ABSTRACT
New York born Thau has had a long career in the popmusic industry, from promoting teen pop and bubblegum in the 1960s to punk and downtown rock in the 1970s. Thau attended NYU and then got hired in the advertisement department of Billboard, the music industry journal. On the side, he began managing a down-at-the-heels teen singer, Tony Orlando, although he didn’t achieve much success for the future singing star. Through friend Neil Bogart, Thau got a job as a PR man at the small Cameo/Parkway label in 1965, and then two years later became head of promotion for Buddah, where he successfully oversaw the careers of frothy pop acts like the 1910 Fruitgum Co. and disco stars Ohio Express. In 1970 he partnered with Lewis Merenstein to form Inherit Productions; the duo produced Van Morrison’s influential Astral Weeks and Moondance albums, as well as recordings by Mike Bloomfield and John Cale. In 1972 he moved to Paramount Records to head their A&R department, but soon was independently managing a new group, the New York Dolls. Thau got them a record deal with Mercury in 1972, but their first albums failed to sell. However, the Dolls gave him an entree to the downtown/punk scene in New York, and Thau ended up producing demos by the Ramones in 1975. A year later, he formed a new production company, this time with Richard Gottehrer, called Instant Records, producing the first single by Blondie. In 1976 he formed his own label, Red Star, producing the first album by Alan Vega’s avant-garde Suicide band. Although he has kept the Red Star label name alive through various reissues on LP and CD, Thau has been less active as a producer over the past 25 years. He continues to be an industry gadfly, writing for the Tres Producers website. [website: https://tres_producers.blogspot.com/.]
Patented in 1928 by Leo Theremin, and commercially licensed by RCA that same year, the theremin uses an electronic oscillator as a stable reference tone of a very high frequency. It has another electronic oscillator, initially in tune with the reference, which has a variable frequency controlled by the proximity of the hand to a capacitive sensing element, usually an antenna of some sort. The difference between the two frequencies is a pitch in the audible range which is detected and amplified. Move your hand near and away from the sensing element and get musical pitches. The theremin is perhaps the first electronic musical instrument, and is unique in that it is the first musical instrument of any kind that can be played without being touched. It has been used for decades in movie and television soundtracks and rock bands, and has also been played as a serious solo instrument.
