There was a time when it was not such a painless matter to make live computer music-I can recall electronic artists early in this decade who, lacking laptops, brought a whole PC and monitor on stage: serious dedication. Nowadays anyone can plug in their cheapo laptop and inflict a gnarly aural stream of ones and zeros on the ears of humanoids (though you might ask Girltalk about the joys of having your Dell laptop flake while dozens of people expecting a show watch you troubleshoot it).

Of all the enigmatic characters, musical mutants, would-be acoustic sorcerers, singing street ranters, self-styled prophets of sonic revolutions, and just plain weirdos that have channeled their mental soundtracks to record, blind Moondog, the “Viking of 6th avenue” in New York City, is quite possibly the most interesting.

Guitar Wildman Link Wray has a respectable niche in the Seven Ages of Rock for introducing distortion back in the late 1950’s, and also for perhaps having the only instrumental banned from the airwaves for being too suggestive (“Rumble”, which does indeed sound like a tense face-off before hoodlum violence). Wray also played rockabilly, country, teen-beat dance ditties, and even proto-psych at various points. He re-emerged in the mid-90’s as a shades-wearing septuagenarian with a cat-who-ate-the-canary grin alternating cranked-up garage thunder with cryptic reverbed-out beat-rock.

"Sex" by the Necks

TITLE: MOOG: The Electric Eclectics of DICK HYMAN
GENRE: Electronic/Space Pop/Avant-Pop
For fans of: Stereolab, moog, electronic zolo, space-age bachelor pad music
Picks: #5-Four Duets in Odd Meter, #6 The Minotaur