Echoes Podcast: David Borden & Mother Mallard

Interview Podcast – Echoes

The Continuing Story 0f David Borden-An Electronic Pioneer: The Echoes Interview

Mother Mallard’s Portable Masterpiece Co. circa 1975

In the Echoes Podcast, a pioneer of electronic music: David Borden, the founding member of Mother Mallard’s Portable Masterpiece Company. In 1969, he created the group Mother Mallard’s Portable Masterpiece Company. They were one of the first performing synthesizer bands, managing multiple modular Moogs and Mini-Moog synthesizers. Borden was actually a test pilot for Moog.

David Borden:
Well, in my first few days there I couldn’t get a sound and his head engineer came down and turned on the amplifier. That’s how bad I was. So without the amplifier, of course, none of this stuff, you can’t hear it. So the next week I was patching patch cords and I ruined one of his modules. . . . . And so Bob came down. He was there for about five seconds, looked at it and . . . .And then I thought to myself, well, that’s it for me. I’m out of here. And he came over and put his arm around me and said, can I come at night? . . . So he took me upstairs, had a key made to the whole place and said, just come here at night and after you’re done working, just leave it set up. It’s okay. Everything’s fine and don’t worry about a thing. And so I said, okay. . . So after six months, I was very sophisticated. I knew all the parts of the synthesizer. I was hooking up very tricky things and strange things and having a great time. And he said, I just wanted to tell you, we redesigned all the modules so that no matter how you set it up, you can’t screw it up. So I was surprised. That was a big turning point because I realized I had taken part in the research and development of what became the standard Moog synthesizer.

Mother Mallard released their eponymous debut in 1973, a work that stands alongside the best of both Tangerine Dream and Steve Reich. A new album, Make Way for Mother Mallard, 50 Years of Music has just come out, that contains never-before released archival works of live and studio performances, from the very beginning to his last concert. Hear this epic story on Echoes.