This machine embellished recordings of "Hello Young Lovers" and "Harbor Lights" (from Martin Denny 1959 "Exotica III") with self playing instruments (including a heavily modified Chickering Ampico player piano) and it is planned to be resurrected in the future.
By 2009, the machine was already decommissioned and the token box requiring "2 TOKENS" was long gone (after the machine being just "out of order" at least most of the time through the previous seasons following dying by December 2006 from the unheated climate). The violins from the machine were dismantled in 2010 to be placed on display in the Alex Jordan Jr. Center and removing these from the exhibit may have also been based off the fact that the original "Exotica III" recordings never had violins heard in the performance (and that original album was re-released by the time this was accomplished to the machine so the visual of the machine depicts the vision of the orchestra heard on the 1959 recordings moving forward as this existing serves as it's spiritual successor?).
Three or so years after it's dismantling?, it's "black box" was serviced/reassembled in the display (when "out of order" signage was mounted to the railing front of the exhibit in 2012 signaling the "Exotica III" re-release unavailable? then since EMI went out of business?). After this sign was gone, the machine has been out of service following UMG's 10/28/12 acquisition of the EMI/Capitol catalog (with Capitol Records 1959 "Exotica III" part of it). From 2018 until late 2020, "THIS DISPLAY UNDER RENOVATION" signage was mounted to the nearby tree but the exhibit was NOT truly being renovated. This later signage (which the Director wouldn't acknowledge) might have been used to indicate the exhibit in it's partially dismantled form undergoing a nonphysical "alteration" into the 1959 “Exotica III" Capitol Records re-release "using" the "Exotica III" samples on this machine's original audio tracks (the marimbas, bass, chimes, glockenspiel, vibes and the guiro, woodblock, conga, bongo, cymbals and piano parts that were to be embellished by the instruments in-house, part of it's prerecorded SFX) and "MOON OF MANAKOORA" name (from an "Exotica III" song title) as these are features of the Exotica III re-release (whilst this exhibit is silent) as it stood at that time?.
Upon most recently being re-accessed last year?, there is now a plan for a full rebuild of this exhibit for it to be functional again PERHAPS in the NEXT 3 YEARS (like it did prior to being partially dismantled in 2010)!
Sam Morex
14-Dec-2018 05:02
According to the Director of Operations of House on the Rock, the Moon of Manakoora music machine no longer plays since it broke Christmas 2006 and is not repairable because it is in an area of the attraction that isn't climate controlled.
Guest
14-Sep-2018 00:36
It's too bad that this no longer works. Even if it's mostly fake, I liked the music it played.
Guest
12-Sep-2018 00:51
I saw that play during my visit there in the mid 2000s.
TMS
27-Jul-2015 01:47
I recall this machine having played in the past but as of my most recent visits (2010 and 2015) it no longer does, and even the token box has been removed from the wall. All this machine did was augment a Martin Denny recording of "Hello Young Lovers" with some additional percussions and sound effects. There were four CDs available in the gift shop years ago with recordings of selected music machines at House on the Rock (they are no longer available, however I have all four); this was one of them. The result was impressive. If any House on the Rock fans ever come across any of the CDs, I encourage you to check them out; you can hear how glorious these machines are (regardless if fully real or not) when they are in tune. I suspect that some of them haven't received any TLC since the 1990s when the CDs were made.
And these pictures, by the way, are awesome!
Andrew
30-Jun-2007 08:34
This is, by far, the finest picture I have seen of the Moon of Manakoora "fantasy music machine". And I should know, at last count I have amassed some 42 pictures of it from all over the internet, also counting my own. You seem to have a great sense of mise-en-scene (the arrangement of objects, and the genral layout of the photo), not just capturing the one that is is there (Alex Jordan Jr. was, if anything, a visual and spatial artist), but also managing to cram as much of these huge, wide music displays as possible into one photo, something which hardly any of the other photographers managed to do, and certainly not me.
Even more than that, you get the lighting JUST RIGHT. Having visited the House in person (and to fully appreciate what it's like, one must go in person; the best camera eyes are still not human eyes), I can fully vouch for the fact that many of the displays are quite dimly lit. According to a friend of Alex's, this is done deliberately so that "reality merges into one's imagination" (read: it covers up the bogusness of these exhibits, especially the fantasy music machines)
In most of them, all of the tuned (xylophone, bells, chimes, etc) and untuned (drums, cymbals, etc) percussion actually plays, more-or-less along with the music emanating from speakers.
However, this one is unique in that only the untuned percussion actually plays. The tuned percussion is just there in mock-up and doesn't do a damn thing. In fact, the crude beater actions fitted to the secondhand theatre organ marimba and xylophone bars and resonators in the "marimba stack" don't even twitch along with the music... and from their construction, it is obvious that they couldn't if their life depended on them! Thusly, it is worth noting that this one is more dimly lit than the rest of them.
So, to capture it as though it was normally lit, with everything actually LOOKING GOOD, is quite an accomplishment, and for that I salute you.
