Silver Apples and Experimental Music Listening

The dubbed over music on the starling video that I mentioned in the previous blog brought back memories of other electronic music - some that go way back to the early 1970's. I have no personal music talent and I cannot sing very well - best done in a crowd. I have tried piano and guitar, even had lessons - only remember a few chords, have no rhythm, no coordination. I am sure if I were to try to sing and play an instrument at the same time, that would be a complete disaster. But as far back as I can remember, I have always enjoyed listening to all kinds of music - record albums of musicals my mom had; starting to listen to rock and roll on an old tube radio beside my bed when I was 11 or 12 - KONG radio (1); beginning to purchase albums in junior high school from a store in town called The House of Wax - before J.C. Penney's, and later Tower Records and Barnes and Noble; playing more records on a Heathkit stereo receiver I build when I was a sophomore in high school electronics shop. I have especially enjoyed listening to my oldest and youngest sons play their instruments - their talent came from their mom's side of the family (and my mom's as well). As far back as I have bought music, I had a penchant for experimenting with the kinds of albums I would buy. Synthesizers used in music by Jefferson Starship; Emerson, Lake and Palmer; Pink Floyd just sounded good in my ears. There was a period when I would turn on the NPR Hearts of Space radio program every Tuesday night on KLCC from Eugene.

I think it all started with an album called Silver Apples of the Moon that I purchased from a discount book catalog from Publishers Central Bureau. I had no real idea what it was when I ordered it - the title sounded interesting. It turned out to be early synthesizer music by Morton Subotnick. I am pretty sure my wife and kids won't appreciate this, but samples of his music from Silver Apples can be listened to here and from another piece call The Wild Bull here. Years later, I bought a copy of Wendy Carlos' sound track to the original movie Tron - I see there is a new version coming out soon.

I had a lot of vinyl albums that were packed in cardboard boxes that went from Visalia to Davis to Fresno to Clovis to Corvallis and back to Clovis, back to Corvallis again, and then to a used record shop before moving to Annapolis - Silver Apples among them. Most all of the PCB experiments are gone - the way of the 33 1/3 turntable that stopped functioning during the first tour in Corvallis.

Regardless, here is my list of favorite institutionalized music that still has some remnants of the experimental listening era:

Jefferson Starship - Blows Against the Empire

Emerson, Lake and Palmer - Brain Salad Surgery

Michael Hedges - Aerial Boundaries

Pink Floyd - Dark Side of the Moon
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(1) KONG radio in Visalia, California is now defunct.