Robert Arthur Moog, better known as Bob, was an American engineer best known for his work with synthesizers and electronic music. Moog didn’t invent the synthesizer, but he did revolutionize it. Before Bob, synthesizers were huge, unwieldy machines that took up an entire room and cost far too much to make them commercially viable.
Robert Moog changed the landscape of music forever when he launched the first commercial synthesizer in the ‘60s. Since then, the Moog name has become synonymous with synthesis and iconic pieces of hardware like the Minimoog. Now, the Bob Moog Foundation has opened the Moogseum — a museum dedicated to Moog’s work and other important music devices — in Asheville, North Carolina.
Visiting Asheville, North Carolina, in December, I walked past a sandwich board that read, “Synth you’re here, come on in.” It was a pop-up store selling T-shirts, mugs, and other memorabilia commemorating one of the town’s most famous citizens, electronic music pioneer Bob Moog.
Robert Moog was a game-changing electronic music pioneer and the father of four children (and one step-daughter), including daughter Michelle Moog-Koussa, executive director of the Moogseum, a brand-new facility opening on what would have been Moog’s 85th birthday, Thursday (May 23), in Moog’s adopted hometown of Asheville, N.C.
Music facilitated and inspired by the late inventor Bob Moog can be heard all over the world, but Western North Carolina can rightly claim to be its historic base, as he lived out his last decades in the Asheville area.