Chris Monk wrote:I know you're talking tongue-in-cheek Andy but it's a good point. Pink Floyd aren't who I immediately think of when someone mentions syths but I suspect that they were many people's first introduction to them. Such a shame that not more people got into TD. It really winds me up when my mates tell me that they really like 'On the Run' on DSOM but won't give TD a listen.
I guess at least PF used synths on several albums (I like the results btw...R.I.P Rick)...
what really does wind me up at that people like Mike Oldfield get labelled as EM innovators, or Florian Fricke gets another for being an 'EM expert'. Now I think a lot of this comes from very lazy journalism, let's just drop a few nuggets and names in the paragraph and hopefully they won't notice (to get the word count up?
). The biggest bug bear of mine (and strangely enough Klaus Schulze) is his and TD's music being linked to Karlheinz Stockhausen, as in a big influence. This is utter, 100% solid gold nonsense. I think in all the 100's and 100's of articles I've read in the group, they've actually mentioned his name 2 or 3 times. But come an article, there it is again, 'TD were deciples of Stockhausen' etc etc. Some journalists should know better. Perhaps they can't be bothered to do the research, perhaps they're just trotting out their party line or (and I'm being fairer than they sometimes deserve) perhaps they think everyone is so thick that they wouldn't have heard of the real people who were key infuences on the Berlin musicians. Wiki is prime example of this...listing Johannes for bringing in a Steve Reich infuence...whilst Edgar is just hendrix and the like. That's simplifying things to a point where the names mean nothing, dropping styles and ideas in to neat little boxes where they can slotted and in the process be forgotten about.
Back on topic (forgive me I'm getting paid by the word here
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the biggest name who's infuence on history books compared with what they actually did, has to go to Keith Emerson (no insult to KE and ELP fans), but really, what did he do? ok...amazing performer, fantastic technique...but what did he personally do for the progress of EM?, bar popularising the Moog. KS and TD (and some others) were the true innovators, and yet how many times do you see their names in EM history books? very few.
it's the old problem of a big name doing something small and everyone notices (as Edgar noted: Bowie changed his socks and everyone talked about it), whilst the (for want of better word) 'lesser' stars hardly ever get the credit for what they did.