Tom Tom Club – Genius of Love

Featured in this March 19, 2020 Facebook post.

😉

one of my favorite devices from the early eighties is this Electro Harmonix Echoflanger. this is the original one I used on so many records from 1981 onward. it’s missing the all-important 4-way selector knob so it can’t be made active, but I have another in much better condition I bought from mike at Analog Man years ago which works perfectly.

you can see the “dot settings” I put on it, one of which would be the “elephant sound” for “elephant talk”, one of which would be the “rhino sound” for “lone rhino”, and another of which would be the guitar sound for “genius of love”.

I discovered by accident the one thing I love most about it. the missing 4-way knob was faulty and could be made to “stick” between settings. sticking it between “chorus” and “flanger” was the way I made the sound for “genius of love.”

my very favorite sound I made with it started by sticking it between those settings, but then came the fun. if you carefully adjusted the “feedback” it would start to oscillate. then you could fiddle with the “tune”, “width”, and “depth” knobs to create the sound of giant metallic insects flying across the stereo image.

in the 80’s I had it mounted on my mic stand so I could get that sound to “stick” and then manipulate the knobs to create my crazy oscillation effects. one of the music magazines in japan had a cartoon of me doing just that with me looking like Frankenstein!

I used that sound many times on record (I still do). to hear it, listen to the ending of “Gypsy Zurna” on “Desire Caught By The Tail”.

(don’t have that record? it’s available for download of bandcamp.)

I’m just sayin’.