In continuation of yesterday's Amoeblog tribute to Morrissey's 58th birthday and the Amoeba Music one-day storewide 20% off sale on all Morrissey and The Smiths product to celebrate the date, we continue the birthday theme today by honoring three diverse artists whose birthday fell on this date of May 23rd: Rosemary Clooney, Maxwell, and Robert Moog. In the case of the latter artist/creator, whose legacy was celebrated over this past weekend with the annual MoogFest in North Carolina, select music artists whose careers were influenced by the moog synth creator will also be celebrated in this second birthday week Amoeblog installment. Note tomorrow Wednesday, May 24th, Bob Dylan's 76th birthday will be celebrated with both a tribute Amoeblog as well as one-day 20% off instore sale on the artist's releases And then on Friday this week, May 26th: birth date of the late Miles Davis, the jazz great's legacy will similarly be celebrated in this one-week series.
synthesizer five and a half decades ago and, as such, widely credited with being a pioneer of electronic music. It was in 1965 when the Moog company rolled out the commercially available modular voltage-controlled analog synthesizer systems. The radical musical creation would alter and help shape the course of popular music over the next half century. His electronic synthesizer keyboard instrument, that originally cost $11,000, counted among its earliest owners The Beatles, Sun Ra, and Mick Jagger after its introduction at the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967. As noted by such academics as Cornell University professor of Science and Technology Studies, Trevor Pinch Moog's creation and his name are often mispronounced. Moog rhymes with "rogue" not with "fugue" as it has repeatedly been mispronounced dating back to its earliest usage. 
Among the earliest artists associated with the history of the Moog synth included Walter Carlos (later Wendy Carlos), Diana Ross & The Supremes, The Doors, and The Byrds followed by such others as Rick Wakeman of Yes, Keith Emerson, Kraftwerk, and Gary Numan. Another fan of using the Moog synth, although not often associated with the instrument, was Bob Marley, But it was the aforementioned Walter / Wendy Carlos provided many music fans first introduction to the Moog with 1968 release of the crossover classical album Switched-On Bach which reworked Bach's pieces on this then new instrument. But in terms of the first big pop hit for the Moog as the main instrumentation, that occurred a few years later with the 1972 international pop hit single "Popcorn" by Hot Butter (song below) which was actually a cover of the song Gershon Kingsley wrote and first recorded in 1969 for his album Music to Moog By and done by numerous other artists including Jean-Michel Jarre who was recently featured on the Amoeblog for his WIMB? appearance.
"Human beings do not survive on bread alone, you poor, soulless creature, but on the nourishments of liberty. For what indeed is a man without freedom, naught but a mechanism, trapped in the cogwheels of eternity."
includes all formats (CD, vinyl, cassette, DVD etc.) and extends to any merch (T-shirts, posters, etc.) for Morrissey or The Smiths. [
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