Thursday, September 9, 2010

An Early (And Highly Automated) Clue to the New Direction

From 1966, please enjoy Manfred Mann -- one of the two notable 60s rock stars who shares a birthday with yours truly -- and the rest of the gang with the original (and I think on balance inferior) version of "Machines," the prescient Doc Pomus/Mort Shuman song done two years later (as perhaps the first genuine synth-pop record) by Lothar and the Hand People.




A lot of the sort-of space age effects on this are similar to those on the Lothar version, but it sounds to me like they were done with conventional electronic keyboards of the day, rather than the primitive Moogs the Hand People used.

In any case, a coveted PowerPop No-Prize will be awarded the first reader who gleans the clip's relevance to the theme of tomorrow's Listomania.