MOOG’D OUT! MoogFest, and the Legacy of Bob Moog
Oct 28, 2010
With the electronic music/alt-rock festival set for this weekend in N.C., we pay tribute to the man who inspired it all.
BY FRED MILLS
"He planted the seed."
The "he" would be the late Dr. Robert Moog, and the seed he planted was his signature invention, the Moog synth, which as most everyone knows was instrumental in the evolution of electronic music - a bountiful musical harvest.
The above quote comes from Dr. Moog's daughter Michelle Moog-Koussa, who as executive director of The Bob Moog Foundation (MoogFoundation.org) is charged with furthering her father's legacy. To that end she's spent the better portion of the past five years spearheading a series of projects ranging from preserving and organizing the Bob Moog Archives (which include vintage gear, personal notes and correspondence and hundreds of hours of tapes); to a student outreach program designed to get kids interested in electronic music and instruments; to the delightfully-named "Moogseum" which is intended to display artifacts representative of the Moog legacy as well as serve as a unique historical and hands-on resource for the public.
Although, it must be said, it's equally clear that the familial connection lends a personal element to Moog-Koussa's efforts, too. As she put it in a 2008 interview with BLURT, reflecting on her dad's death in 2005, at the age of 71, and her subsequent decision to establish the Foundation, "Immediately following Dad's passing, thousands of people around the world paid tribute to the effect that Dad had on their lives, both through his instruments and through his warm, humble spirit. My father has a unique and beautiful legacy of touching people's lives through innovation, creativity and human warmth. The Bob Moog Foundation aims to carry that legacy forward. As my father would say ‘What's not to like?'"
What's not to like, indeed. This weekend, October 29, 30 and 31 in Asheville, NC, home to Moog Music, which continues to design and produce in-demand electronic gear, there's going to be a whole lot to like when some 50-odd musical artists descend upon the artsy, bohemian-tilting mountain city and take part in a marathon Bob Moog celebration that most observers agree marks the biggest musical event ever to happen here. Full disclosure: I live in Asheville, so I'm particularly partial to the city and its music scene; but I can recognize a phenomenon when I see/hear one.
It's dubbed MoogFest 2010 - official website is MoogFest.com - and it represents the logical evolution for MoogFest, which had taken place as single-night events in previous years in NYC featuring the likes of Keith Emerson, Rick Wakeman, Money Mark, Jan Hammer, DJ Logic, Jordan Rudess of Dream Theatre and others. If you've kept up with some of the BLURT news clips about the event or entered in our ticket giveaway contest, you already know that this year's event features some of the biggest names in electronica and alternative rock, performing over the course of the e three evenings and at multiple venues. Among the artists: MGMT, Massive Attack, Big Boi, Girl Talk, Van Dyke Parks w/Clare and the Reasons, Thievery Corporation, Jonsi, Caribou, Four Tet, Hot Chip, Sleigh Bells, DJ Spooky, Projek Moog With Brian Kehew, Nortec Collective Presents Bostich + Fussible and RJD2. (Cee-Lo, originally announced as the Sunday headliner, had to cancel due to a scheduling conflict, while just yesterday DEVO announced they were postponing their current tour following an injury sustained by Bob Mothersbaugh. As of this writing, Mark Mothersbaugh and Bob Casale are still scheduled to attend and are reportedly planning to work up some type of musical presentation.) Shows will be kicking off on a staggered basis around 6pm each night at the Asheville Civic Center, the Thomas Wolfe Auditorium and the Orange Peel Club, and the performances will extend until 2:30 in the morning with late night sets at the Stella Blue club and the aptly-named "Moogaplex," established specifically for MoogFest.
Meanwhile, on Saturday and Sunday at the Moogaplex there will be daytime workshops, interactive exhibitions and panel discussions ranging from several synth history panels (one, titled "The Birth of the Minimoog," will feature early Moog collaborator Herb Deutsch and Moog Cookbook keyboardist Brian Kehew) to performance demonstrations involving the Theremin, Moogerfooger, the Moog Guitar and the Abominatron. Local independent movie house the Fine Arts Theatre plans to screen a pair of documentaries, "Bouncing Cats" by Nabil Elderkin & Red Bull Media House (Oct. 30) and "Moog" by Hans Fjellestad, the latter offering a Q&A with Deutsch and DJ Spooky after the screening. There wil also be an art display, "Synth: A Group Art Show Inspired By Bob Moog," featuring limited-edition prints for sale from a number of acclaimed contemporary poster artists and graphic designers; proceeds will go to the Moog Foundation. Leading up to all this has been a series of contests open to the public including the MoogFest/URB.com Remix Contest (Moving Temple And Peripheral gets a DJ slot on Oct. 31 at one of the venues for submitting the winning entry, a remix of Hot Chip's "We Have Love") and the Moog Circuit Bending Challenge, in which three finalists will be selected to showcase their soldering skills at the Moogaplex and compete for a grand prize.
Speaking of prizes: on Oct. 29, attending members of DEVO will be presented the Moog Innovation Award by the folks from Moog Music. The award "celebrates pioneering artists whose genre-defying work exemplifies the bold, innovative spirit of Bob Moog" and will also be accompanied by the presentation of a special synthesizer to the band.
Says Moog-Koussa, of this year's blowout, "I attended the MoogFests in New York, and they were one night, they were at the BB King nightclub and held about 500 people, and maybe four or five hours long. So I thought it sounded really exciting since the musical possibilities for a weekend are huge. [Concert promoters] Ashley Capps and AC Entertainment showed us they could fill up that weekend with a great variety - Moog Music and The Bob Moog Foundation are both supporting and partnering with AC in different ways, but it really was Ashley's vision. I'd have to give him 100% credit for that, and I personally feel like we're really lucky for him to have an interest in this and to be able to pull it off so well."
(View the MoogFest schedule of performances, panels and workshops, along with locator maps of the venues and additional details on the contests and more, at the MoogFest.com website.)
"It's going to be a great weekend - I really think it's just going to be epic."
That's AC Entertainment founder Capps speaking, making an insider's prediction about MoogFest. He's been promoting concerts throughout the region for more than three decades, including, not insignificantly, the annual Bonnaroo Festival as well the smaller but no less critically acclaimed Big Ears Festival in Knoxville, where AC is based. So if the man uses a term like "epic," pay attention.
"MoogFest has been in a state of evolutionary development for at least three years or more," Capps continues. "The idea is something I've thought about and talked about with people for quite a long time. I've always thought that Asheville, with its support for the arts and live music in general, was the perfect setting for a great festival. And MoogFest had a tradition [as] an event that was being staged in New York City. So with that existing MoogFest it took awhile to work through this idea that rather than it being this one day event in New York, why not do it in Bob Moog's adopted hometown, the place where Moog Music is still churning out amazing new instruments and developing new products. And invite people to this magnificent city for the celebration. That's really the crux of the issue, or at least the real catalyst for developing the event.
"Certainly [with] the planning of an event, new opportunities have emerged and certain ones we've been able to incorporate and certain other ones we may have to wait a year or two before they become a reality. But the scope of the festival that you see right now was planned from the beginning. It's complicated, and it's very time consuming to put something like this together, so the unfolding of the various elements, especially for a first year event, is really just part of the process."
In addition to the no-brainer aspect of staging MoogFest in Robert Moog's back yard, Capps cites the layouts and physical proximity of the venues and the Moogaplex and the general "walkability" of Asheville as key to ensuring that the Oct. 29-31 weekend will be a success. "To this day I'm really excited about being involved with Bonnaroo," he says. "It's an amazing event and I love outdoor music festivals. But I'm also very attracted to these more boutique oriented festivals that have a theme and take place utilizing indoor venues where you can create different types of experiences for the artists and fans. Our focus is on those details and trying to surprise people, not only with great music on a stage, but [with] visual design elements too. [For MoogFest] we're working with some visual artists to try to transform some of these rooms into some pretty incredible experiences visually as well. And we're also limiting the number of ticket sales so we can provide the very best possible experience for everyone that we can.
"Also, one of the key components of making that experience work for me, at least, is the walkability of the city: people need to be able to experience the festival on foot, and Asheville certainly affords that opportunity. And you're right - the longest distance, Asheville Civic Center to the Orange Peel, is not only merely a ten minute walk, it's a fun ten minute walk with lots of fun stuff taking place along the way."
On that latter point, yours truly can weigh in readily with a "boy howdy." To anyone reading this who is attending MoogFest and is not familiar with Asheville - which just this past Sunday, was the subject of a glowing "36 Hours In..." profile in the New York Times - I'd recommend partaking as much as possible of the local flavors while in town. The downtown area where the official MoogFest events are taking place Friday through Sunday is literally crammed with eateries, coffee shops, clubs and bars of all imaginable persuasions, with the Lexington Avenue and Biltmore Avenue stretches in particular providing plenty of touristy bounce to the ounce (record collectors: check out the Voltage, Static Age and Karmasonics music stores). As Capps noted, it's a walking-distance city that won't tax the ankles and arches unduly, and the relative density should also play enabler to all you Gawker types determined to play spot-the-musicians. Make sure you ask a bartender for a pint of Moog Filtered Ale while you're here. Also, for those of you who get in on Friday, do not miss the Friday night drum circle at nearby Pritchard Park, as it's a boho-bash par excellence suitable for upright citizens and visiting deviants alike.
Too, depending on the length of your stay and how much time you can allot to fanning out in the area, there's plenty to do. A MoogFest Pre-Party will take place Thursday night at The Southern (Lexington Ave.) featuring a DJ set from King Britt, while an After Party will run Sunday night until 4am at the Flood Gallery (on Roberts Street, in the nearby River Arts District adjacent to downtown). Not far from the River Arts District is West Asheville, also bohemian-tilting and home to a slew of restaurants, bars and shops - notably, BLURT's buddies at Harvest Records, easily the finest independent record store in the region. Lastly, if you're outdoors-inclined, riding up on the Blue Ridge Parkway to take in the views or hit a hiking trail should definitely be on your itinerary, as the weather is generally beautiful this time of year in the mountains, and as of this writing it looks like we're headed for a clear-skies weekend.
"It's all a celebration of his spirit and the technology he innovated."
If you go to the Moog Music website you can read a fairly detailed bio of Dr. Moog, a two-time Grammy winner. His story, in brief: from making Theremins in the late ‘50s and early ‘60s, he created the first Moog Modular Synthesizer in '64, and by the late ‘60s, following the success of Wendy/Walter Carlos' Switched-On Bach album and the infiltration of the synth into the rock world, Moog's invention had become a cultural sensation; he eventually left Moog Music in 1977 to found another company, Big Briar, soon moving his family to Asheville where he taught at the University of North Carolina and continued to design gear, ultimately reclaiming the rights to the Moog Music and Minimoog trademarks and changing the name of Big Briar to Moog Music Inc. in 2002. (Moog was also an accomplished keyboardist although he rarely played in public; however, a CD of a 1980 performance was released earlier this month as a timely lead-in to MoogFest. Read more about it elsewhere at BLURT.)
Yet perhaps the most revealing detail of the bio is the part that reads thusly:
"Where would R&B, rap and hip-hop be if groups like Parliament and Funkadelic hadn't used Moog keyboards? Where would rock and roll be if groups from Yes to the Beatles hadn't used Moog keyboards? Would jazz music have branched off into fusion without Herbie Hancock and Chick Corea using Moog keyboards? And would classical music have enjoyed such resurgence without Wendy Carlos and her modular Moog synthesizer?"
Consulting the schedule of MoogFest performers, you can quickly see the logical corollaries to those questions - the lasting impact of Bob Moog is enormous. By way of acknowledgement Michelle Moog-Koussa notes, "What we're trying to carry on is that spirit, the way he impacted people's lives. Whether it was because they played the instruments or because they were inspired by the music that was produced by those instruments. That's what we're trying to move forward. [For example] at the MoogFest workshops and panels, we have pulled from a lot of people from the Moog legacy to participate. Those panels at the Moogaplex are a manifestation of our mission, to educate and inspire people through electronic music. But that mission also sprang from what Bob Moog was all about. So I think what you're going to hear at MoogFest, it's all a celebration of his spirit and the technology he innovated."
The Moog spirit, perhaps, can be found in the connections the man made in his life and with his work - connections both literal (as in circuitry), and spiritual. In 2004, BLURT contributor Steven Rosen interviewed Bob Moog. The documentary film Moog had recently been released, and one of the comments he made to Rosen was quite telling, both about his intellectual gifts and about his outlook on life:
"When I was a teenager, and a little bit before, I really loved electronics," said Moog. "I have a talent and a gift for making contact with electronic circuitry. It's a gift that enables stuff to come through you. I don't think I'm so smart or creative that it starts off inside my head and then comes out.
"I think all us humans are capable of experiencing connections - engaging in
spiritual things like that. Whether or not we take advantage of that depends on
a lot of things. I found it through electronics, particularly musical
electronics."
The obvious question, then, is how Dr. Moog himself might have reacted to all the fuss taking place this weekend. It's a question that apparently been posed a number of times to Moog-Koussa during the run-up to the festival.
"Someone asked me in an interview about what would my dad have thought of all this," she says, with a chuckle. "And I said, ‘You know, I can't really answer for my dad. He was a very unique thinker, and I can't profess to know exactly what he would think. But my suspicion is that he would be a little shy-slash-uncomfortable with all the attention.'
"And that was not his nature in general, but when it came to this type of recognition of this magnitude, and anything that hinted at notions of celebrity, it did make him a little uncomfortable. Because he was very humble, and he would describe himself as a ‘tool maker' - a tool maker for musicians. And I think that would be his first sentiment, a little unease. But once he recognized what the event was all about, it's really what he was all about too.
"He was all about the musicians, and he was all about music. This is what he worked to do; he worked to provide tools to musicians. And here is the fruition of his work."
Go here to read more of our interview with Michelle Moog-Koussa, in which she discusses the recent CD release Bob Moog Live as well as some of what's been cooking with the Bob Moog Archives.
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