LaGrange College Moog Poster & Bob Moog's Sense of Humor

via Eric Frampton:

"Bob had a good sense of humor.

He and I were on the same lecture schedule together at an electronic music festival at LaGrange College down in middle Georgia. We got to spend a fair amount of time just hangin' out, so I brought him a printed copy of the 12 Steps of Syntheholics Anonymous, a posting on Analogue Heaven from back in 1995, which I thought he'd enjoy. He indeed thought it was funny, enough that when I asked him to sign my poster, he signed it thusly.

I brought a bunch of my vintage keyboards down there as as show-and-tell sort of thing. I had the Memorymoog, the Mini, a Source, and I forget what all else (this was in 1998, at the height of my G.A.S.), and I remember him saying, 'I see you don't have a Polymoog here.' To which I replied something along the lines of, good lord those things are awful, what a maintenance nightmare, not worth the trouble, etc. He simply gave me a knowing smirk, and a nod of agreement. Nothing more needed to be said.

Also, I asked him what was the last product he directly worked on at the old Moog. Turns out it was the Micromoog.

I've copied the original 12-step email here for reference. And sorry about the fuzzy poster shots…I hope they still get the message across.

From: SuperBad MoFo
Subject: Syntheholics Anonymous
Date: Wed, 14 Jul 1995 10:08:39 -0700

–

Hello, my name is Mr-808. I am a syntheholic.

I bought my last synth 5 days ago. I was talking to a friend, and he said he was selling his Polaris for US$300, and I just couldn't resist.

I would like to review the 12 steps of SA now:

1. We admitted we were powerless over analogue synths at good prices and that our lives had become unmanageable.

2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.

3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of Bob Moog, as we understood Him.

4. Made a searching and fearless inventory of our gear collection.

5. Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the number of times we used each synth in a piece of recorded music in the past year.

6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these synths from our studio.

7. Humbly asked Him to give them back if we promise not to buy any more until we master what we have.

8. Made a list of all persons we had sold gear to at too high a price, and became willing to make amends to them all.

9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others, or embroil us in a flamewar.

10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it on both Analogue Heaven and rec.music.maker.synth.

11. Sought, through patch editing and sequencing, to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of Control Voltages and DIN Sync conversion, and the power to carry that out.

12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to syntheholics, and to practice these principles in all our affairs."