I really like Mike Adams. He’s the CEO of Moog Music, the guy who showed Bob Moog he was sitting on a goldmine, but he just didn’t know how to leverage/capitalize it all. It is like Adams possesses this shrewd business sense that always outsmarts me. For instance, I’m not sure that his request for city and county funding for Moogfest wasn’t about the want of subsidy so much as free publicity. Now, I’m not so sure Moogfest’s inviting, disinviting, and surprise appearance of Governor Pat McCrory wasn’t another ingeniously-calculated tactic to use politically-active egos to garner more publicity. Adams is now taking responsibility, which, amazingly, gets more press; which I’m happy to provide in my own demented way.
Mike Adams, CEO of Moog Music, said the goal of the [inviting and disinviting] panel was to “get people thinking about economic development” in ways that are outside of the box. “It doesn’t have to be just the traditional economic development approach… We’re transforming from an industrial age to an information age.”
Now, that could just be a bunch of random mumbo-jumbo, as pretentious as a lot of the noise-makers masquerading as musicians at Moogfest. It could also be interpreted to mean something like, emulating the vernacular of Mooger C FreddIE, “We can restart the economy with genius, creativity, technology, and art [stuff]. Know’m sayin’?”
While I’m on the subject, I felt a strange euphoria yesterday at the Ableton workshops. I was curious, excited, standing up to get a better view, thinking in terms of questions again. Then, I flashed back to the real world and thought how much nicer it was learning about concrete, constructive things. The presenters shared some geek philosophy, too, about how life should be creative and if you get bogged down in the medium it’s time to move on and do something fun, and limitations are invitations to find workarounds.
I leave it to you to decide, as always, if I am really mesmerized by all the Moog hype, or if I am kissing up to Adams and his hipster minions to make sure I get a press pass again next year.
