This year the recipients of the newly titled Moog Innovation Award are none other than New Wave pioneers DEVO! The award, handed out by Moog Music to artists who’s pioneering work exemplifies the innovative spirit of Bob Moog, her previously gone to Keith Emerson, Herb Deutsch, Gershon Kingsley, Jan Hammer and Bernie Worrell (under the title the Moog Award). DEVO will receive the accolade at this years MoogFest in the last weekend of October in Asheville, NC where they will be presented with a special synthesizer, of which more details are to come.
“MoogFest is about shunning limitations, opening your mind and rejoicing in what’s next. MoogFest is about celebrating the marriage of technology and art, fearlessly embracing the future while respecting the genre-definers of the past. That’s why we created the Moog Innovation Award, to celebrate artists that helped to catapult pop music into the future and commemorate those artists that boldly burst through established norms to pave the way forward. That’s the spirit of Bob Moog and that’s the essence of the Moog Innovation Award.
The first recipient of the Moog Innovation Award is DEVO and we feel that they are a perfect representation of innovative sound-sculpting and genre-defying electronic music. Like Bob Moog, DEVO enthusiastically charted their own course and thus dramatically affected pop culture because of it. Not to mention the fact that they used Moog instruments to create their inimitable sound. MoogFest and the Moog Innovation Award is the perfect way to pay homage to Bob Moog and his adopted hometown of Asheville, NC where he raised his kids, gave birth to some of his greatest inventions and where he re-established the company that bears his name and carries on his legacy, Moog Music.” – Emmy Parker, Moog Music
Congratulations to DEVO, well deserved!
You can check the goings on at MoogFest here and DEVO’s new album ‘Something For Everybody’ out now!
