An Interview on Gershon Kingsley with Reflections on Bob Moog

Full interview on Astronauta Pinguim

"ASTRONAUTA - Today (May 23) is the day we celebrate the birthday of Robert Moog. You had contact with him in the beginnings of the invention of the Moog synthesizer and also in the last days of his life, when you were interviewed by Hans Fjellestad to the "Moog" documentary. How did you meet Robert Moog and, in your point of view, what is Bob's greatest legacy?

GERSHON - I met him in 1969 up at his place in Trumansburg and after considerable time of learning this specialty of frequency modulation, I bought with my last money the synthesizer. Luckily, in a few weeks, I got my money back making a commercial for hair dryers.

Bob's greatest legacy is the probably the polyphonic synthesizer and further development of the Theremin..."

via @astroping

Update 5/23 4:23 PST: I'm finally getting around to reading the interview in full myself. If you hadn't had the chance yet, make a note or bookmark it for when you do. It's a great interview. You'll pick up lots of interesting bits of synth history. I never knew the following regarding Popcorn: "GERSHON - When it was first recorded and we didn't have a title, one of the musicians suggested 'Popcorn', but not because it sounded like popcorn, but "pop" for popular and 'corn' for kitsch. It came out like a Russian folk tune or a Bach invention originally.

To be honest, not much. However, I do like the Popcorn International I oversaw that was done with the Cologne Radio Orchestra, Popcorn Fantasie arranged by Benny Gebauer, and the M & H Band '80s version, Goodiepal (with the extra beats), the Crazy Frog version and the Swedish Chef Muppet version.

As a side remark, when I conducted in Japan in the early 80's, Yamaha invited me to their factory where I heard for the first time Popcorn as a sample in one of the Yamaha synthesizers."