Triumvirat,ELP,Synergy and Symphonic Slam

[Peter Snow]

Michael,

How was Brian Auger on that night?  I remember him from years back in England playing with
the Brian Auger Trinity fronted by Julie Driscoll - Wheels on Fire was their big hit.  You
can still hear a reasonable rendition of that one if you catch any episode of "Absolutely
Fabulous" (perhaps on Public TV?).  BTW a few years ago my stepbrother used to manage BA
and The Oblivion Express - don't know if he still does. However, he did send me all their
CD's - nice guy!

Cheers,

Peter

WeAreAs1 at aol.com wrote:
> 
> In a message dated 9/8/00 10:07:52 AM Pacific Daylight Time,
> Synthmanic at aol.com writes:
> 
> << Anybody remember or hear of the group Symphonic Slam? The guitar player
> (Timo
>  Laine I believe) used a 360 Systems guitar synth on their self titled album.
>  >>
> 
> I saw them perform once at the Starwood in Hollywood, California.  I think it
> was around 1975 or 1976.  The Starwood, along with the Whiskey a Go Go and
> Gazzari's, was one of LA's few successful rock nightclubs of the day (before
> the New Wave and Punk Rock movement broke the club scene wide open in the
> late '70's).  They were the opening act for Brian Auger's Oblivion Express
> that night.  They (Slam) were very, very loud and fairly boring, musically
> speaking.  They were not really what I would have called "progressive rock" -
> they were more like hard rock or heavy metal, with a lot of sawtooth wave
> power chords and overly dramatic filter sweeps instead of distorted guitar
> riffs.
> 
> However, that polyphonic 360/Oberheim guitar synth did sound (and look)
> pretty impressive.  This was before Roland had brought out the GR-300, so no
> one had ever even heard or seen anything quite like it.  He had the whole
> setup mounted in a huge rack on wheels.  You could see the custom-made
> polyphonic 360 Systems controller unit and six Oberheim SEM modules in the
> rack.  There was also a big pedal board that had all kinds of switches and
> pedals for controlling the synth.  There also may have been one of those
> Sequential Circuits Model 700 programmer units connected to it, but can't
> remember for sure.
> 
> I do remember Mr. Laine was wearing tight black leather pants that night, and
> thinking that chubby guys probably shouldn't wear tight leather pants.
> 
> I think Timo Laine lived in Fullerton, California - at least he did about
> fifteen years ago.  I think I remember him trying to sell that rig in the
> Recycler (back when it was just a local weekly ad paper).  I think his asking
> price was about $5000, which was quite a bit less than he had invested into
> it.  However, at the time, people were having difficulty getting rid of their
> Oberheim Four Voices for much more than two hundred dollars, so I doubt that
> Timo got much response on his offering.  Maybe he still has it!
> 
> Michael Bacich