"The Moog Cookbook and Imperial Drag: A Collective Comical Space Odyssey with Roger Manning"
Keyboard Magazine, July 1996
by Kyle Swenson
The Moog Cookbook is a pleasant punch in the stomach; how many people would dare start a Soundgarden cover with a programmed bossa nova beat? Many of us remember Roger Manning from Jellyfish, with his acrylic-painted Wurlitzer and bell-bottoms most likely sewn from super-retro living room curtains. Since the breakup of the band, Manning has been working on several different projects. (For the current whereabouts of the Jellyfish members, check out the Web site: http://compu.uark.edu/~cbray/jelly/.) Along with guitarist Eric Dover (who toured with Jellyfish for the Spilt Milk tour), bassist Joseph Karnes, and drummer Eric Skodis, Manning formed Imperial Drag, which is somewhat of a departure from the Beatlesque arrangements and Beach Boysian harmonies of Jellyfish. After hearing a comparison of Imperial Drag's "Boy Or Girl" to T. Rex, Manning admitted to owning a vast collection of T. Rex video footage. (He doesn't yet have a copy of the '70s British television show, Mark, which features the band playing while skateboarders roll up and down quarter pipe ramps in the background.)
The Moog Cookbook, a side project from Imperial Drag, may instigate arguments due to the pronunciation of "Moog."
"To this day, you walk into a room full of people and you pronounce it correctly," says Manning, "and no one knows what you're talking about. Not only that, but they think you're wrong, or that you're highfalutin, that you have an arrogance about it; you don't pronounce it the way they do. My partner Brian and I got totally tired of this, so we resorted to calling the band 'Moo-g Cookbook,' 'cause we figured, that's how everybody's gonna pronounce it anyway, and it just sounds better."
So what's the truth behind the confusion? According to Bob Moog, his name was originally pronounced "moo-g." But his former wife Shirleigh taught the first grade, and when she told her students to call her Mrs. Moog, the kids had way too much fun making cow noises. At her request, the pronunciation was changed to "moe-g." Today, Bob diplomatically says, "Either is correct."
The Moog Cookbook was inspired by pure '60s cheesiness. The idea of taking ten testosterone-filled MTV frat-rock songs and covering them using only vintage synths was inspired partly by Shirleigh Moog's cookbook, Moog's Musical Eatery, which featured recipes by the likes of Keith Emerson and John Cage. Going along with the theme, The Moog Cookbook, is a compilation of rock anthems stirred in with brown sugar oscillations, chocolate chip pitch wheels, and sweet Moog syrup. It's such a stick-sweet mockery of the original music that upon hearing the first three tracks, I felt tears well up (after unclenching my stomach muscles from laughing). Soundgarden's "Black Hole Sun" is like a muppet game show theme converted into elevator music. Weezer's "Buddy Holly" starts off after a brooding alien funeral intro and suddenly kicks into a crazy space polka. Green Day's "Basket Case" is reminiscent of the theme song for the TV sitcom Bosom Buddies.
To create these sounds, Manning and Brian Kehew (the Moog Cookbook) used a lot of vintage gear. For some of the drum sounds, they tapped into an Electro-Hammonix drum sequencer, Roland CompuRhythm, Moog Liberation, Yamaha RX11, and Conn Organ Box. In the realm of synths, "We used everything from the ultra-versatile antiquated stuff like ARP 2600 to really cheesy disgusting '80s stuff like Roland GR-707 guitar synthesizer." The Korg 9X11 guitar synthesizer and Hohner Clavinet also played a part of the production, not to mention the many Moog models such as the Polymoog, Opus 3, and Micromoog.
Explaining the fascination with spaceship qualities traceable in both projects, Manning says, "In Jellyfish, I didn't have a whole bunch of tools to make space sounds with, and I don't know if Jellyfish would have allowed that to happen. There's a definite tounge-in-cheek to both Imperial Drag and the Moog Cookbook that lends itself to that. I think we just kind of exploited it more. Obviously the Moog Cookbook is kind of a completely humoristic side of myself, and Imperial Drag floats a little more to the right."
More than sounding spacey, Imperial Drag tells the sad story of NASA history. In the press release, Manning claims that "America's space program is a 25-year-old washed up celebrity." But unlike the Moog Cookbook, Imperial Drag steers clear of the spacey bloops and bleeps; several tracks would have fit right in on the soundtrack for Dazed and Confused, the '90s retrospect of '70s suburban high school pot-smoker kids.
So why did these guys choose to cover these particular Seattle grunge rock tunes?
"The main reason we chose most of them was because they had some kind of melodic content. There's a lot of music out right now that's just kind of blues riffing; there's not a whole lot of obvious melody. In the '60s, tons of synthesizer records covered Beatles songs, and the reason is obvious, because Beatles melodies are so simple and catchy that it's very easy to mutate them and have fun with them. We tried to do that in the '90s and it was a little harder. We were like, 'Well, wait a minute. You can't cover 'Loser' by Beck, because it's mostly rap.'"
Discussing the recent revival o vintage synthesizer sounds, Manning goes into a tirade about the cycles and recycling of music. As one style of music burns out of vogue, another comes back posing as something new and untried.
"Well, nothing's changed. Elastica is Romeo Void. I'm sorry, it's the same band. All that's happening is that certain new wave sounds are having a resurgence. It's just cycles. All the bands said, 'Oh, we'll never use keyboards in the first place because of all the bad stigmas.' You couldn't use Mellotrons or Minimoogs, 'cause then you were a progressive rock band and that was bad. You couldn't use sequenced keyboards because new wave was bad. And then you couldn't use synthesized drums 'cause of disco, blah blah blah. You couldn't use wah-wah pedal and then it finally took Slash to bring the wah-wah pedal back. He was the first guy that did that, brought it to the forefront, and that was in '88, which meant it took ten years to finally get over the gross wah-wah pedal.
"Everything goes in cycles. I mean, I'm hearing some synthesizer sounds on serious albums now that you would have been crucified for using four years ago, because it would have been way too close to Human league. But now, suddenly Gary Numan and Kraftwerk are cool again, so we gotta pay homage to them on our records, so you hear hat stuff creeping up. But I'm not butter at keyboards or Beck. The only reason I might be bitter is that it makes it that much harder to find old gear, 'cause everybody wants it, 'cause it's a trend all of a sudden."
Of course, Manning doesn't exclude himself from the recycling loop. He included lots of synthesizer sounds in Imperial Drag's debut album and doesn't deny influences of early new wave and progressive rock.
"We get pretty risky and so some really gross things, but I think the public's ready for it."
Well, the public had better be ready for some stomach pains; the Moog Cookbook and Imperial Drag's "gross things" are catalysts for a laugh riot.
