Small Planet (For Synthesizer Geeks Only) Blog FLASHBACK
This is a flashback from my old blog, dated Tuesday, March 9, 2010 at 9:14pm ·
Something happened today that struck me pretty hard- what a small world we (or maybe just me) live in. I’ve been in radio for over 35 years, and quite the synthesizer geek even longer- and when the two converge in the studio it’s magic. Back in 1988 when I had the chance to meet Bob Moog, I had already been in search of a vintage Minimoog of my own.
Dr Robert Moog and blathering fanboy.
Now that I was all grown up with a real job, I could afford the toys of my teen years and I was on a buying spree. I had located not one, but TWO minimoogs, picked the nicer of the two and sold the second to TM Productions, a Dallas jingle company.
About that same time, another (Canadian) radio geek named Amin Bhatia had released an incredible album called “Interstellar Suite”, using a single Minimoog for all sounds on the album. The music was perfect for making very dynamic promos, and that’s what I did at Pirate Radio in Los Angeles. One day, Amin contacted me, saying he had heard his music on the promos- unlike most musicians, he didn’t want to sue me, he actually liked it! After that, we became friends, and stayed in touch over the years.After I moved back to Dallas in 1990, I was thrift shopping at a pawn shop in Balch Springs when I found an amazing item- a solid plexiglass Mellotron with a serial number of #1. I called Dave Kean at Mellotronics and asked him if it was the real deal, and was it valuable? “Yes,” he said, “It is priceless, it’s the only one of it’s kind…. and it’s stolen!”. Wow. Dave made a deal with me that if I would buy it, he would pay me back and swap me for a refurbished Mellotron. The transaction took almost a year, but Acrylic #1 was back with it’s rightful owners.
Acrylic #1 as it looked in my home studio
Fast forward to today, while buying a raffle ticket on the Bob Moog Foundation website, I see an article about Amin doing an appearance at a Moog Foundation function last January. Links and bounds later, I’m on a YouTube site watching a video of my old friend Amin walking through the synth museum at the Cantos Music Foundation in Calgary. He stopped to play an old Mellotron, that just happened to be made of plexiglass (Perspex, actually). At 3:55 of the video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dx-H2tjT9tE&feature=player_embedded
I thought to myself “No…It can’t be…” I searched the Foundation website and there it was. Acrylic #1.
What are the odds that I would see my old friend playing my old keyboard in a museum in Canada that I’ve never heard of?
Pretty good, if you’re a lucky boy like me. : )
