Into the Music Library appeared a peculiar album one day. Upon its cover were spacemen, two, with keyboards. Displayed in a font that looked as futuristic as the two spacemen didn't were the words, "The Moog Cookbook." Curiosity reared its head and listening instigated soon thereafter. Our lives were more or less the same after that moment.
I've always gotten a kick out of musicians revamping a song in a style or format far from the conceived version. Think Pat Boone in his metal mood. Hence, the Moog Cookbook was right up my alley.
From what we were able to glean from the liner notes and the accompanying press notes in the package (yes, we actually received the full album in the mail; we couldn't get the popular stuff that all the kids loved but we got these guys...), the "band" of Meco Eno and Uli Nomi performed a number of popular 90s alternative tracks exclusively on 70s era Moog analog synthesizers. In reality, it was Brian Kehew and Roger Manning Jr. (think Jellyfish and Imperial Drag, respectively) paying tribute to the beloved instrument of yesteryear.
Now while we did play some pretty outrageous stuff from time to time (Tribal Life comes to mind), there wasn't any way that anything on this disc would get played on the air. Why? It didn't fit. That would have been the usual way of thinking of some of the conservative student directors. I mean, it was a nice novelty to share with others in the office, but it didn't need to be played on the air.
You know we did, though. There were, thankfully, people who liked to keep things light and throw the listening audience a curveball once in a while. John Fletcher probably played this on the Wednesday night music show, and I remember our station manager, Martin Manning, was known to borrow it from the station office to “study” the tracks in his office. Tracks like a trippy Smells Like Teen Spirit, Black Hole Sun done up with a pseudo-salsa beat, and Green Day’s Basket Case done up in such a sunny, smarmy 70s pastiche that you almost forget the semi-serious rant of the lyrics. There was also, most memorable for us, a version of R.E.M.'s The One I Love performed in a smarmy lounge style. After its brief usage during a few rock shifts it became a popular item in the production rooms, where we'd milk the tracks for use as bed music, for use in liners and station promos, and essentially for any use that would that would get the music on the air in some veiled form or fashion. And we did, too, but not as often as the group probably wished.
We actually received a lot of albums like this that never received any full time exposure, but rather were kept in the music library in a plastic bin marked "Production Music." If you needed something that sounded both strangely familiar and strangely foreign, chances are that production music (sometimes called “closet music” because it was only used in those closet-sized production rooms) would fit the bill. And this album fit it pretty well.
While their first album focused on 90s alternative hits, Moog Cookbook returned to surprise most everyone two years later with a sophomore album that googily moogilied a handful of well-known classic rock songs. Ten years on, I wonder if they’re up for a third?
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The One I Love
(Bill Berry/Peter Buck/Mike Mills/Michael Stipe)
The Moog Cookbook
From the album The Moog Cookbook
1995
This one goes out to the one I love
This one goes out to the one I've left behind
A simple prop to occupy my time
This one goes out to the one I love
Fire (she's comin down on her own, now)
This one goes out to the one I love
This one goes out to the one Ive left behind
Another prop has occupied my time
This one goes out to the one I love
