Moog (2004)

Great Film overall

Admirable film.

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

I was captivated by Moog synthesizers at age 12, when "Switched On Bach" was released. I've read many things by and about Bob Moog over the years, and was looking forward to seeing this documentary. But sadly, it's a missed opportunity. First of all, the video quality looks like an 8mm home movie from the 1970s, rather than a 2004 production. Secondly, it's very amateurishly done. For instance, when you have Bernie Worrell, Rick Wakeman, and Moog together to talk about synths, do you think you could possibly pull them into a quiet room, instead of holding a 10-minute interview in a busy hallway with so much background noise that the voices are hardly audible? There are interesting bits here, including archive footage of the Moog assembly line and Gershon "Popcorn" Kingsley with his Moog Quartet. But there's a lot of BAD synth music too, and poor visuals. If you're a die-hard Moog fan like myself, you'll put up with it. If you're not, skip it.

This must rank among the worst documentaries ever made, and that's truly a shame. The subject could have been endlessly interesting, not because of the man himself, but because of the musical revolution he instigated. Sadly this doc largely leaves it up to Moog to tell the story, producing a diffuse, woefully inadequate film. The man is pleasant enough, and tells one or two amusing anecdotes, but he's terrible at explaining his inventions, and worse at contextualizing them. Interviews with the likes of Bernie Worrell and Money Mark are equally uninformative and uninteresting. Only Rick Wakeman was worth talking to. There's a lesson in here for doc makers-- you actually have to WRITE your film. You can't just slop together a bunch of interview footage, as is done here. (Oral history doesn't work unless the event revisited is familiar to all in most of its details.) This footage should have been placed into the hands of a good general-interest magazine writer and a decent film editor-- from this raw material they might have made a decent film. All in all, a really frustrating watch.

This is an unfortunately terrible documentary. It's boring and tedious, and does very little to tell me much about the instrument or its inventor. It seems like the director didn't really even bother to edit the film at all, presenting a collection of rambling, nonsensical "conversations" between Moog & various musicians, or semi-relevant ramblings with Moog by himself. It really is unfortunate, because he seems like an incredibly intriguing & intelligent person, but is presented in such an uninteresting way that seems to indicate that the director not only doesn't really care about him, but doesn't really care much about music in general. There are scenes where Moog is talking about the sounds the instrument can make, and the musician's options in terms of how they can manipulate the sounds, but the director doesn't bother to insert any "examples" during that scene, making it actually aggravating to watch. I found most of the various performances not really all that interesting to watch, either, as some of them barely showed the artist using the Moog (Stereolab) or focused more on other musicians in the performance (Money Mark's d.j.) I also really didn't learn much about Moog's life, or the real history & development of the instrument. It may have only been 70 minutes long, but i was barely able to sit through the whole thing. It really doesn't do the man justice in the least. If you want to see a great documentary about an inventor of an incredibly influential electronic instrument, watch THEREMIN. Not only is THEREMIN incredibly informative, but also rather touching. Truly a beautiful documentary.

The film was reasonably well filmed and reasonably edited and it's great that there is now a film out there about a synth pioneer.However my first thoughts on watching this film are: It repeats itself far too many times. It only needed to mention that Moog synths were first used for experimental music and adverts once. It only needed to show Bob Moog with his garden once! And there only needed to be one section on his philosophies on life and synthesisers.There were massive sections of the Moog story missing. What about the first fall of Moog Music in the early 80s and the Moog Liberation (the first guitar synth - only problem was it was too heavy to hold!) He only touched on his feelings about digital synthesisers. What about the 80s and the DX7 and Moog synths falling massively out of favour. What about the comeback in the 90s - initially selling his analogue circuit designs to other companies, who produced synths like the MIDI Moog and the SE ATC1. What about his FX pedals? Finally the soundtrack left much to be desired. All the live performances were badly recorded, the synths were far too loud compared to the backing. I know the synth was the instrument being demonstrated, but I found it uncomfortable to listen to. The content of the music was nearly all progressive rock musicians and various lesser known modern electro acts (bar stereo-lab and DJ spooky). He only mentioned Walter/Wendy Carlos in passing, he/she was the most important thing to happen to him and there was no interview or audio clip!! What about electropop, which was founded on the early affordable synths like the Moog Prodigy? These are just the first 2 genres that spring to mind that were missing - I could go on! So all in all - it's great that there is now a film about this fascinating guy. But...Hans Fjellestad should have got all the raw materials together before doing it. Get interviews with ALL the relevant people and use a soundtrack that is more diverse.