ARP Odyssey

It is the late seventies, maybe even 1980, and I am completely bewitched by electronic music. 1981 will be the annus mirabilis, when the charts will be stormed by Depeche Mode ('New Life'), The Human League ('Love Action (I Believe In Love)'), Soft Cell ('Tainted Love'), OMD ('Joan Of Arc'), Kraftwerk ('The Model'), and plenty more.

But for now, my musical passion is off the cultural radar. What little information I can glean about these bands that I love is taken from their album sleeves. Occasionally, they will list the equipment that they have used for the recording, and as a result of this I am enthralled by Moogs, Polymoogs, and Minimoogs, by Roland and their "sequential circuits", by Oberheims and, amongst all these and more, the ARP Odyssey.

I'm particularly taken by this last although I don't know why. For some reason - and I can't find anything to back this up - I associate the Odyssey with a particularly wonderful solo from Gary Numan's farewell concerts, but I honestly think that was just some kind of wishful thinking, that - to me - only the (largely imagined) Odyssey could have generated such sounds.

Today, forty years later, I came face to face with one for the first time, in the studio of our tutor, Yoss, at college.

Post script, 10/04/21
I always wanted to be in a band, all through my teenage years. There were a couple of bands in school - I remember the Genesis loving Granny's New Intentionz - but there was nothing for me.

Then, in 1985, I went to university in Liverpool and met a guy called Ashley Jones whose band was looking for a singer. I've always recognised what brilliant musicians they were but it's literally only this evening that it's dawned on me how unlikely it was that they were *exactly* the band I would have wanted to be in.

Anyway, I performed live with them at The Lion's Den in Cardiff on January 3rd, 1986, and I was their singer until that Easter, when we recorded a bunch of songs.

The keyboard player was a chap called John Watton, who was a good pianist, a great synthesist, and a top-notch songwriter. (There is a riff of his that still goes around my head to this day.)

As you can imagine, John was and remains an authority on keyboards and synthesisers, and as we are - I'm delighted, really delighted to say - still good friends, he Tweeted me this evening to say:

"Dude! It’s a beautiful thing but that’s the 2017 Korg reissue of the MkI. Also Numan, Billy Currie etc mainly used the MkII & MkIII (both black). So a meeting in spirit, if not in body. I only know as the MkIII is on my wish list. Just need a ‘spare’ £3k. #synthnerd"

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Reading: 'Touching The Void' by Joe Simpson