BWAHAHAHAHAHA!!

Oh boy, that kills me...

The very first notes you hear on both Tubeway Army albums are minimoog. The cover of Tubeway's Touring Principle video is a shot of Gary playing a minimoog. The synth that was lying around the studio that first got him into synths at all was a minimoog. Go get Telekon and read the sleeve notes - nearly every song has mini on it. The man ate, breathed and shat minimoogs, and probably screwed them as well.

And I love both Tubeway Army and the minimoog for exactly that reason. The best sounds ever.

KB :Conspicuous in its presence is your Minimoog. Being one of the first artists to use it, what do you think of the significance of that instrument, and why do you think it won’t leave you ?

RW: Because there is nothing else that can do what it does ! I was talking to Bob Moog in Frankfurt just a few month ago, and I was saying there is nothing else. People have sampled them, and there are some good virtual synths floating around. But you can realy tell the difference. It’s like with organs: there are great Hammond sounds, but if you put the real thing up there, with a Leslie, then you can realy hear that difference. The Minimoog sticks out like a sore thumb. It’s just the most wonderful machine. I’ve got two, and I’m desperatly trying to find another two. I had nine and seven where stolen a few years back, wich was tragic. There are load of them about, but many are in terrible condition. Finding a nice one is difficult. There are quite a few out there in America, but the ones that everybody wants, strangely enough are English ones, because for whatever reason, the ones that work at 220-240 volts are much more stable than those that work at 110.

KB: What advice would you give to young musicians ?

RW: keyboard players in particular ? If you are looking to be individualistic, then just an individualistic style is not enough. You have got to create your own sounds, find sounds that are unique to you. I get around 30 or 40 CDs a month. I don’t know why (laughs). With 99% of them, I listen and think, “Oh yeah I know that setting, I know that patch, I know that one, I know that one”. What they don’t realize is when they buy an instrument, go into a preset and think, “Oh, that’s a great sound”, there are 10,000 others who are also going, “That’s a great sound!”. […] I think technology has brought laziness to some players, to some extent. I think the young players should try to be as individualistic as possible. In the early days, with synths like Minimoogs, there were no presets. You took something out of the box and spent a week trying to get a sound out of it. And when you did, you nurtured it. With some of the first Moogs, the big modulars ones, you couldn’t tune them. What you did was trying to get it the best you could. And you’d say, “Ok, that’s what it is”. It was good fun.