Too dour to be cheeky but George Harrison certainly had some effrontery in releasing a whole album of his Moog dribblings (one side actually played by Moog-man-for-hire Bernie Krause
They all had a go
Byrds too - although they are too earnest to be filed under "cheeky monkey"
Hang on a minute, that came out at the very start of 1968. 2001, A Space Odyssey came out in April. Did the Byrds come up with the idea independently, or had they heard about the film being in production?
The lyrics
In 1996, we ventured to the moon
Onto the sea of crisis like children from the womb
We journeyed cross the great wall plain beneath the mountain range
And then we saw the pyramid, it looked so very strange
This beacon had a field of force that circled all around
And not a man could get inside, no way could be found
It was here for thousands of years before our life began
Waiting very patiently for evolving man
When the galaxy was young, they looked upon the Earth
And saw that its position was promising for birth
They searched for life, but finding none, they left a beacon bright
Its signal had not been disturbed in the eternal light
How wise they were to choose this place, they knew when we arrived
That our atomic energy we'd harnessed and survived
I look out on the Milky Way for people of the dawn
I know that they will come some day, but will our wait be long?
In 1996, we ventured to the moon
Onto the sea of crisis like children from the womb
We journeyed cross the great wall plain beneath the mountain range
And then we saw the pyramid, it looked so very strange
Ah, I see - the song and the film are based on the same Arthur C. Clarke story, "The Sentinel"....
I don't know why I never came up with this gruesome but conceptually accurate pun before:
sci-fidelia
Would have worked as well as synthedelia, describing the electronic / rock convergence of late Sixties
"Electronic rock" was a term quite widely bandied about at the time, I discovered only quite some time after doing that piece. All studio-as-instrument stuff was considered part of "electronic rock" though, since it involved manipulating magnetic tape - not just rock with the add-on of synth and Moogy stuff. So psychedelia and "electronic rock" were if not the same, then overlapping considerably.
From Lilian Roxon's Rock Encyclopedia, published 1969
This one song is quite a good example of synth-meets-psych - how disappointed I was on picking up the second-hand album to find not a single song in the same vein as "Old Man Willow", instead rather hearty and roots gut-bucket rock was the order of the day. (Didn't they go on to back up Lennon during his power-to-the-people, back-to-basics phase?). Well, the middle section of jazzy horns and vamping piano chords in "Old Man Willow" reveals these traits, if only it all stayed in the dreamy, watery trance state...
More from Roxon:
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Despite the title, not actually involving a Moog I don't think
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