I missed the sad news about the death of Gershon Kingsley in the midst of my Xmas Panic™. 97 though, he had good innings, but with him and Perrey gone, it’s a whole era that has passed.
Kingsley is most famous for Popcorn, the track that not-arguably-at-all kickstarted the whole synth boom – first it was seen as a novelty track, but joined by others it became a calling card for synth pop and electronica. The first electronic pop hit (that IS arguably given all the early Moog experimenters like the Beatles and Monkees!) but it inspired many others to play with synths, most notably Giorgio Moroder. According to Donna Summer he was inspired by it to create I Feel Love (although the truth is he actually was messing with electronics far earlier, creating Son of My Father and other early proto-electronic hits in rather Schlager pop form).
He had his First Moog Quartet – as embedded above which featured Ken Bichel and Stan Free, most famous as Hot Butter who put Kingsley’s Popcorn in the charts – but most famously he worked with Jean-Jacques Perrey on several albums, most notably ‘The In Sound From Way Out!’.
Here are the two of them perform live in a rare televised performance:
I’d love to know why they had an obsession with ducks though… They crop up in their respective works ALL the time!
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