The Music of
JACK RUGAN
Arriving 6.19.26, an album 53 years in the making!
FROM JACK
Back in 1973, my Mom and Dad bought us Rugan kids this really cool full size keyboard organ called…The Optigan! It was developed by the Mattel corporation and it would utilize these full-size floppy optical discs to play chord loops on the left side and notes on the right. The 10 or 11 year old version of me was intrigued by the chord pattern loops, and on day way back then I was messing with some chord progressions and said to myself, “that’s a song there”. That was indeed the first real song I came up with and never forgot it!
Jump ahead to 2020. The original high fidelity master tapes were found by Optigan historian, Pea Hicks, who then formatted the loops to work with today’s technology. Of course I purchased the entire catalogue back then and I said to myself, “one of these days I’m going record a full album utilizing these original optigan chord pattern loops and build upon them”.
Well, that day arrives on Friday, June 19th, when my 31st solo album, “OptiRugan”, is released worldwide! It’s a fun 12-song collection unlike anything else in my catalogue. Many of the songs incorporate the original chord pattern loops with additional instrumentation I played along with vocals. And in some cases, I deconstructed the original chord pattern loops to come up with an entire new sound! Lyrically, 8 to 9 of the songs were written from a 10 to 14 yo version of myself which really adds to the vibe and 70’s pop sound of the tunes.
As always, thanks for listening!