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10/27/2003: "drum machines!"

Drum machines! I love 'em. I don't have the mad dough though so the only drum machine I've got is the fearsome PLAYSKOOL brand -- purchased at Dollar-A-Pound back in Cambridge for 70 cents! (it weighs 0.7 pounds.) Yeah it can only do 2 beats and one lame fill but it's got a line out (!!) and there's a crude tempo adjustment and pitch adjustment!! With a little bit of fiddling I can play 'Come As You Are' on it -- can you say that about your toy-store drum machine?

But oh, the beautiful drum machines of back in the day! Back when they looked like Atari 2600 consoles!



The Linn LM-1 'Drum Computer'! As used by the Human League, Art of Noise, Thompson Twins, Prince et al. Hey is that fake wood paneling on the sides? (cool!!) Each card for the Drum Computer had 32K of memory (32K!! i get emails longer than 32K now!)



And look it's the Obie DMX -- the "Blue Monday" drum machine! Also used, of course, on lots of hip-hop.

More machine gawking (the Roland 808! etc.) to come! Check out vintagesynth.org for your fix in the meantime. I'm going to get back to playing my Coleco-Vision.