just it would be weird Richard: Well, and Joe: Because. Richard: Not to even some more paranoid, but like I've been reading about different things about like I guess they did a study recently about that choir that had that rehearsal before anybody realized it was a pandemic. But then like 40 out of the 60 people that were in the choir wound up getting tested. They're testing positive. Joe: Oh, wow. Richard: And they you know, I mean, it's a horrible tragedy, I think like two or three of them passed away from it and the whole circumstance was awful and they were going off of all the information they had, which at the time was nothing. And I mean, the whole thing is a terrible tragedy. But out of that, they recreated the circumstances. They obviously didn't infect people again, but they started to look at how singing and things of that nature, what it does to the transmission of a disease, you know, of a virus of this nature and then you think about people that like an event where they're shouting or screaming or singing along and all this other stuff. And you just think to yourself, you know, how is this going to look? Joe: Yeah. Richard: You know what we know? I don't know. It's it's, a it's an interesting. If it wasn't so devastating to the to people that I personally know and just to the industry that I'm aware of and the ripple effects of all of that, it would be just fascinating. But instead, it's just I mean, it's just. Joe: Yes. Richard: It is really. It just makes me really sad and I'm really grateful, like I feel weird sitting in a studio talking to you right now because I feel like almost like I'm, I'm unintentionally flexing and I don't mean to be. It's just, you know. I never thought my life musically would be in a place where I could feel musically secure more than most musicians out there in the world. That is such a bizarre moment of clarity for me. I almost feel obligated to be making more music right now. Not because anybody needs to hear it or that it'll be any good, but almost because I feel like if I don't, I'm being incredibly selfish, that I have the option to do it and I'm not Joe: Right. Richard: Taking advantage of it. Joe: A. Richard: I feel like, you know. You can believe this, but I feel like I would just do like such an ass, like if Joe: Now I get it. Richard: I feel like, I feel like I believe in karma. And I just, I just feel like I have I have an obligation, especially I'm about to head into summer, which changes up my teaching obligations and my, you know, Joe: Yes. Richard: Obligations of that nature. And running the studios are going to be very different for the foreseeable future, at least. Joe: Yes. Richard: Wrote Joe: And it's then Richard: permanent excuse Joe: It's like, no, yeah. No. And I get it. And it's in a lot of our talent is struggling. You know, that that I personally know and had, had helped to get a fair amount of work that they, you know, at times where they don't have work and they're struggling just to put food on the table and pay their car payment, keep a roof over their head. They now are sort of forced into possibly going into debt to buy a webcam and a microphone and and learn, you know, some sort of software if need be, or if they just end up going live on Zoom or Facebook or any of the streaming platforms. But, you know, they're putting in there they're Venmo and PayPal handles as a virtual tip jar just to try to make any sort of money. Richard: Yeah, anything is Joe: And Richard: Anything. Joe: Yeah, Richard: Mm Joe: And Richard: Hmm. Joe: It's it's really tough. So, yeah, I keep brainstorming on ways to try to figure out a way to help. And I haven't come up with it yet. I but I'm working on it. It's not like I'm sitting here, I'm not you know, I'm lucky enough that I had a business where because at one point I was the seven day week musician, you know, I was playing, you remember, and Richard: I do. Joe: That's all I Richard: I Joe: Did Richard: Do. Yeah. Joe: Before. Richard: Yeah. You were impossible to get a hold of because it would always be like a message back, like dude I'll call you later, I'm on, I'm like, you know, 17 gigs today. Joe: Yeah, right. Yeah. But so I get it. Again, we go back to. I've I've lived it and I understand where it's all coming from. Now I just have to figure a way to help and so that's a struggle for me. But that's that's a whole like you said, it's a whole different conversation. And the one last piece that you touched upon that I don't want to forget is that in the conversation I had with Nate Morton, the drummer from The Voice, there's a connector in L.A. that you may or may not have heard of that that I knew when I wanted to, you know, possibly get a tour. A guy named Barry Squire and Barry is basically the music matchmaker out there. So if Cher is looking for a band, Barry will put out the notice that Cher is about to go on tour and they need this, this and this. Same thing with Pink or any of those, Barry was the guy to basically piece these bands together in L.A. for these big tours. Richard: Interesting, Joe: And Richard: I did. Joe: And so now the listing and Barry puts these listings up now on, on Facebook and it's obviously become a lot easier as part of the discussion I had with Nate, where it used to be, hey, you go to this executive's office and you pick up a C.D. or tape, you learn these three songs on it, you come to this studio/soundstage on the Saturday at 1:00, you play the songs and we'll let you know kind of thing. Now, Barry posts these things on Facebook and its he post the requirements. And, you know, everyone has to be pretty much for the most part, 25 or younger, you know, there's there's no none of these things that are going to take all these old dudes like us out on tour. Richard: Right. Joe: Her Richard: Right Joe: Or me Richard: Now, of course. Joe: Anyhow. Richard: No, no, no, no, no, I'm right there with you. I'm Joe: But Richard: With you. Joe: But the instead of it being the old style that you and I are used to, which is, you know, bass, drums, maybe two guitars, keys and a couple of back, backup singers or maybe a horn section. Now it's guitar, drums and a multi instrumentalist that knows Ableton. So it's, it's that and Barry and Nate were talking, they went to lunch a few weeks ago. They'll always be a drummer because the visual part of it, of of that makes it look like it's a band. So that that one seat, you know, thankfully, has not been necessary, eliminated as much as the others. But it's just so weird and Nate and I were talking was like, I mean, I know I, I don't know Ableton anywhere near that I could say I could do it to go get a gig and neither does Nate. But that's the state of things right now. And then, and then Nate's talking and he's like, and if the band becomes, you know, popular and there's more money in the budget, they don't turn around and then start adding bass and guitar and keys that they add more production, they add dancers, they are they whatever. It's just it's so weird to me. Richard: Well, yes, the idea of a show, it's different, you know. That's why, that's why it still comes back to me of this idea of playing. And I think that, I don't know, Like like, do you still sit down to play just for the joy of playing? Joe: I, I do here and there, but nowhere near as much as I should. Richard: Well, nobody ever does that as much as they should. Joe: Yeah. And it's like we Richard: But. Joe: Played a gig last Wednesday and we played out in the parking lot at an assisted living complex for Richard: Oh, Joe: The Richard: Cool. Joe: For the residents because these elderly people had not been out of this place for the last two months or whatever. Richard: Oh, Joe: They're Richard: My Joe: Just Richard: Gosh. Joe: Going stir crazy. Richard: Sure, Joe: So Richard: Sure. Joe: There was four different jazz combos and we were setup out in the parking lot where the people could come out on their balconies and Richard: Oh, Joe: We played to Richard: How Joe: Them. Richard: Cool. Joe: Yeah, it was fun and it was cool. And at the end, like all the guys in the band are like, God, I so misplaying, like I just the hell with practicing, I just want to play because there's that interaction on stage and anticipating where that that other player is going to next and just being able to interact and lock in with somebody. And because I left the gig going I really got to practice. And everybody's like, no, we're just gotta play, we just it's more fun just playing. So, Richard: Yeah, yeah, Joe: Yeah. Richard: And that's I think that I think there's something about that visceral live element. You know, Joe: Yeah. Richard: We it's funny when, when when, when the COVID shut down happened, it sort of sent obviously a lot of chaos into the whole educational system, especially into arts education, which regardless of titles and everything else, I am basically running an arts program. You know, call it what you want, but it's an arts program. And it's been it was interesting what wound up happening very much and that's why I truly thought I'm going to get all these kids that are just going to send me you know, here's this recording I worked on at home, here's this work and I've got a lot of those. I mean, that's. And it's great. But the lot of them, first of all, a lot of them, you know, you started to really see the demographic of the students and who had what available to them. Joe: Yeah, Richard: Lots of posturing and Joe: Yeah. Richard: In high school certainly about that and that's fine. But I don't begrudge because any we've distributed gear as much as possible in that. But it was, you know, was interesting how a lot of them really enjoyed the live streams we did more than anything else. So we wound up doing our big annual end of year concert anyway. But we did it online on Zoom. It was clunky we were subjected to all kinds of elements related to streaming and what mics they had and Wi-Fi connectivity and everything else and yet in the moment, the fact that it wasn't taped, that we, you know, like Joe: Yeah. Richard: I had some kids that played some sessions, that we just kind of watch the sessions on the screen, which was still cool and it was really awesome. I had one group that actually did go in and they pre-recorded their parts and filmed themselves while they did it and then we spliced it together into kind of like a live video and and whatnot. But most of it was a kid with their guitar, at the piano or whatever it happened to be singing. You know, in some cases it was just through their phone and imperfect, absolutely! But, it it had that kind of because you knew it was right then. And there wasn't a well, we're going to go back and fix it in post kind of option. It was interesting that, that, you know, you still got a little bit of that same charge. I mean, it was different because obviously you don't get the you know, you don't hear the applause in the same Joe: Yeah, Richard: Way that you're hopefully Joe: Yeah. Richard: Getting you know, there wasn't really production in terms of lights and stuff that we normally would do. But, you know, because I asked a lot of them, you know, should we be prerecording this and some of them are like, yeah, that would be better for me. But that was because of nervousness that they always have had inherently. You know, these are kids that don't like to get up on stage, even though they're wonderfully talented. They just may be, you know, at that age, they're, they're they get freaked out by it or whatever. But the vast majority wanted it live and in the moment, warts and all. And I found that to be very fascinating. Joe: Yeah, Richard: And Joe: That's cool. Richard: We wound up, you know. We did a tie. I think we did. I think we did like seven or eight live broadcast. We're still doing them. We've done a bunch of podcasts, but it's been interesting watching the students. Their response, and maybe it's not an entirely, like I'd like, I don't think that I can, I always look at my own students and I go, I probably shouldn't be lumping you in with every other teenager is like a generality because they tend to be a little bit of a unique and and if we're being honest, I probably do have a bit of an influence on their approach Joe: Right. Richard: In that regard. Joe: Yeah. Richard: Hopefully a good way. But I do think it's interesting, like what you're saying, that there's something about a live response, even if it's remote, even if it's from streaming, it still beats the just watching video. Joe: Yeah, Richard: There's something. And organic and visceral about it. Joe: Yep. Richard: Which is Joe: All Richard: Important. Joe: Right, well, you know, since we are now, you know, sort of talking about the graduation piece, I wanted to...so I always refer to it as CMAS and I think that's probably what most of you do. But it's Creative Musical Arts and Science program, correct? OK,  So this is happening at Arcadia High School here in, are we, this is considered Phoenix. You're right down the street from me, right? So it's Phoenix. Richard: Yes, well, I'm yeah. Joe: The border is. I don't know. Richard: Yeah, it's Scottsdale Unified School District, but it's technically in greater Phoenix we're like I want to say, what's 48 Street and Indian School and what is it? 56th is the line into Scottsdale. Joe: Ok. Richard: I don't actually know. I mean, I've been at that school for, gosh, 20 plus years, if you can believe that...long time. Joe: Yeah. Richard: I don't know. I was long before my time how they managed to carve out that section of, you know why it's Scottsdale and not in Phoenix Union, I don't know. Joe: All right. OK. So you just mentioned 20 some years ago, so when did you get to this school? Richard: Ok, so let me see. How do I explain this? 1990 or something so I'm at the U Of A Joe: Ok. Richard: I have finished my second master's degree in orchestral conducting, which I still miss, I, you know, if only for not having enough time in the day. Basically, I start working in Tucson at one of the high schools and a middle school, I've got an orchestra program that I love. I am always still for years and years and when I did it, I grew up in the Midwest. So as an undergrad and as a grad student and at different times and in different places, I was always gigging as a very mediocre drummer. I like to say I was, I was sort of the, the, would you want to call it? I brought the game down for everybody else, But um..but, you know, and so I done some touring, nothing, nothing fancy. So but I had done a lot of it, I loved the studio experience and also their stuff. But there was no at the time at least available to me, you only were really able to do that kind of independently and on your own. And there was very much this sense of, you know, we were we were talking before about two different music industries well, there were sort of like two different musical experiences. You had the experience you could have as a student. I mean, you know, you know, it was one thing and there were in it, it was great. I mean, don't get me wrong, I have such fond memories of growing up. And I still every now and then I am lucky enough, I guess. I've talked to my old high school band director a few times, he's long since retired. He drives trains now, of all things Joe: Wow. Richard: Which he just loves. Old, old military, retired guy, sweetheart of a guy, brilliant musician, far more, I didn't realize his musical chops. This is another problem I have like I hadn't like it takes me a while to realize something in the moment. Oh my gosh. The level of lost opportunity on my count two, like not tap into more of his experience as he came out of a military band experience but he had this incredibly open view of what music was for, even if he had a particular love of a certain style and what not. But I'm I've Joe: Wait, Richard: Got this. Joe: Before before you leave, that point is just amazing that you just said that because I look at you and go, God, if I only had a band teacher in high school like you. My teacher, and God rest his soul, I think I'm sure he's gone by now but I was just there doing it, collecting the paycheck, Richard: Sure, Joe: Going through the Richard: Sure. Joe: Motions. Just it was just the worst. And. Richard: And it can't. Yeah, I mean, I. I don't know, I can't speak to that. I mean, the educator in me says, you know, at a certain point you can it's very easy to get disenchanted if you get wrapped up in it and you never know. I mean, you know, the further back you go. People that I get asked all the time, you know, did you have something like CMAS when you were in high school or whatever? And I can't tell if they're sometimes I wonder if they're being sarcastic, if they've completely misjudged my age, if, you know, I don't even know where it's coming from. But, but the truth of the matter is, is that it's not a matter of if I did or not, it wasn't even an option. It just literally wasn't a possibility. I can't, I can't fault Pete Metzker was his name, is his name or Jeff Bieler or Bob Wagner. I literally remember all of these people...West Frickey. They were brilliant! They didn't, if they, if you would come to them and said, we have this idea and you described what I built with the CMAS Program, what I designed, honestly, I think they would have been like, OK, that's really cool! We can't, like we, if we could figure out how to do that in the architecture or the in, the in, the the infrastructure, if you will, of music education at the time, I really think they probably would have been like, OK, sure! Let's do it! I don't think it was an option. I mean, I really think that, you know, there's a prospective element. I'm not that old but it does remind me a little bit of what I have conversations with students about classical music, for example. And I always tell them the same thing. Richard: You know, you can't, you can't fault Beethoven or Mozart and say you don't like their music because there's no electric guitar. Because there wasn't even electricity at the time. You can't you know, you're missing the whole point. You don't think, like that can't be your thing. In the same way when I have students who are very, very much of a more and this is fine too, but we'll say a more traditional mindset. I'm like, you can't look at a kid who wants to do like turntables and say that's not a legitimate musical instrument. You do it, for the same exact reason because you've got to deal with intent, you just you just have to. And that's the thing that like I said, I look back on those that band director and those teachers, all of them throughout all of my school years, as it were. And Dave Vroman, I mean, I could list all these professors throughout, you know, college that some of which I'm still friends with, which is really wonderful too, you know. Sorry, I, I have to I have to namedrop Molly Slaughter, I don't have anyone to know who she is but just for me, I got to say it karma again, and there's lots of others. Greg Sanders, Steve Heineman I'm gonna shut up now, okay...Ed Kaiser God, we would be here for a long time, but, but all of them would tell you...but, but the thing of his you is the best musicians are about intention. You know, Springsteen walks up onstage with the E Street Band and it's unbelievable and then the band takes a break for a minute and he sits down with just as acoustic guitar and it's unbelievable. Joe: Yeah. Richard: And it's I mean, look, the guy's a genius. And I mean, that's you know, you don't need me to say that. But I think the reason it works in both settings is because of his musical intentions. Joe: Yeah. Richard: It comes out different, of course, it comes out differently when you have more people and you can interact. And again, we go back to that visceral thing, but it's about intent. And I think that's what I've carried with me from all of those people. Joe: Right. Richard: I go on in any case, so I go, I go to Bradley University and become their first music educator, excuse music composition and theory graduate ever out of that university. I don't, I don't know if that's like I have two distinctions being a Bradley, one is I'm the first person ever to receive that degree from that institution, which I'm very proud of and two, I was probably the most arrogant pain in the butt student that's ever been through there in the history of that university's music school. And it was a brilliant place, it was wonderful. They had an old Moog synthesizer, that had been installed by Robert Moog himself. Joe: Oh. Richard: But it unfortunately didn't work. If I could go back now...know, you, you know, you always say if you know, if I knew then what I know now. But they allowed you know, they bought some equipment. We had, you know, an old Mac computer and we were able to do some sequencing and learn some bit. And I just kind of got bit by the bug of it. I just found it so compelling and so interesting. Didn't know what I was doing, had a couple of microphones, couldn't even tell you what they were. Probably a 58, like a beat up condenser, by whom...You know, I want to say there was a, I don't know, I want to say it was like an old Rode or an AKG or something, but it was I mean, we you know, we didn't know what we were doing. But freedom to explore the process. I mean, again, in hindsight, I see all of us greatest gift possible. Graduate, don't know what I'm going to do. So the Youngstown's, I don't know if I'm gone too far back Joe: No, Richard: Or Joe: No, Richard: Not in the story. Joe: No, no, no. Richard: So I'm going to I go to university, so Youngstown State University. Partially out of desperation, partially out of you know, I didn't, I was wandering in sort of like the the desert of my own immaturity and unawareness, you know? I just, I just I had this thought in my head that I was gonna be the next Leonard Bernstein. Not realizing that basically even the next Leonard Bernstein wasn't going to be the next Leonard Bernstein because that world doesn't exist. And it wasn't like people were telling me that but it doesn't, I mean, it just doesn't exist. And and I didn't, I wasn't that guy. I mean, that's, you know, kind of like what you were talking about before, which I disagree with your assessment of your skill set but we can have that conversation off of air sometime. But no, but, but in all seriousness, I mean, you know but I wasn't that guy. I mean, that's just that's a reality, I wasn't that guy. But while I'm in Youngstown, Stephen Gage, who's another one of these sort of like ah ha moment people. I'd done a lit..I'd done some conducting. I even put together for my senior recital at Bradley, I put together my own sort of like mini orchestra of friends just for the heck of it. And I seem to remember Vroman, Dave Vroman, who was head of the music department, and that can be one of the main conductors there, I seem to remember him saying, you know, we could have like. Richard: To help you out with this, like you didn't have to, like, do it covertly here. He's a guy I really did not appreciate nearly as much as I should have at the time, brilliant man, just brilliant, wonderful guy. But anyway, he, um, so but so Steve Gage basically goes, you know, I need a, I, I've got an opportunity for graduate student. And he was the band conductor is like, but you'll also work a little bit with the orchestras as well. And you'll get to do you know, you'll get to conduct and I'll teach you how to and he was my first real conducting teacher that I took seriously. I had taken cond

“The people that I connect with online come from all over the musical world, from contemporary composition, from blues, from free jazz, from rock music, from noise… To me it's just all music. I've never felt those barriers were hard and fast — they were imposed by someone else.” Elliott Sharp has been one of the key figures in the avant-garde and experimental scenes in New York City since the late 1970s. With close to 100 releases spanning jazz, noise, orchestral, no wave, contemporary classical, and electronic music, his career can really only be described as prolific. He studied with icons like Morton Feldman, Roswell Rudd, and Robert Moog. His compositions have been performed by renowned ensembles like the Kronos and FLUX quartets. He's released music for the alt rock SST label alongside bands like Sonic Youth and Hüsker Dü. He's collaborated with everyone from jazz legend Jack DeJohnette to Blondie's Debbie Harry to Wilco's Nels Cline to Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, the Pakistani Qawwali singer regarded as having one of the most impressive voices ever recorded. We chatted about the halcyon '60s when people thought of all kinds of music as simply music, when genrification didn't really stratify how we think about what we hear. We also spoke of the evolution of community alongside the emergence of online platforms, and the importance of resonance when it comes to making music and finding others to make it with. And for budding experimental artists, Elliott offered some wisdom into how they can find their people and work toward making a living. Support Elliott Sharp: www.elliottsharp.com/ Music in this episode, used with permission from Elliott Sharp: The Boreal  (excerpt) -  performed by JACK Quartet Flexagons (excerpt) - performed by Elliott Sharp and Orchestra Carbon Port Bou: Words  (excerpt from opera) - performed by Nicholas Isherwood with Jenny Lin, William Schimmel, and Elliott Sharp Koinoinia - performed by Elliott Sharp on Koll 8-string guitarbass --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/greymatterfm/message

Michelle Moog-Koussa (Executive director of the Bob Moog Foundation, creator of the Moogseum and Bob Moog's third daughter) is carrying her father's legacy forward through education and archive preservation. Michelle continues to innovate and give back to the community through unique educational programs and experiences. Rob Gray sits down with Michelle to hear her perspective as being a daughter of the one of the most important instrument makers in music history. She shares heartwarming stories about sweet connections with her father, funny exchanges with famous musicians on her home telephone, her and Bob's love for Sesame Street and other sweet gems you never knew about Robert Moog. Fans of the synth legend will truly enjoy this episode and have an appreciation for Michelle and her work!

ADSR Schematic of #ADSR The most common kind of envelope generator has four stages: attack, decay, sustain, and release (ADSR).[3] #envelopegenerator Attack is the time taken for initial run-up of level from nil to peak, beginning when the key is pressed. Decay is the time taken for the subsequent run down from the attack level to the designated sustain level. Sustain is the level during the main sequence of the sound's duration, until the key is released. Release is the time taken for the level to decay from the sustain level to zero after the key is released.[4] While, attack, decay, and release refer to time, sustain refers to level.[3] The Hammond Novachord in 1938 uses an early implementation of an ADSR envelope. A seven-position rotary knob set preset ADS parameter for all 72 notes; a pedal controls the release.[1] The envelope generator was created by the American engineer Robert Moog in the 1960s. While experimenting with the first Moog synthesizers, composer Herbert Deutsch suggested Moog find a way to articulate the instrument so notes did not simply trigger on and off. Moog wired a doorbell button to the synthesizer and used a capacitor to store and slowly release voltage produced from hitting a key. He refined the design to remove the need to push a separate button with every key press, with two switches on every key: one to produce the control voltage and the other to trigger the envelope generator.[2] The envelope generator became a standard feature of synthesizers.[2] Following discussions with engineer and composer Vladimir Ussachevsky (then head of the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center) in 1965, Moog developed a new envelope module whose functions were described in f T1 (attack time), T2 (initial decay time), ESUS (sustain level), and T3 (final decay time). These were later simplified to the modern ADSR form (Attack time, Decay time, Sustain level, Release time) by ARP.[2] In sound and music, an envelope describes how a sound changes over time. It may to relate to elements such as amplitude (volume), filters (frequencies) or pitch.[citation needed] For example, a piano key, when struck and held, creates a near-immediate initial sound which gradually decreases in volume to zero. Envelope generators, which allow users to control the different stages of a sound, are common features of synthesizers, samplers, and other electronic musical instruments. The most common form of envelope generator is controlled with four parameters: attack, decay, sustain and release (ADSR). weki --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/vegansteven/message

Tosh and Kimley discuss “Wendy Carlos's Switched-On Bach” by Roshanak Kheshti from the 33 1/3 series. “Switched-On Bach,” an album of Bach compositions played on a Moog synthesizer, is one of the bestselling classical recordings of all time. In the 1960s Carlos worked with Robert Moog to further the synthesizer’s capabilities and with the 1968 release of “Switched-On Bach” she pioneered an entirely new way of making music. She also wrote powerful scores to several films including Stanley Kubrick’s “A Clockwork Orange” and “The Shining.” And she was one of the first public figures to come out as transgender. She’s groundbreaking in both her professional and private life and yet she’s maintained an air of mystery and intrigue that we find very compelling. Theme music: "Behind Our Efforts, Let There Be Found Our Efforts" by LG17

Welcome to episode nine of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs. Today we’re looking at Les Paul and Mary Ford, and “How High The Moon”. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. —-more—-  A couple of notes: This one is a few hours late, as I had some *severe* technical problems with the several previous attempts at recording this. This version was recorded starting around midnight on Sunday night, which is usually the time I put them up, so I apologise if it’s lacking a final polish Resources If the episode starts you wondering about playing instruments while physically disabled, or inventing new instruments, you might want to check out a charity called the One-Handed Musical Instrument Trust, which invents and provides instruments for one-handed musicians. As always, I’ve created a Mixcloud streaming playlist with full versions of all the songs in the episode. This 3-CD box set is a very good compilation of Les Paul and Mary Ford’s best work. The quotes from Les Paul in this episode come from this book of interviews with him. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript   To be a truly great guitarist, you need to have an imagination. You need to be inventive. And you need to have a sense of musicality. Some would also say that you need to have a lot of dexterity, and to be able to move your fingers lightning fast. Maybe also have long fingers, so you could reach further down the neck. But let’s talk about Django Reinhardt for a bit. We mentioned Django a little bit in the episode on Bob Wills and “Ida Red”. We talked, in particular, about how he was making music that sounded very, very similar to what the early Western Swing musicians were doing. We’re not going to talk much about Django in this series, because he was a jazz musician, but he *was* very influential on a few of the people who went on to influence rock, so we’re going to touch on him briefly here. He never played an electric guitar, but he still influenced pretty much every guitarist since, either directly or indirectly. And this was despite having disadvantages that would have stopped almost anyone. One point we haven’t made very much yet, but which needs to be made repeatedly, is that the people in most of these early podcasts were crushingly, hellishly, poor by today’s standards. Poverty still exists of course, to far too great an extent, but the people we’re talking about here lived in conditions that would be unimaginable to almost all of the listeners to this podcast. And Reinhardt had it worse than most. He was a Romany traveller, and while growing up his greatest skill was stealing chickens — real, proper, poverty. But he became a professional musician, and it looked like he might actually become well off. And then his bad luck got worse. His caravan caught on fire, and in trying to rescue his wife and child, he suffered such extreme burns that one of his legs became paralysed — and more importantly for Reinhardt as a musician, he lost the use of two of his fingers on his left hand. He had to re-teach himself to play the guitar, and to use only two fingers and a thumb on his left hand to play. Remarkably, he managed well enough to do things like this: [Excerpt: “How High The Moon” Django Reinhardt] Reinhardt influenced many guitarists, and one American guitarist in particular became a friend of Reinhardt and said that he and Reinhardt were the only two guitarists in the world at that time who were actually serious about their instrument. He was another jazzman, with a similar style to Reinhardt but one who had a more direct influence on rock and roll. Waukesha, Wisconsin, is not the most rock and roll town in the world. It was a spa town, before the water started to dry up, and about the most exciting thing that ever happened there is that Mr Sears, the founder of Sears & Roebuck, retired there when he got too ill to work any more. It’s a bland, whitebread, midwestern town in a state that’s most notable for dairy farming. Yet it’s also the birthplace of the only man who is in the rock and roll hall of fame *and* the National Inventors Hall of Fame, and who probably did more than any other individual to make the guitar a respected lead instrument. Almost every moderately-known guitarist eventually gets a “signature” model named after them, and most of these sell a small number of instruments before being discontinued. But one man has a signature model that’s so popular that other guitarists get their signatures *alongside his*. When you buy a Jimmy Page or Mark Knopfler or Slash or Eric Clapton signature guitar, there are two names on there — the name of Page or Clapton or whoever, and the name Les Paul. Les Paul was a remarkable man, whose inventions are far more widely known even than his name. You’ll almost certainly have seen musicians playing guitar and harmonica at the same time, using a harmonica holder — Les Paul invented that, as a teenager, making the first one out of a coathanger. I guess if you were a teenager in Waukesha in the 1920s, you’d have little better to do with yourself than invent coathanger harmonica holders too. But Les Paul was, first and foremost, a guitar player, and he became a semi-professional musician by the time he was thirteen. The choice of the guitar was one that was actually made by his mother. She explained to him “if you play the piano you got your back turned to the audience. If you play the drums, you gotta carry all that stuff around, it’s not musical. If you play a saxophone, you can’t sing and talk at the same time.” In his own words, she “whittled it down to guitar in a hurry”. His mother, indeed, seems to have been a remarkable woman in many ways — if you read any interviews with Les, he barely ever goes a few sentences without saying something about how much she did for him. That’s one of the defining characteristics of Les Paul’s life, really — his admiration for his mother. There were two more things that characterised him though. The first was that pretty much dead on, every ten years, he would have some major health crisis that would put him out of commission for a year. The other was his lifelong devotion to learning, which meant that he used those health crises as an opportunity to learn something new. This love of learning could be seen from his very early days. When he was just learning the guitar, the singing cowboy star Gene Autry came to town. Gene Autry was a star of Western music — the very biggest star in the country — and his music was a cleaned-up, politer, version of the kind of music Bob Wills played: [excerpt: Gene Autry “Back in the Saddle Again”]. Les and his friend went to every show in the residency, and after a couple of nights, Gene Autry stopped the show in the middle of the set and said “something strange has been happening here — every time I play an F chord, and *only* when I play an F chord, there’s a flash of light. What’s going on, how is this happening?” It turned out that Les had been wanting to learn how Autry made that chord shape, so he’d been there with a pencil and paper, and his friend had a torch, and every time he played the chord Les Paul wanted to learn, the torch would come on and Les would be trying to sketch the shape of Autry’s fingers. Autry invited Les Paul onto the stage, showed him how to make the chord, and had him play a couple of songs. A few years later, when Autry moved from radio to films, he suggested Les Paul take over his radio show. So Les Paul was always fascinated by learning, and always trying to improve himself and his equipment. And once he decided to be a guitarist, he also decided to electrify his guitar, a full decade before electric guitars became a widespread instrument. He explained that when he was starting out, he was playing at a hotdog stand, using a homemade microphone for his voice and harmonica — the microphone was made out of bits of an old telephone, and it was plugged in to his mother’s radio. People who were listening liked his performances, but they said they wished the guitar was as loud as his voice — so he took his *dad’s* radio, too, and connected it to a record player needle, which he jammed into the body of his guitar. Once electric guitars started being manufactured, Paul started playing them, but he never liked them. The electric guitars of the late 1930s were what we’d now call electro-acoustics — they were acoustic guitars, playable as such, but with pickups. There were two main problems with them — firstly, they were very prone to feedback, because the hollow body of the guitar would resonate. And secondly, most of the sonic energy from the strings was going into the guitar itself, so there was no sustain. Paul came up with a simple solution to this problem, which he called “the log”. The log was almost exactly what the name would suggest. It was a plank, to which were nailed some pickups, strings, and tuning pegs. On the front was attached the front of a normal guitar — not anything that would actually resonate, just to make it look like a proper guitar. But basically it was just a lump of wood. Les Paul wasn’t the first person to build a solid-body electric guitar — but as he put it himself later “there may be some guy out there in Iowa says he built the guitar in 1925, for all I know, and he may have. I only know what I was doing and I was out there weaving my own basket, and there wasn’t anybody else around and it had to be done.”. He perfected the solid-body guitar during the first of his years of illness — he’d been running an illegal radio station, accidentally stuck his hand in the transmitter, and not only got an electric shock but had a load of equipment fall on him. By the time he was well enough to work again, he had the idea perfected. He took his solid-body guitar idea to Gibson in 1941, but they weren’t interested — no-one was going to want to buy a solid guitar. It wasn’t until Leo Fender started selling his guitars in 1950 that Gibson realised that it might be worth doing. But by then Les Paul had become one of the most famous guitarists in the country. Even before he became hugely famous, though, he’d been one of the *best* guitarists in the country. In 1944, when the guitarist Oscar Moore was unable at the last minute to play at Jazz At The Philharmonic — the first of what would eventually become the most famous series of jazz concerts ever — Les Paul was drafted in at short notice, and the live recordings of that show are some of the greatest instrumental jazz you’ll hear, at a time when the borders between jazz, R&B, and pop music were more fluid than they became. Listen, for example, to this excerpt from “Blues, 1, 2, & 3”. [excerpt] The honking saxophone player there is Ilinois Jacquet, the man who we talked about in episode one of this podcast, who invented R&B saxophone. The pianist there was also pretty great — he was, in fact, a pianist who was already regarded as one of the best in the business, even before he started to sing, and who later had two further, separate careers under his more familiar name – one in R&B in which he inspired a generation of singers like Charles Brown and Ray Charles, and one in pop, where he became one of the great ballad singers of all time. He’s credited on the track we just heard as “Shorty Nadine” for contractual reasons, but you probably know him better as Nat “King” Cole. Listening to that you can hear musicians performing at a time when jazz and R&B and rock and roll were all still sort of the same thing, before they all went off in their different directions, and it’s hard not to wish that that cross-fertilisation had continued a while longer. But it didn’t, and it would be easy to imagine that as a result Les Paul, who was absolutely a jazz musician, would make no further contributions to rock and roll after his popularising the solid-body electric guitar. But we haven’t even got to his real importance yet. Yes, something he did that was even more important than the Les Paul guitar. It started when his mother told him she’d enjoyed something she heard him play on the radio. He’d replied that it wasn’t him she’d heard, and she’d said “well, all those electric guitar players sound the same. If you want to be a real success, you want to sound different from everyone else — at least different enough that your own mother can recognise you”. And over the years, Les Paul had learned to listen to his mother — she’d been the one who’d got him playing guitar, and she’d been the one who had told him to go and see Bob Wills, the day he’d ended up meeting Charlie Christian for the first time. So he went and spent a lot of time working on a sound that was totally different from anything else, spending days and weeks alone. He stopped working with his trio — and started working with a young country singer who renamed herself Mary Ford, who Gene Autry had introduced him to and who he soon married — and he eventually came up with a whole new idea. This episode is primarily about Les Paul, because he was such an astonishing force of nature, but it’s worth making clear that Mary Ford was very much an equal partner in their sixteen years together. She was an excellent singer — *far* better than Les Paul was — and also a pretty good guitarist herself. On their live dates she would play rhythm guitar, and often the two would do a comedy guitar duel, with her copying everything Les Paul played. She was a vital part of the sound — and of the sonic innovations the records contained, because one of the things they did for the first time was to have her sing very close to the mic — a totally different technique than had been used before, which gave her vocals a different tone which almost everyone imitated. But that wasn’t the only odd sound on the records. It sounded like Les Paul was playing two or three guitars at the same time, playing the same part. And sometimes he was playing notes that were higher than any guitar could play. And sometimes, when Mary Ford was singing… it sounded as if there were two or more of her! This was such an unusual sound that on the duo’s radio and TV appearances they made a joke of it — they pretended that Paul had invented a “Les Paulveriser”, which could duplicate everything, and that for example he could use the Les Paulveriser on Mary, so there’d be multiple Marys and she could get the vacuum cleaning done quicker. It was the fifties. But of course, what Paul was actually doing was overdubbing — recording one guitar part, and then going back and recording a second over it. He’d been fascinated by the idea for decades and he’d first done it as an experiment when he was still with the trio. He’d wanted to rehearse a song on his own, but with the arrangement the rest of the band played, so he’d recorded himself playing all the parts, using a disc cutter and playing along with previous takes. This didn’t give good results until the introduction of magnetic tape recording in the very late forties — when you recorded directly to a disc there was so much surface noise, and recording quality was so poor, that no-one would even think of recording overdubs. But in 1945, American soldiers brought back a new technology from Germany as spoils of war — high fidelity tape recording. With magnetic tape you could record sound with orders of magnitude less noise than by cutting to disc. And Bing Crosby, who often worked with Les Paul, was the first person to see the possibilities of this new technology (in his case, for pre-recording his radio shows so they didn’t have to go out live, which meant he could record them in batches and have more time to spend on the golf course). Les Paul was far more technical than Crosby, though, and far more aware of what could happen if, for example, you had two tape recorders. Or if you ran one slow so that when you played it back at normal speed everything sounded sped up. Or a dozen other obvious tricks that occurred to him, but had never occurred to anyone else. So on those Les Paul and Mary Ford records, literally every instrument was Les Paul on the guitar. The bass was Les Paul’s guitar slowed down to half speed, the percussion was his guitar, *everything* was his guitar. So now we come to “How High the Moon” itself. This is a song that originally dated back to 1940 — the Benny Goodman band had the first hit with it, and indeed Les Paul had recorded a version of it in 1945, with his trio. [excerpt Les Paul Trio version of “How High the Moon”] That was right before his experiments with tape recording started. Shortly after the first results of those were released, in 1948, there was another one of those every-decade health problems. In this case, Mary Ford was driving the two of them from Wisconsin to LA. She was from California, and not used to driving in winter weather. She hit a patch of ice and the two of them went off the road. Les Paul spent hours in ice water with multiple bones broken before anyone could get him to a hospital. For a while, it was believed it would not be possible to save his right arm — and then for a while after that the doctors believed they could save it, but it would permanently be fixed in a single position if they did, as his elbow would be unfixable. He told them to try their best, and to set it in a position with his hand over his navel, because if it was in that position he could still play guitar. As a precaution, he spent his time in hospital drawing up plans for a synthesiser, ten years before Robert Moog invented his, because he figured he could play the synth with one arm. When he got better, he and Mary Ford recorded a new version of “How High The Moon”, but at first the record label didn’t want to release it: [Excerpt Les Paul and Mary Ford: “How High The Moon”] That record sat unreleased for eighteen months, until 1951, because Jim Conkling at Capitol said that there’d been seventy-five recordings of the song before and none of them had been a hit. Conkling thought this was because the lyrics don’t make sense, but Les Paul was insistent that no-one was going to listen to the lyrics anyway. “It doesn’t matter what Mary sang or if it was done by the Four Nosebleeds. It didn’t make any difference, because that wasn’t what made the record. It was the arrangement and the performance.” And he was right — the version by Les Paul and Mary Ford was an absolute phenomenon. It spent twenty-five weeks in the Billboard pop charts, nine of them at number one, and while it was at number one another Paul and Ford track was at number two. Even more astonishingly, it also made number two on the rhythm and blues charts. Remember, that was a chart that was specifically aimed at the black audience, and between 1950 and 1955 only five records by white performers made the R&B charts at all, mostly very early rock and roll records. “How High the Moon” might easily seem an odd fit for the R&B charts. To twenty-first century ears, it’s hard to imagine anything more white-sounding. But what it does, absolutely, share with the music that was charting on the R&B charts at the time, and the reason it appealed to the R&B audience, is a delight in finding totally new sounds. The R&B charts at the time were where you looked for experimentation, for people trying new things. And also, there’s that rhythm on the record — this is entirely a record that’s driven by the rhythm. It’s not quite dance music, not like the jump bands — and there’s only guitar and vocals on it, something which would be absolutely out of the ordinary for rhythm and blues records at the time with their emphasis on piano and saxophone — but what there is in that guitar playing is personal expression. And R&B was all about individual expression. Les Paul was doing something which was qualitatively different both from jazz and from R&B, and so it’s not surprising that he ended up crossing over from one market to another. But in doing so, he also invented the way the guitar was to be used in rock and roll music. There’s a lot of Western Swing about what he’s doing on “How High the Moon”, unsurprisingly. But while the rhythm guitar is keeping to the same kind of rhythms that the Western Swing people would use, the lead guitar is much more aggressive and forceful than anything you got in country or western music at the time. It’s playing jazz and R&B lines — it’s playing, in fact, the kind of thing that a saxophone player like Illinois Jacquet might play, full of aggressive stabs and skronks. And more than that, he invented the way the recording studio would be used in rock and roll. Before Les Paul and Mary Ford’s early records, the recording studio was used solely as a way of reproducing the sound of live instruments as accurately as possible. After them, it became a way to create new sounds that could not be made live. One thing we’re going to see over and again in this series is the way technological change, artistic change and social change all feed back into each other. The 1950s was a time of absolutely unprecedented technological change in America, and people went from, in the beginning of the decade, listening to recordings played at 78RPM, often on wind-up gramophones, made of breakable shellac, to listening to high fidelity forty-five RPM singles and long-playing records which could — shockingly — last more than four minutes a side. Radio went from being something that had to be listened to as a family because of the size of the radiogram to something a teenager could listen to in bed under the blankets on a transistor radio, or something that you could even have on in your car! The combination of these changes made music into something that could be personal as well as communal. Teenagers didn’t have to share the music with their parents. All of that was still to come, of course, and we’ll look at those things as they happen during our history. But “How High the Moon” was the first and best sign of what was to come, as the 1940s gave way to the 1950s, and music entered a totally new age. Les Paul kept playing the guitar into his nineties. Interviewed in his late seventies, when his arthritis was so bad he only had movement in two fingers, with all the others so stiff they just had to stay where he put them, he said he played better than he had when he had ten fingers, because he’d had to learn more about the instrument to do it this way. In the end, his arthritis got to the point that he could no longer move any fingers on either hand — so he just let his fingers stay where they were, but would move his whole hand to play single notes and bar chords — he could lift his fingers up and down, just not move the knuckles. But he could still play. This is him on his ninetieth birthday: [excerpt: Les Paul 90th birthday concert “Sweet Georgia Brown”] So it turns out you don’t even need the two fingers Django had left, not if you have the kind of mind that gets you into the rock and roll hall of fame *and* the inventors’ hall of fame. Les Paul died, aged ninety-four, in 2009.

Welcome to episode nine of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs. Today we're looking at Les Paul and Mary Ford, and "How High The Moon". Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. ----more----  A couple of notes: This one is a few hours late, as I had some *severe* technical problems with the several previous attempts at recording this. This version was recorded starting around midnight on Sunday night, which is usually the time I put them up, so I apologise if it's lacking a final polish Resources If the episode starts you wondering about playing instruments while physically disabled, or inventing new instruments, you might want to check out a charity called the One-Handed Musical Instrument Trust, which invents and provides instruments for one-handed musicians. As always, I've created a Mixcloud streaming playlist with full versions of all the songs in the episode. This 3-CD box set is a very good compilation of Les Paul and Mary Ford's best work. The quotes from Les Paul in this episode come from this book of interviews with him. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript   To be a truly great guitarist, you need to have an imagination. You need to be inventive. And you need to have a sense of musicality. Some would also say that you need to have a lot of dexterity, and to be able to move your fingers lightning fast. Maybe also have long fingers, so you could reach further down the neck. But let's talk about Django Reinhardt for a bit. We mentioned Django a little bit in the episode on Bob Wills and “Ida Red”. We talked, in particular, about how he was making music that sounded very, very similar to what the early Western Swing musicians were doing. We're not going to talk much about Django in this series, because he was a jazz musician, but he *was* very influential on a few of the people who went on to influence rock, so we're going to touch on him briefly here. He never played an electric guitar, but he still influenced pretty much every guitarist since, either directly or indirectly. And this was despite having disadvantages that would have stopped almost anyone. One point we haven't made very much yet, but which needs to be made repeatedly, is that the people in most of these early podcasts were crushingly, hellishly, poor by today's standards. Poverty still exists of course, to far too great an extent, but the people we're talking about here lived in conditions that would be unimaginable to almost all of the listeners to this podcast. And Reinhardt had it worse than most. He was a Romany traveller, and while growing up his greatest skill was stealing chickens -- real, proper, poverty. But he became a professional musician, and it looked like he might actually become well off. And then his bad luck got worse. His caravan caught on fire, and in trying to rescue his wife and child, he suffered such extreme burns that one of his legs became paralysed -- and more importantly for Reinhardt as a musician, he lost the use of two of his fingers on his left hand. He had to re-teach himself to play the guitar, and to use only two fingers and a thumb on his left hand to play. Remarkably, he managed well enough to do things like this: [Excerpt: "How High The Moon" Django Reinhardt] Reinhardt influenced many guitarists, and one American guitarist in particular became a friend of Reinhardt and said that he and Reinhardt were the only two guitarists in the world at that time who were actually serious about their instrument. He was another jazzman, with a similar style to Reinhardt but one who had a more direct influence on rock and roll. Waukesha, Wisconsin, is not the most rock and roll town in the world. It was a spa town, before the water started to dry up, and about the most exciting thing that ever happened there is that Mr Sears, the founder of Sears & Roebuck, retired there when he got too ill to work any more. It's a bland, whitebread, midwestern town in a state that's most notable for dairy farming. Yet it's also the birthplace of the only man who is in the rock and roll hall of fame *and* the National Inventors Hall of Fame, and who probably did more than any other individual to make the guitar a respected lead instrument. Almost every moderately-known guitarist eventually gets a "signature" model named after them, and most of these sell a small number of instruments before being discontinued. But one man has a signature model that's so popular that other guitarists get their signatures *alongside his*. When you buy a Jimmy Page or Mark Knopfler or Slash or Eric Clapton signature guitar, there are two names on there -- the name of Page or Clapton or whoever, and the name Les Paul. Les Paul was a remarkable man, whose inventions are far more widely known even than his name. You'll almost certainly have seen musicians playing guitar and harmonica at the same time, using a harmonica holder -- Les Paul invented that, as a teenager, making the first one out of a coathanger. I guess if you were a teenager in Waukesha in the 1920s, you'd have little better to do with yourself than invent coathanger harmonica holders too. But Les Paul was, first and foremost, a guitar player, and he became a semi-professional musician by the time he was thirteen. The choice of the guitar was one that was actually made by his mother. She explained to him "if you play the piano you got your back turned to the audience. If you play the drums, you gotta carry all that stuff around, it's not musical. If you play a saxophone, you can't sing and talk at the same time." In his own words, she "whittled it down to guitar in a hurry". His mother, indeed, seems to have been a remarkable woman in many ways -- if you read any interviews with Les, he barely ever goes a few sentences without saying something about how much she did for him. That's one of the defining characteristics of Les Paul's life, really -- his admiration for his mother. There were two more things that characterised him though. The first was that pretty much dead on, every ten years, he would have some major health crisis that would put him out of commission for a year. The other was his lifelong devotion to learning, which meant that he used those health crises as an opportunity to learn something new. This love of learning could be seen from his very early days. When he was just learning the guitar, the singing cowboy star Gene Autry came to town. Gene Autry was a star of Western music -- the very biggest star in the country -- and his music was a cleaned-up, politer, version of the kind of music Bob Wills played: [excerpt: Gene Autry "Back in the Saddle Again"]. Les and his friend went to every show in the residency, and after a couple of nights, Gene Autry stopped the show in the middle of the set and said "something strange has been happening here -- every time I play an F chord, and *only* when I play an F chord, there's a flash of light. What's going on, how is this happening?" It turned out that Les had been wanting to learn how Autry made that chord shape, so he'd been there with a pencil and paper, and his friend had a torch, and every time he played the chord Les Paul wanted to learn, the torch would come on and Les would be trying to sketch the shape of Autry's fingers. Autry invited Les Paul onto the stage, showed him how to make the chord, and had him play a couple of songs. A few years later, when Autry moved from radio to films, he suggested Les Paul take over his radio show. So Les Paul was always fascinated by learning, and always trying to improve himself and his equipment. And once he decided to be a guitarist, he also decided to electrify his guitar, a full decade before electric guitars became a widespread instrument. He explained that when he was starting out, he was playing at a hotdog stand, using a homemade microphone for his voice and harmonica -- the microphone was made out of bits of an old telephone, and it was plugged in to his mother's radio. People who were listening liked his performances, but they said they wished the guitar was as loud as his voice -- so he took his *dad's* radio, too, and connected it to a record player needle, which he jammed into the body of his guitar. Once electric guitars started being manufactured, Paul started playing them, but he never liked them. The electric guitars of the late 1930s were what we'd now call electro-acoustics -- they were acoustic guitars, playable as such, but with pickups. There were two main problems with them -- firstly, they were very prone to feedback, because the hollow body of the guitar would resonate. And secondly, most of the sonic energy from the strings was going into the guitar itself, so there was no sustain. Paul came up with a simple solution to this problem, which he called "the log". The log was almost exactly what the name would suggest. It was a plank, to which were nailed some pickups, strings, and tuning pegs. On the front was attached the front of a normal guitar -- not anything that would actually resonate, just to make it look like a proper guitar. But basically it was just a lump of wood. Les Paul wasn't the first person to build a solid-body electric guitar -- but as he put it himself later "there may be some guy out there in Iowa says he built the guitar in 1925, for all I know, and he may have. I only know what I was doing and I was out there weaving my own basket, and there wasn't anybody else around and it had to be done.". He perfected the solid-body guitar during the first of his years of illness -- he'd been running an illegal radio station, accidentally stuck his hand in the transmitter, and not only got an electric shock but had a load of equipment fall on him. By the time he was well enough to work again, he had the idea perfected. He took his solid-body guitar idea to Gibson in 1941, but they weren't interested -- no-one was going to want to buy a solid guitar. It wasn't until Leo Fender started selling his guitars in 1950 that Gibson realised that it might be worth doing. But by then Les Paul had become one of the most famous guitarists in the country. Even before he became hugely famous, though, he'd been one of the *best* guitarists in the country. In 1944, when the guitarist Oscar Moore was unable at the last minute to play at Jazz At The Philharmonic -- the first of what would eventually become the most famous series of jazz concerts ever -- Les Paul was drafted in at short notice, and the live recordings of that show are some of the greatest instrumental jazz you'll hear, at a time when the borders between jazz, R&B, and pop music were more fluid than they became. Listen, for example, to this excerpt from "Blues, 1, 2, & 3". [excerpt] The honking saxophone player there is Ilinois Jacquet, the man who we talked about in episode one of this podcast, who invented R&B saxophone. The pianist there was also pretty great -- he was, in fact, a pianist who was already regarded as one of the best in the business, even before he started to sing, and who later had two further, separate careers under his more familiar name – one in R&B in which he inspired a generation of singers like Charles Brown and Ray Charles, and one in pop, where he became one of the great ballad singers of all time. He's credited on the track we just heard as "Shorty Nadine" for contractual reasons, but you probably know him better as Nat "King" Cole. Listening to that you can hear musicians performing at a time when jazz and R&B and rock and roll were all still sort of the same thing, before they all went off in their different directions, and it's hard not to wish that that cross-fertilisation had continued a while longer. But it didn't, and it would be easy to imagine that as a result Les Paul, who was absolutely a jazz musician, would make no further contributions to rock and roll after his popularising the solid-body electric guitar. But we haven't even got to his real importance yet. Yes, something he did that was even more important than the Les Paul guitar. It started when his mother told him she'd enjoyed something she heard him play on the radio. He'd replied that it wasn't him she'd heard, and she'd said "well, all those electric guitar players sound the same. If you want to be a real success, you want to sound different from everyone else -- at least different enough that your own mother can recognise you". And over the years, Les Paul had learned to listen to his mother -- she'd been the one who'd got him playing guitar, and she'd been the one who had told him to go and see Bob Wills, the day he'd ended up meeting Charlie Christian for the first time. So he went and spent a lot of time working on a sound that was totally different from anything else, spending days and weeks alone. He stopped working with his trio -- and started working with a young country singer who renamed herself Mary Ford, who Gene Autry had introduced him to and who he soon married -- and he eventually came up with a whole new idea. This episode is primarily about Les Paul, because he was such an astonishing force of nature, but it's worth making clear that Mary Ford was very much an equal partner in their sixteen years together. She was an excellent singer -- *far* better than Les Paul was -- and also a pretty good guitarist herself. On their live dates she would play rhythm guitar, and often the two would do a comedy guitar duel, with her copying everything Les Paul played. She was a vital part of the sound -- and of the sonic innovations the records contained, because one of the things they did for the first time was to have her sing very close to the mic -- a totally different technique than had been used before, which gave her vocals a different tone which almost everyone imitated. But that wasn't the only odd sound on the records. It sounded like Les Paul was playing two or three guitars at the same time, playing the same part. And sometimes he was playing notes that were higher than any guitar could play. And sometimes, when Mary Ford was singing... it sounded as if there were two or more of her! This was such an unusual sound that on the duo's radio and TV appearances they made a joke of it -- they pretended that Paul had invented a "Les Paulveriser", which could duplicate everything, and that for example he could use the Les Paulveriser on Mary, so there'd be multiple Marys and she could get the vacuum cleaning done quicker. It was the fifties. But of course, what Paul was actually doing was overdubbing -- recording one guitar part, and then going back and recording a second over it. He'd been fascinated by the idea for decades and he'd first done it as an experiment when he was still with the trio. He'd wanted to rehearse a song on his own, but with the arrangement the rest of the band played, so he'd recorded himself playing all the parts, using a disc cutter and playing along with previous takes. This didn't give good results until the introduction of magnetic tape recording in the very late forties -- when you recorded directly to a disc there was so much surface noise, and recording quality was so poor, that no-one would even think of recording overdubs. But in 1945, American soldiers brought back a new technology from Germany as spoils of war -- high fidelity tape recording. With magnetic tape you could record sound with orders of magnitude less noise than by cutting to disc. And Bing Crosby, who often worked with Les Paul, was the first person to see the possibilities of this new technology (in his case, for pre-recording his radio shows so they didn't have to go out live, which meant he could record them in batches and have more time to spend on the golf course). Les Paul was far more technical than Crosby, though, and far more aware of what could happen if, for example, you had two tape recorders. Or if you ran one slow so that when you played it back at normal speed everything sounded sped up. Or a dozen other obvious tricks that occurred to him, but had never occurred to anyone else. So on those Les Paul and Mary Ford records, literally every instrument was Les Paul on the guitar. The bass was Les Paul's guitar slowed down to half speed, the percussion was his guitar, *everything* was his guitar. So now we come to "How High the Moon" itself. This is a song that originally dated back to 1940 -- the Benny Goodman band had the first hit with it, and indeed Les Paul had recorded a version of it in 1945, with his trio. [excerpt Les Paul Trio version of "How High the Moon"] That was right before his experiments with tape recording started. Shortly after the first results of those were released, in 1948, there was another one of those every-decade health problems. In this case, Mary Ford was driving the two of them from Wisconsin to LA. She was from California, and not used to driving in winter weather. She hit a patch of ice and the two of them went off the road. Les Paul spent hours in ice water with multiple bones broken before anyone could get him to a hospital. For a while, it was believed it would not be possible to save his right arm -- and then for a while after that the doctors believed they could save it, but it would permanently be fixed in a single position if they did, as his elbow would be unfixable. He told them to try their best, and to set it in a position with his hand over his navel, because if it was in that position he could still play guitar. As a precaution, he spent his time in hospital drawing up plans for a synthesiser, ten years before Robert Moog invented his, because he figured he could play the synth with one arm. When he got better, he and Mary Ford recorded a new version of "How High The Moon", but at first the record label didn't want to release it: [Excerpt Les Paul and Mary Ford: "How High The Moon"] That record sat unreleased for eighteen months, until 1951, because Jim Conkling at Capitol said that there'd been seventy-five recordings of the song before and none of them had been a hit. Conkling thought this was because the lyrics don't make sense, but Les Paul was insistent that no-one was going to listen to the lyrics anyway. "It doesn't matter what Mary sang or if it was done by the Four Nosebleeds. It didn't make any difference, because that wasn't what made the record. It was the arrangement and the performance." And he was right -- the version by Les Paul and Mary Ford was an absolute phenomenon. It spent twenty-five weeks in the Billboard pop charts, nine of them at number one, and while it was at number one another Paul and Ford track was at number two. Even more astonishingly, it also made number two on the rhythm and blues charts. Remember, that was a chart that was specifically aimed at the black audience, and between 1950 and 1955 only five records by white performers made the R&B charts at all, mostly very early rock and roll records. "How High the Moon" might easily seem an odd fit for the R&B charts. To twenty-first century ears, it's hard to imagine anything more white-sounding. But what it does, absolutely, share with the music that was charting on the R&B charts at the time, and the reason it appealed to the R&B audience, is a delight in finding totally new sounds. The R&B charts at the time were where you looked for experimentation, for people trying new things. And also, there's that rhythm on the record -- this is entirely a record that's driven by the rhythm. It's not quite dance music, not like the jump bands -- and there's only guitar and vocals on it, something which would be absolutely out of the ordinary for rhythm and blues records at the time with their emphasis on piano and saxophone -- but what there is in that guitar playing is personal expression. And R&B was all about individual expression. Les Paul was doing something which was qualitatively different both from jazz and from R&B, and so it's not surprising that he ended up crossing over from one market to another. But in doing so, he also invented the way the guitar was to be used in rock and roll music. There's a lot of Western Swing about what he's doing on "How High the Moon", unsurprisingly. But while the rhythm guitar is keeping to the same kind of rhythms that the Western Swing people would use, the lead guitar is much more aggressive and forceful than anything you got in country or western music at the time. It's playing jazz and R&B lines -- it's playing, in fact, the kind of thing that a saxophone player like Illinois Jacquet might play, full of aggressive stabs and skronks. And more than that, he invented the way the recording studio would be used in rock and roll. Before Les Paul and Mary Ford's early records, the recording studio was used solely as a way of reproducing the sound of live instruments as accurately as possible. After them, it became a way to create new sounds that could not be made live. One thing we're going to see over and again in this series is the way technological change, artistic change and social change all feed back into each other. The 1950s was a time of absolutely unprecedented technological change in America, and people went from, in the beginning of the decade, listening to recordings played at 78RPM, often on wind-up gramophones, made of breakable shellac, to listening to high fidelity forty-five RPM singles and long-playing records which could -- shockingly -- last more than four minutes a side. Radio went from being something that had to be listened to as a family because of the size of the radiogram to something a teenager could listen to in bed under the blankets on a transistor radio, or something that you could even have on in your car! The combination of these changes made music into something that could be personal as well as communal. Teenagers didn't have to share the music with their parents. All of that was still to come, of course, and we'll look at those things as they happen during our history. But "How High the Moon" was the first and best sign of what was to come, as the 1940s gave way to the 1950s, and music entered a totally new age. Les Paul kept playing the guitar into his nineties. Interviewed in his late seventies, when his arthritis was so bad he only had movement in two fingers, with all the others so stiff they just had to stay where he put them, he said he played better than he had when he had ten fingers, because he'd had to learn more about the instrument to do it this way. In the end, his arthritis got to the point that he could no longer move any fingers on either hand -- so he just let his fingers stay where they were, but would move his whole hand to play single notes and bar chords -- he could lift his fingers up and down, just not move the knuckles. But he could still play. This is him on his ninetieth birthday: [excerpt: Les Paul 90th birthday concert “Sweet Georgia Brown”] So it turns out you don't even need the two fingers Django had left, not if you have the kind of mind that gets you into the rock and roll hall of fame *and* the inventors' hall of fame. Les Paul died, aged ninety-four, in 2009.

He wasn't a musician, instead he was an engineer and inventor, but he would develop the synthesizer and change music forever. Robert Moog passed away on this date, August 21, 2005. Allan looks back in today's Classic Rock Calendar… Image:  iStock / Getty Images Plus / i3D_VR

Dr. Robert Moog was the father of the synthesizer and perhaps the best-known promoter of the Theremin and electronic music. The synthesizer celebrated the two things Bob loved most, electronics and music.

On this day in 1934, American engineer and pioneer of electronic music, Robert  Arthur Moog was born in New York City. On today's "A Day in the Life", we explore the synthesized sound of Moog's creations from the music of the 70's to they're role in reinterpreting the classics of orchestral music.

Namlookian encounters, with Klaus Schulze, Robert Moog and Pink Floyd.

Namlookian encounters, with Klaus Schulze, Robert Moog and Pink Floyd.

On this day in 1934, American engineer and pioneer of electronic music, Robert  Arthur Moog was born in New York City. On today's "A Day in the Life", we explore the synthesized sound of Moog's creations from the music of the 70's to they're role in reinterpreting the classics of orchestral music.

The origins of electronic music can be traced back to the origins of electronic technology itself. As soon as tinkerers started creating sounds with synthesized instruments, writers started experimenting and composing music with them. Wholly new styles were created, and more forward thinking established artists started incorporating electronic elements into their new music. Robert Moog brought the first commercially available synthesizer to market in 1965, and it soon found its way onto albums by household names like The Beatles, The Rolling Stones and The Doors – along with anyone else with the wherewithal to create art by turning a bunch of knobs. Synthesizers became a cornerstone in progressive rock and evolving electronic technology continued to revolutionize music and the way it was made throughout the ensuing decades. By 2014, younger musicians have grown up in a world where this technology has always existed. The Moth & the Flame is a Los Angeles-based band that approaches their music like a tabula rasa – a blank slate upon which they indiscriminately add elements of traditional and electronic instruments. The result is catchy, ethereal, driving and haunting. They established their style on their eponymous full-length debut in 2011, and followed it up with a six-song EP named Ampersand in late 2013. Not content to coast, The Moth & the Flame are planning on releasing a brand new record in 2014 that will likely see their fan base continue to grow.

The origins of electronic music can be traced back to the origins of electronic technology itself. As soon as tinkerers started creating sounds with synthesized instruments, writers started experimenting and composing music with them. Wholly new styles were created, and more forward thinking established artists started incorporating electronic elements into their new music. Robert Moog brought the first commercially available synthesizer to market in 1965, and it soon found its way onto albums by household names like The Beatles, The Rolling Stones and The Doors – along with anyone else with the wherewithal to create art by turning a bunch of knobs. Synthesizers became a cornerstone in progressive rock and evolving electronic technology continued to revolutionize music and the way it was made throughout the ensuing decades. By 2014, younger musicians have grown up in a world where this technology has always existed. The Moth & the Flame is a Los Angeles-based band that approaches their music like a tabula rasa – a blank slate upon which they indiscriminately add elements of traditional and electronic instruments. The result is catchy, ethereal, driving and haunting. They established their style on their eponymous full-length debut in 2011, and followed it up with a six-song EP named Ampersand in late 2013. Not content to coast, The Moth & the Flame are planning on releasing a brand new record in 2014 that will likely see their fan base continue to grow.

The origins of electronic music can be traced back to the origins of electronic technology itself. As soon as tinkerers started creating sounds with synthesized instruments, writers started experimenting and composing music with them. Wholly new styles were created, and more forward thinking established artists started incorporating electronic elements into their new music. Robert Moog brought the first commercially available synthesizer to market in 1965, and it soon found its way onto albums by household names like The Beatles, The Rolling Stones and The Doors – along with anyone else with the wherewithal to create art by turning a bunch of knobs. Synthesizers became a cornerstone in progressive rock and evolving electronic technology continued to revolutionize music and the way it was made throughout the ensuing decades. By 2014, younger musicians have grown up in a world where this technology has always existed. The Moth & the Flame is a Los Angeles-based band that approaches their music like a tabula rasa – a blank slate upon which they indiscriminately add elements of traditional and electronic instruments. The result is catchy, ethereal, driving and haunting. They established their style on their eponymous full-length debut in 2011, and followed it up with a six-song EP named Ampersand in late 2013. Not content to coast, The Moth & the Flame are planning on releasing a brand new record in 2014 that will likely see their fan base continue to grow.

Novo especial da serie DIÁLOGOS 3. Nesta ocasión, un programa monográfico emitido o 1 de febreiro de 1992 en Radio 3 [RNE], adicado ao sintesista Walter/Wendy Carlos. A fonte, como sempre, unha vella cita de casete no arquivo sonoro do Pequeno Monstro. "A música electrónica que habitualmente escoitades en Diálogos 3, ten unhas orixes moi concretas que imos tentar de explorar nos dias de hoxe e manhá ao través de dous artistas que, cada un coas súas especias caracteríticas, marcaron unha serie de sendas a seguir, da reproduzón, máis que da produzón, aínda que no caso de Wendy Carlos, a recreación pasou a un segundo termo, despois. Estamos a falar de Wendy Carlos, antes chamado Walter Carlos, e de Isao Tomita [...] De 1955 a 1967, o doutor en electrónica Robert Moog, inventa el sintetizador Moog, cuxa evolución sería o Mini Moog, instrumento eletrónico do que se dicía que era capaz de crear unha gama case infinita de sons. Robert Moog, foi galardoado co Polar Music, da Real Academia da Música de Suecia, considerado coma o Nobel da Música. En 1966, Robert Moog, se pon en contacto co único músico que ten título de enxeñeiro electrónico naquel momento, Walter Carlos [que despois cambiaria de sexo, pasando a ser Wendy Carlos], dando lugar esta colaboración a primeira obra deste músico: `Swiches on Bach [1967]´, donde Carlos recrea electrónicamente obras de J.S. Bach. Daquela, unha das compañías de música electrónica máis potente nos EE.UU., a Columbia Broadcasting Systems [CBS], realiza unha convención de enxeñeiros electrónicos, donde se apresentará o Mini Moog e a transcripción para este instrumento de composicións de J.S. Bach, baixo o título de: `Swiched on Bach´. A reazón dos enxeñeiros eletrónicos asistentes a convención ao ouvir aquilo foi de grande sorpresa. O ano seguinte, 1968, aquel album xa publicado, acada no mercado un número de vendas foi moi superior das que Robert Moog e Walter Caros tiveran nunca imaxinado". Sintonizamos. Radio 3 [RNE], tres da tarde, Diálogos 3. Evolución da música electrónica [Cap. 1 Walter/Wendy Carlos]. Dirixe e presenta Ramón Trecet. Entrada completa en: http://pequenosmonstros.blogspot.com.es/2012/04/dialogos-3-radio-3-rne-evolucion-da_15.html Capítulo 2 desta serie en: http://pequenosmonstros.blogspot.com.es/2012/04/dialogos-3-radio-3-rne-evolucion-da_23.html Toda a serie "DIÁLOGOS 3" no blogue http://pequenosmonstros.blogspot , procurando a Etiqueta: "Serie: DIÁLOGOS 3 [Radio3-RNE]".

Ernie Rideout, the former editor for Keyboard magazine, has just put together a new book, Keyboard Presents: Synth Gods, which profiles 20 of the most influential keyboard pioneers in music. From the early inventions of Robert Moog to the trailblazing sounds of Brian Eno, Rideout shows how each artist would take the ideas from the past and give them their own personal touch. Icon Fetch talks to the author about meeting many of the musicians in the book, including getting to hang out and play basketball with the reclusive Prince.

Ernie Rideout, the former editor for Keyboard magazine, has just put together a new book, Keyboard Presents: Synth Gods, which profiles 20 of the most influential keyboard pioneers in music. From the early inventions of Robert Moog to the trailblazing sounds of Brian Eno, Rideout shows how each artist would take the ideas from the past and give them their own personal touch. Icon Fetch talks to the author about meeting many of the musicians in the book, including getting to hang out and play basketball with the reclusive Prince.

In this episode, we have a few drinks and discuss the basic concepts of voltage-controlled oscillators, how Robert Moog founded Moog Music, what makes the Minimoog Model D so iconic, and we interview Toronto composer/musician Peter Chapman.

1. Plucked, Spun Around, Discrimination against a Person of Green Skin 2. Plucked, Spun Around, They Get Those Funny Looks3. Plucked, Spun Around, Forked Tongue4. Plucked, Spun Around, What is On the Radio5. Plucked, Spun Around, The DJ Says Goodnight6. Tortoise, Beacons of Ancestorship, Northern Something7. Coil , England's Hidden Reverse, Are You Shivering8. Phantogram, Running from the Cops, Running from the Cops9. David Kristian , Tribute to Robert Moog, Tremen 2910. Clark , Totems Flare, Talis11. Blank Dogs, Under and Under, Two Months / Message One12. Freescha , slower than church music, Gole13. Dusty Wright with guitarist and Gibson guitar inventor 14. Les Paul, Dusty Wright Show Vid021 , Interview with Les Paul15. Charles Mingus, Mingus Ah Um, Bird Calls16. Miles Davis , Sketches of Spain, Saeta