------------------------------------------------------- MAY 20, 2004 ------------------------------------------------------- Source: Wired News http://www.wired.com/news/digiwood/0,1412,63523,00.html Is a Moog Renaissance Nigh? By Noah Shachtman The band onstage was rocking pretty hard. But the spinning spotlight stayed focused on the rickety, vintage machine just to the musicians' left. The bathtub-size tangle of wires and knobs and Star Trek-era flashing lights was an original Moog synthesizer. And it deserved the attention. Forty years ago, upstate New York engineer and physicist Bob Moog started making instruments like these -- the world's first commercially available, playable synths. Within a decade, they had radically refigured the sound and texture of music, become a fixture of rock and jazz fusion, and formed the foundation of a dozen different genres known collectively as "electronic." On Tuesday night, some of the Moog's most famous practitioners gathered in Times Square to pay homage to this influential machine: a one-night, one-time "Moogfest." "Until Bob Moog came along, we (keyboard players) were hidden in the background. He gave us an instrument that can cut through concrete and frighten guitarists to death," growled Rick Wakeman, the hulking, platinum-blonde keyboard player for the progressive rock band Yes. But Moogs became famous not just for the screeching, buzz-saw leads like the one Wakeman lets fly. The bubbling low-end sound behind '70s funk and West Coast hip-hop, the bloops and bleeps of techno, the sci-fi sounds of the Aquarius Age -- all of that is Moog, too. The instrument figured in the most classic of classic rock albums: Abbey Road, Who's Next, Pet Sounds, Beggar's Banquet. Many of the best-known hits of Parliament-Funkadelic, Herbie Hancock, Pink Floyd, Stevie Wonder, Kraftwerk and Rush all lean on its tonal foundation. After a long legal battle, Bob Moog (rhymes with "rogue") not long ago won back the rights to start marketing synthesizers in his name. The timing couldn't have been better. After years in the shadows of digital keyboards and software-based synths, the fat bass and piercing highs of analog keyboards have re-emerged -- big time. "There were more companies showing true analog synths this year at (a recent convention) than at any time since the '70s, or maybe ever," Keyboard magazine reported. "Meanwhile, just about every company with a digital synth was busy explaining how 'analog' it sounded." The audience of 600 or so graying rockers at B.B. King's nightclub got a taste of the real deal. Keith Emerson -- whose solo on Emerson, Lake and Palmer's "Lucky Man" is considered by many to be the quintessential Moog lead -- headlined the show. While he stabbed single-note melodies with his right hand, Emerson used his left to twist knobs on the massive machine facing him, turning phrases from syrupy to trumpet-esque and back again. At the end of the night, he stood before the device, arms akimbo, and let the Moog chirp on, as he worshipped from a yard away. Like many others, Emerson first discovered the Moog in 1968, when he heard Walter (later Wendy) Carlos' Switched-On Bach. "I asked, 'What instrument is this?'" Emerson recalled for a group of about 100, gathered in a nearby music store for a Monday Moog seminar. The guts of the machine were technically simple: a series of oscillators, each of which produced tones, like the simple sine wave. A keyboard or a metallic ribbon controlled the pitch. Fiddling with knobs or rearranging cables could make the tone warble molasses slow or hummingbird quick, and it could turn that round sine sound jagged and cutting, or boxy and solid. Filters could then be applied to strip the tone of everything but the lowest rumbles or ear-popping peaks. But the thing was enormous, and ruinously expensive -- "as much as a small house," said Trevor Pinch, author of "Analog Days: The Invention and Impact of the Moog Synthesizer." Nevertheless, Emerson wanted to take it on the road with him. Moog's reply: no chance. The machine was too fragile. Besides, it required extensive training to operate properly. But Emerson finally convinced Moog to let him have it, and took a programmer on tour to keep the instrument running. Other big names also gravitated toward the Moog: Pete Townsend, George Harrison, The Doors' Ray Manzarek, to name a few. When Stevie Wonder heard the subsonic bass zips from Malcolm Cecil and Robert Margouleff's Tonto's Expanding Head Band, he recruited the pair to become his producers and dedicated Moogmen. Together, they teamed up for some of the deepest grooving albums ever pressed -- Innervisions, Talking Book, Fulfillingness' First Finale and Music of My Mind. The Moog became synonymous with funk. Herbie Hancock -- who was pioneering jazz fusion with his Headhunters band -- got with the sound. So did Parliament keyboardist Bernie Worrell, who used it for the group's most enduring hit, the boot-stomping, endlessly descending "Flashlight." But by 1983, the Moog was on its way out. Digital synthesizers, like the Yamaha DX-7, came in vogue. "It became about repetition, rather than exploration," Pinch said. "People wanted standard sounds -- 'Get me that bass Stevie Wonder got.'" That's started to change in recent years. Software emulators for the classic synths have reignited interest in the analog sound. Techno enthusiasts wanted to manufacture noises on their own. Hip-hop producers wanted to capture the secrets of P-Funk's and Stevie's respective shades of groove. "We need electronic instruments to make new sounds, not just imitate old ones," neo-jazz guitarist Stanley Jordan announced at Tuesday's show. But neither he -- nor Worrell, who also made a brief appearance -- could back up the sentiment. Both played meandering, unrehearsed mishmashes that started nowhere and didn't travel much further. It was up to the evening's least-known player, Steve Molitz from the jam band Particle, to show what the Moog was really capable of. Sitting in on a campy song -- a funkified version of Also Sprach Zarathustra (widely known as the theme from 2001: A Space Odyssey) -- Molitz trilled a slinky solo so deep in the pocket of the groove that audience members had to dig into their pants to get it out. Then he climbed into the higher register, uncorking a series of extraterrestrial tones that could only be described as R2D2's acid trip. As the horn players blared the fanfare's final notes, Molitz' Moog bleeps increased to heart-attack rate. The audience hooted. And something old had suddenly been reborn. Close Window YesInThePress.com For site comments, inquiries, corrections, or additions, contact yitp@yesservices.com