MOAM were a sight and sound to behold. They definitely knew how to put on a show. Being from BAMA they toured locally alot, which gave us several hundred chances to see them. Every gig was a great one, even when the light/video/sample program malfunctioned. Those guys were champs for loading that crap up and down stage all those gigs.
My favorite merch was the space dust (colored lint, packaged in a little bag) for .50 cents. Too funny.

017

Fender Bass, Small Firearms

I've got a lunchbox and thermos.

TFJ
It was because of them (and The Bomoras) , that I went back and found the original versions of the songs they were playing - Ventures Batman album, Original Surfaris, Avengers VI, etc.

Ya, me too on this.

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zak
...and the living room would look like a liquor store had exploded all over it.

Hahaha, two nights ago I witnessed a tap beer barrel explode and completely drowning the bartender in beer. She took it really well but some of the guests looked quite shocked for a while.

T H E ✠ S U R F I T E S

I LOVE MOAM!

I even like their post-Star Crunch stuff a bunch. Ambient intro-noise rock, but they actually do a great job at playing that stuff too. I'm with Brian though, I think they really hit their sound on the Experiment Zero album. I still listen to that album frequently.

Science friction burns my fingers.

What is the effect that causes the echo at around 0:58 in the youtube video of Inside the Atom? I've always wondered since hearing this song on CD.

One of my favorite bands and in my early days of collecting surf music they had the advantage of being available at Tower Records. That's how I discovered them, just stumbled across the CD's in a Tower Records. They were so prolific that whenever I went back there would be something new there.

This thread got me to dig out my copy of Destroy All Astromen.
Man, that album just kills!

Ryan
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JakeDobner
Here is a band that doesn't get talked about very much here. However, I would wager a large percentage in a certain age range got us got our start from Man or Astro-Man?

I got my start from Surf Beat '80, but I definitely got my re-start from Man or Astro-Man? I was lucky enough to see them for the first time in 1992, before they had any releases out, before the Pulp Fiction wave. At that time I didn't think I would ever see a live surf band, let alone playing a tiny nightclub in Athens, GA. Still less did I imagine that MoA? would soon fill the 40 Watt Club with 200 kids dancing to their cover of "Squad Car". I think they opened a lot of clubs to surf bands by bringing out the crowds.

To further certify my MoA? geekdom I will mention that I have a copy of their first 7" (Possession by Remote Control) signed by all four band members.

What do you think of their early albums compared to their later albums, how exciting were they live, were they blasphemous to surf? And of course are they a surf band.

Given my entry point, I love the early singles best of all. Of the albums, I naturally love the singles compilations: Destroy All Astromen?, Project Infinity, Intravenous TV Continuum, What Remains Inside a Black Hole?. I also dig the EPs 1000X and Your Weight on the Moon.

Contrary to what some have suggested about a quantity/quality trade-off, I think their stuff was the most exciting when they were putting out the highest quantity.

The live shows, as others have said, were an amazing experience. "Twice the effort for half the result" was their motto. In the earliest shows -- weekend gigs around the southeast while they were students at Auburn --they had a dozen TVs strewn around the stage showing various old sci-fi B-movies. Later they added projections onto a screen behind them. When they began touring full-time and nationwide, they concocted a new stage show for each tour. In one, they constructed a decontamination "clean room" of clear plastic on a frame that enclosed the entire stage, came out in Tyvek CDC-type coveralls, and proceeded to destroy the room as they played. For the EEVIAC tour they hid their amps in giant mock computer towers, complete with spinning tape reels. Then of course there were the "clone" tours where they sent out entire bands of MoA? imposters!

They were obviously not a pure surf band, but a retro-futuristic sci-fi-punk-surf band. Which was a great thing.

Starcrunch's tone. Simply awesome. I can safely make the assumption that there is no tank in the mix. Fender combo amps and mosrites and gretschs are my guess.

Yep. In early shows he switched between a Gretsch Tennesseean and some kind of Fender or Mosrite. Later a Fender Jazzmaster.

Several folks in this thread have commented on their covers of old surf tunes. They actually recorded more covers than they released, because they didn't want to be known as a cover band. Their arrangements were often genius, e.g. Hot Line, Live Wire, Wayward Meteor .

Last edited: Jul 20, 2008 14:26:29

Brian
Project Infinity was a singles collection?

Yep. Here's the track listing and the 7" sourcing:

Man or Astroman?
Project Infinity LP/CD

1. Escape Velocity = D
   
2. Sferic Waves = C
   
3. ----------(classified) = E
   
4. Transmissions From Venus = A
   
5. Max Q = D
   
6. Inside The Atom = C
   
7. Phillip K. Dick in the pet section of Wal-Mart = A
   
8. Put Your Finger In The Socket = C
   
9. Complex 34 = F
   
10. The Man From U.N.C.L.E. = A
    
11. Tomorrow Plus X = D
    
12. Manta Ray = F
    
13. Point Blank = E
    
14. Special Agent Conrad Uno = E
    
15. Alpha Surfari = F
    
16. Mach One = B
    

A = Astro Launch 7”
B = Brains of the Cosmos 7”
C = Inside the Head of Mr. Atom 7”
D = World Out of Mind 7”
E = Return to Chaos 7”
F = In Orbit 7”

Brian
Cool thanks. For some reason I thought it was a stand-alone album as the songs seemed to actually hang together.

Good sequencing, and all the singles were recorded within about twelve months. But note that tracks 2, 6, and 8 were recorded by the famous Steve Albini in Chicago, while the others were recorded by Jim Marrer at Zero Return Studios in Alabama.