Perhaps the cheesiest episode ever of the old 70s-vintage Buck Rogers TV show — which is saying a lot, considering how that entire series was one long block of yummy, yummy fromage — was “Space Rockers,” wherein evil Jerry Orbach wants to control the minds of the galaxy’s youth via subliminal signals embedded in truly awful music. Actually, it probably wasn’t such a bad idea for a story, at least not back then, when people still believed there were backmasked Satanic messages underlying “Stairway to Heaven.” The way it was executed, however… oy. I thought it was embarrassing even when I was a kid and Buck was don’t-miss-viewing.
Part of what made it so dippy was the appearance of the “rock” band Orbach was secretly using for his nefarious scheme. Leaving aside their cringe-inducing costumes — which consisted of body stockings and rope lights — their “playing” looked really, well, goofy. The series was set in the 25th Century, so everything had to be electronic and futuristic-looking, right? That meant that the “guitar” had no strings and Bonzo played his “drum kit” by tapping plastic rods with a pencil. But the most ridiculous item was the synthesizer/keyboard doohickey: it was just a table with colored circles on it, which was the musician “played” by passing his hands (or, in an over-the-top eruption of Velveeta, his leg) over them. Have a look at the video, if you dare.
Silly, right? Well, maybe not. Via Scalzi comes word of a new electronic musical instrument called the ReacTable, and I’ll be damned if it isn’t highly reminiscent of that old Buck Rogers prop:
Wired.com has an article about this new instrument here.
You know, if something from Buck Rogers had to developed out here in the real world, I think I’d have chosen those spandex jumpsuits that Erin Gray always wore. Maybe there’s still hope for those…
