Bob Moog's replacement: A crazy military research dude*

GearJunkies (why are they always first with the news?) report that the new head of product development at Moog Music is Cyril Lance, a musician and engineer. The story contains the intriguing line: "A great deal of Cyril’s technical experience has been involved in developing optical electronics used for upper-atmospheric experiments, work that has taken him around the globe including a one-year stint in Antarctica at the South Pole." A quick bit of Googling reveals that Cyril also worked on HAARP, the US military project which zaps the Ionosphere with radio waves, causing a small section of it to heat up. In the mid '90s, HAARP was very popular among conspiracy theorists. Even then Secretary of Defence William Cohen suggested the technology could be used to "alter the climate, set off earthquakes, volcanoes remotely through the use of electromagnetic waves". The real crazies put it like this: "HAARP Boils the Upper Atmosphere... Electromagnetic waves then bounce back onto earth and penetrate everything - living and dead."
Anyway, it's cool that Moog have found someone interesting and clever to invent new things now that Bob is gone, and I'm looking forward to a new range of Moog instruments which are able to penetrate everything - living and dead.
*NB: This headline almost entirely misrepresents this story, the work of Cyril Lance, and his role in Moog Music. I just thought it sounded better than "Moog names Cyril Lance to head product development"

Posted by Tom Whitwell.

Comments:

The cover of my first CD was all pictures of the HAARP project. It's very spooky. They've built another one (the first was a prototype of sorts), but under water. It can cause huge tidal waves, and uses a large reactor to power it.

# posted by

Anonymous : 3:16 pm

quote: GearJunkies (why are they always first with the news?)

Its a secret ;))

# posted by

Anonymous : 9:44 pm

I saw a Documentary on Tom Dowd, were he was involved in the Early A-Bomb tests before going on to record everyone from Clapton to Aretha.

"Tom Dowd was born on October 20, 1925 in New York City. At a young age he excelled in mathematics and physics, leading to his work from the ages of 16 to 20 on the Manhattan Project at Columbia University. In 1946, as a sergeant in the Army Corps of Engineers, he oversaw a team of radiation detection specialists at the atomic bomb tests in Bikini Atoll."

http://www.thelanguageofmusic.com/

FYI, awesome documentary... The footage of Les Paul and his original 8-track are worth the price of admission alone.

# posted by

Anonymous : 5:55 am

I saw Cyril Lance perform in 2003 at a small club in North Carolina. He was a whopping guitarist(!) and en easygoing guy. Clearly, his brain hemispheres must be well balanced, especially in light of this Moog development.

Here's his homepage, DogTalk Music:

http://www.dogtalkmusic.com

# posted by

Anonymous : 5:59 pm

..and while we're at it -- who can forget Jeff "Skunk" Baxter... Doobie Bros. and session-guitar ace...he was also a Defense Dep't consultant & sub-contractor. The "Skunk" refers (reefers?) to his love for the kindest, greenest, best California bud. BTW, gearheads, Jeff also played the guitar-synth solo on Donna Summers' "Bad Girls", which would be the highest charting example of guitar synth on a song.

# posted by

Anonymous : 5:17 pm

i have (had?) a tape of bluegrass he cut at the south pole with my brother in law. it looked really cold, but sounded nice. no one got hurt.

# posted by

Anonymous : 8:27 pm