JudysTrevor
10-06-2003, 06:59 PM
As I've noted here before on the board, I'm also a huge Styx fan. Member Glen Burtnik recently left the band to be at home with his family. Every month, he sends out notes of what is going on in his life. Currently he is working on a solo album. He also tells stories. Here is one.
It was the winter of 1970. I was a teenager in a band with a couple of college
students named Eric Steinberg and Wayne (I’ve forgotten his last name) - I wrote
the songs, but they helped arranging and taught me a lot about classical music.
The three of us went to see a concert/demonstration of electronic music by the
First Moog Quartet (a pioneering four-synthesizer ensemble that was bringing
electronic music into classical music venues, led by a guy named Gershon
Kingsley, who’d have a novelty instrumental synth hit titled POPCORN in 1972).
Now, up til then, synthesizers were fairly large, bulky and complex instruments,
requiring lots of patch wires and plugs. And they were expensive. But after the
concert, there was a short speech by the man who is pretty much credited as
inventing the synthesizer, Robert Moog, who unveiled the brand new, portable and
affordable Mini-Moog synthesizer.
Eric ran out and procurred one of those knobby little wooden units promptly, and
our band (our list of rotating monikers included GREEN SPIT, BONJI and AFRICAN
BLOOD LILY) became the first rock group I’d ever heard of with a synthesizer.
Not long after that, imaginative players like Rick Wakeman of YES came along with
gorgeous sounding uses for this progressively popular instrument and by 1974 I
found myself in another band with TWO guys with Mini-Moogs (Mark Haycock and
Dusty Micale).
I thought this was cool to not pass on to you guys!! ;) Rick is THE MAN!!
Judy
:guitar:
It was the winter of 1970. I was a teenager in a band with a couple of college
students named Eric Steinberg and Wayne (I’ve forgotten his last name) - I wrote
the songs, but they helped arranging and taught me a lot about classical music.
The three of us went to see a concert/demonstration of electronic music by the
First Moog Quartet (a pioneering four-synthesizer ensemble that was bringing
electronic music into classical music venues, led by a guy named Gershon
Kingsley, who’d have a novelty instrumental synth hit titled POPCORN in 1972).
Now, up til then, synthesizers were fairly large, bulky and complex instruments,
requiring lots of patch wires and plugs. And they were expensive. But after the
concert, there was a short speech by the man who is pretty much credited as
inventing the synthesizer, Robert Moog, who unveiled the brand new, portable and
affordable Mini-Moog synthesizer.
Eric ran out and procurred one of those knobby little wooden units promptly, and
our band (our list of rotating monikers included GREEN SPIT, BONJI and AFRICAN
BLOOD LILY) became the first rock group I’d ever heard of with a synthesizer.
Not long after that, imaginative players like Rick Wakeman of YES came along with
gorgeous sounding uses for this progressively popular instrument and by 1974 I
found myself in another band with TWO guys with Mini-Moogs (Mark Haycock and
Dusty Micale).
I thought this was cool to not pass on to you guys!! ;) Rick is THE MAN!!
Judy
:guitar: