In rare moments of undetectable good vibrations, former hippies are known to close their eyes, sway back and forth and talk like the ganja has begun to hit. Then, in drawn out syllables, they’ll drop something deep and act like it came straight from the Dali Lama. More than a few will declare “if you remember the '60s, then you weren’t really there.” That’s bullshit. If most people let the era of sex, drugs and rock ’n’ roll break on through without much recollection, then the majority of them missed out on some of the greatest contributions to music of the time. And they probably have no idea who Robert Moog was. Listen up.

Moog was the man. He made the pushed-back, curly white man-fro fresh decades before Napoleon Dynamite, a look he continued to sport until his passing on August 21 of this year. Oh, and besides setting future trends with a prolific hairdo, his invention of the first “compact, easy-to-use synthesizer” in 1970 revolutionized the scope of music.

Like most cool people, Moog was a self-described “class brain” back in high school. “I knew I was smarter than [my classmates] were, so they felt compelled to beat me up periodically to keep me in my place,” Moog recalled in an email interview with Salon.com, an online political magazine.

And this is the guy who brought electronic music to the masses? Yes. The synthesizer Moog eventually created gave musicians the tools for reproducing sounds to a nearly-infinite degree.

Moog’s geeky years were not spent in vain. This guy was going places. By the time he was 14, Moog had built his first electronic instrument, a Theremin. Five years later he was selling how-to-make-them-yourself kits from home, which sold like Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” album. His productive hobby hooked him up with a composer who told Moog what people really needed was a user-friendly electronic instrument, which would allow artists to take advantage of new technological advancements. Thus, the Moog synthesizer was born, laying down the tracks for what would become Electronica.

At the time, Moog’s instrument did for keyed instruments what laptops did for desktops: made them portable and accessible. Unlike the awkwardness of the Theremin, which a musician plays by waving his or her hands in the vicinity of two metal rods connected to a wooden cabinet, synthesizers were essentially keyboards.

The grab-n-go gadget delivered the goods and brought the studio to the stage. Before long, bands like the Beatles and the Doors were using Moog synthesizers to create unworldly sounds, which fused synthetic energy from psychedelic drug trips into their music. “The sound defined progressive music as we know it,” Keith Emerson, keyboardist for the rock band Emerson, said in a CNN interview.

Moog’s musical toy certainly fit in with the times, which Dean Suzuki, a professor of rock music at SF State, calls a “weird, transitional phase” in music. “The unnatural sound was artificially created,” Suzuki says. “It was another sound for musicians to use.”

And use them they did. Synthesizers and keyboards strapped around band members’ necks like a guitar became common icons at rock concerts.

Moog never let the list of rocker patrons get to his head. For him it was about giving people what they wanted. He attributed accomplishments to his interactions with musicians. “I’m an engineer,” Moog said in 2000. “I see myself as a toolmaker and the musicians are my customers.”

Moog, pronounced like “vogue,” went on to create streamlined versions of his synthesizer such as the Minimoog, Mintmoog and Memorymoog. A slew of competitors, bad business contracts and a lack of business sense eventually slowed him down. “I suddenly found myself in a growing business and I didn’t know how to run it,” he went on to say.

By the 1980s the Moog was just one contraption in an orchestra of Casio and Yamaha keyboards, which he believed were the true catalyst in the change of musical thought. He was right. Who didn’t own one?

Moog’s impact was huge. His invention made an undeniable influence on hip-hop, funk, techno and R&B music, and his name will forever be synonymous with the synthesizer and electronic music.