The Moog synth trivia is that its first appearance on a pop record was on the song "Daily Nightly" from the Monkees 1967 album Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn & Jones Ltd. (your bonus piece of trivia is that Davy Jones and Mike Nesmith shared a birthday and another Capricorn on there would have just sounded weird). I own this album and it's very mid-60s and very fun. Smack talking wool hat pimp daddy Mike Nesmith wrote the lyrics and Micky Dolenz played around on one of the very first synths and this is what they came up with.
Okay, Sgt. Pepper it ain't but it's still trippy. Thanks Mr. Moog. The 80s wouldn't have been the same without you.
I learned of Moog from the Monkees too. And I've always liked "Daily Nightly." :-) (Pieces is my favorite Monkees album with "Salesman" being one of my most favorite Monkees songs.)
ReplyDeleteI am such a sucker for Nesmith's voice in general but "Fading Through the Door Into Summer" is my fave from that album.
Deletemy high school had a MOOG synth. I don't remember which one, unfortunately. It was kind of a pain to get a sound out of -- not like plug and play synthesizers today. You had to understand stuff about the nature of sound before you could get it to work -- stuff like attack, decay, sustain, release -- envelope stuff -- and you had to twist a lot of gears to make it work. I learned a lot about how different acoustic instruments worked because of playing with the synthesizer, trying to get it to sound like various things.
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