Boogafoo Music

Artist: Doug Sharp
Title: Boogafoo Music
Catalogue Number: ijds00
Release Date: 14th March 2011

Track listing:

1. Snus Attack
2. Veluria Ponsonby’s Epiphany
3. Wasp Train
4. Gondwanaland
5. Opus #Glork, Move 2
6. My, My
7. Schveltronia Bimmsler Exudes
8. Zamthrusters Rampant
9. Peodopular Fip Fip (Boogafoo Preview Edition)

Get it on bandcamp or sonic squirrel

(Track 9 – Peodopular Fip Fip is taken from the forthcoming Doug Sharp album: 5 Dozen Bite-Sized Sonic Sculptures.)

Front Cover

Back Cover

Veluria Ponsonby’s Epiphany

Wherein two horrible dogs perform behavioral experiments on an innocent fellow.

Mommy, what’s a Boogafoo?

In 1974 while I attended St. Olaf’s Paracollege, my best friend Larry Heyl ran the Moog Studio. He taught me how to plug patch cords and fiddle knobs to wring squawks out of the Moog Modular Synthesizer. I was earning a hand-rolled degree in Creative Studies so I added torturing the Moog to my curriculum.

Moog Modular Synthesizer like the one in the St. Olaf Moog Studio

To me the Moog was a machine for making weird noises so I pushed it into uncharted territories of sonic strangeness. I didn’t emulate any musician but indulged in pure sonic experimentation. I taped a handful of tracks and called my album “Babie’s[sic] First Words” Twenty years later my daughter renamed it “Boogafoo Music”, which stuck.

Doug Sharp in ’74

I carried around this 2nd-gen tape for years before digitizing it, no charge for the tape hiss

We kept track of our Moog patchcord setups with this worksheet

St. Olaf Moog Studio Gear:

Moog modules:

• 1 x 901 oscillator bank with 3 oscillators
• 2 x 921 oscillators
• 1 x 905 reverb
• 1 x 903A noise generator
• 1 x 904 filter
• 3 x 902 voltage controlled amplifiers
• 3 x 911 envelope generators
• 1 x 951 keyboard

Locally made:

• 3 x 901 oscillator banks, 1 with 3, 1 with 4, and 1 with 5 oscillators
• 2 x 4:1 mixer
• 4 x 2:1 mixer

3 x stereo tape machines (Revox A77, Tandberg 6021X, Ampex 601)