text=Hands up how many of you remember Little Thinker cassette tapes? Boy, that's an obscure one. Email me if you do, I'd seriously like to get my hands on some of those, because while I didn't care much for drawing, the music on those things kicked ass. It was this playful, quirky, little poppy electronic music, and it was produced by these guys here. Like all things from the old-old-old days, this was not a genre, but part of a growing movement. Contrary to popular belief, Kraftwerk were not the only ones making upbeat electronic pop music. A whole wing of this stuff was being churned out for TV and movies and--yes--children's read-along audio cassettes in the 70s. Up until now, electronic music was dork music; adult, sophmoric, stuffy, unenlightening, and just not fun. It was dominated not by musicians and entertainers, but by math and electronics geeks out to showcase their latest feats as circuit board designers, which seems appropriate given the repulsively complex and clunky apparatuses they were using to make this music. But one song in 1972 changed all that, and this is good trivia to impress chicks with at parties: Hot Butter - Popcorn. It was the first ever electronic song that charted. And by charted, I mean, like...REAL record charts. Which means people actually purchased it. In stores. Because they liked it. And it CHARTED. That just blew the fledgling electronic music scene away. Finally, these Moog things were serving a purpose other than being gigantic paperweights that occasionally made noise. They were making shit that was LISTENABLE. How could anyone at the time have possibly seen that coming?
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