November 18, 2014

A Piece of History

Sunday was a bit of a surprise.  The group on stage is always the same, very traditional.  But today, something a bit different, a wizened old lady was up there, seated to the side.  Really small, never seen her before, and she was doing nothing.  When the Eucharist came, now she was standing by a box, not doing much, barely moving, strange music filled the air.

Okay, they are playing a tape, whatever, but what is she doing up there?  Inquiring minds want to know!

Afterwards, I was to learn that she was one of the original Moog Synthesizers performers from back in the 1960's and apparently quite famous, still collaborating on albums even today!  And oh yeah, once you saw the machine you realized just how many miles were on it and how early a model it really was!  I was impressed.  What are the odds in this little burg, anyone of any notoriety would even pass through here?

My only real experience with a Moog dates me horribly; it rolls back time to the early days of the Maranatha movement and Dutchman's playing with electronics.  I remember we had heard a piece from Switch on Bach and he was instantly intrigued ...  In the end, we never get even a phoney Moog, as Dutchman got distracted working with lasers and the idea of building a "radar" gun using light instead of radio ways.  Well, millions of tickets later, his early work is the pain in everyone's collective ... uhm ... backside.  But, it would have been cool to have even built just on one Moog.  I wonder if I still have that issue of Popular Electronics somewhere in my storage ... ?

Well, I no longer own a copy of Switch on Bach, but I do have my Jarre's Oxygene to listen to today ...

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