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Roadside News: April 8, 2009

April 8, 2009

• Moogseum – Prog Rock Mecca?: The daughter of Bob Moog, who invented the Moog synthesizer, wants to build a memorial “Moogseum” in the late inventor’s home town of Asheville, North Carolina. She sees the 6000-square-foot attraction, according to the Asheville Citizen-Times, as “an interactive sonic ‘exploratorium’ at the intersection of science and music,” and imagines that it would have “a bay of theremins you can play.”

We’re hoping it will also envelop visitors in layers of frappy, honking Moog tones the likes of which haven’t been heard since ELP pooted out the finale of  “Lucky Man.” There’s an elaborate proposed facility, but the Bob Moog Foundation needs to raise funds and is reportedly still three to five years from construction. There’s talk of opening a small “beta” Moog museum this summer in an Asheville basement.

• It’s a Bloody Replica: Visitors have less than a week left to see Abraham Lincoln’s blood-stained assassination overcoat at the newly-reopened Ford’s Theatre in Washington, DC. According to the Washington Post, the Theatre had originally planned to display the overcoat in the lobby inside a cylindrical glass “top-of-the-line security display case” that could be seen from the sidewalk 24 hours a day. But textile conservators have talked the Theatre out of it, and after April 15 the overcoat will be replaced by a replica overcoat.

• Most Magnificent Elvis: Moses Walter Fisher Jr., who recently persuaded Nashville, Tennessee, to name one of its streets after bus-sitter Rosa Parks, now wants the city to erect “the most magnificent” sculpture of Elvis Presley “anywhere in the United States.” Elvis is usually associated with Memphis or Las Vegas, but Fisher told the city council that Elvis recorded in Nashville, and Nashville calls itself “Music City, U.S.A.,” so the city should erect a tribute to “the greatest singer and entertainer of our time.” It’s difficult to quarrel with this logic, but Nashville is expected to do just that and decline the offer.

• Stonehenge-By-The-Sea: The world’s first beachfront Stonehenge may be built later this year, north of Boston in Swampscott, Massachusetts.  The Salem News reports that the henge “will be nestled into the dunes” at Beach Bluff Park, and that its seven-foot-tall monoliths will “get people to look up and understand the relationship of the beach to the sun.”

Do we need a Stonehenge to do that?

Sections: Coming Soon, Roadside News 1 Comment »

One Response to “Roadside News: April 8, 2009”

1. Jackie Solomon Says:
   April 8th, 2009 at 9:06 pm

   We don’t need or want another Elvis statue. Let him rest in peace. Stonehenge sounds great. I would like to know the relationship of the beach to the sun.

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