Broadcast on BBC Four this past October, Synth Britannia gives a decent, straightforward overview of the emergence of synthesizers in popular British music in the late 70s/early 80s. Time has been rather kind to most of the musicians interviewed, including Phil Oakey, John Foxx, Gary Numan, Andrew McCluskey, Martin Gore, Vince Clarke, etc, and most seem like pretty ok guys who very much believed in the direction they were taking music. Nobody interviewed, however, seemed to be able to pronounce “Moog” correctly … but I digress.

Worth a watch if you’ve ever gotten all dreamy eyed while thinking about the Mute Records catalog, or, alternately, if you’re into peeking at sexy close ups of Fairlight CMIs and B roll of London streets.

Synth Britannia - 90 minutes:
Part 1 / Part 2 / Part 3 / Part 4 / Part 5 / Part 6 / Part 7 / Part 8 / Part 9

In the alternate future-past of 2076 via 1976, robot space stewardesses will play keytar versions of this while serving rainbow colored foaming cocktails on intergalactic flights to tropical cyberpunk star systems.

1200 bones will land you a MK III version of one of these beasts courtesy of some dude in Fredricksburg.

A dude in Lorton is asking a pretty nice chunk of change ($1375.00!) for his somewhat rare Roland G-707 midi guitar and GR-700 synth module. Supposedly it comes with the original 24 pin connecting cable as well, which is perhaps rarer than the guitar and synth themselves.

Watch it in action on the BBC program Rock School (Well, technically it’s a Roland midi pickup and the G-77 bass, but close enough). They give a pretty nice overview of guitar synths, and, towards the end of the clip, Midge Ure (of Visage, Ultravox, etc.) comes on to talk a bit about their limitations.