Bruce Clinton Haack was a Canadian musician and composer who was best known for working in the electronic side during the later half of the 20th century. Haack had an interest of music at the age of 4 after playing with his family's piano, and after completing college at the University of Alberta, he was able to start working on his music, which led him to be famous, making appearances on shows such as The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson and Mister Rogers' Neighborhood.
During the 1960s, Haack started making children's albums and sometimes work with Esther Nelson. But it wasn't until towards the end of the decade that he decided to expand his music after his friend Chris Kachulis introduced him to psychedelic rock, which lead Haack to create "The Electric Lucifer".
Despite having a healthy career during the 1960 and 1970s, Haack's life started to fall apart by the end of the decade. In 1978, Haack produced Haackula which covered topics such as sex and disillusionment. This got him into trouble mainstream and had to keep his music out of the public eye. Sadly, his health was failing during the 1980s and passed away in 1988 from heart failure at the basement of his best friend's home. However, his innovations in electronic music have become much more widely known in the years since his death.
"Tropes":
- Cerebus Rollercoaster: His music from the 1970s switches from innocent songs for children to dealing with drugs, sex, and the apocalypse.
- Child Prodigy: Haack stated that he started to like music after playing with his family's piano at age 4, and provided piano lessons for others by age 12.
- Concept Album: The Electric Lucifer, which combines a narrative about an A.I. gaining sentience with the Book of Revelation.
- Cover Version: Haack did a cover of "When Mothers of Salem" from the much later released "Preservation Tapes".
- Christmas Songs: He did three Christmas songs, "I Like Christmas", "Deck the Halls" and "Angels We Have Heard on High".
- Cool Bike: "Motorcycle Ride" from The Way-Out Record for Children is about riding a motorcycle.
- Dem Bones: The cover of "Bite" shows a giant skull building wearing an academic cap with people going inside.
- Digital Destruction: "Party Machine" is a 26 minute song, but it was edited by Russell Simmons to be trimmed down to 8 minutes and much slower.
- Friend to All Children: Haack in early years was very friendly to children and most of his stuff was aimed at children.
- Giant Spider: The cover of Haackula is a giant spider with Haack's head and top hat.
- Platonic Life-Partners: Haack was very close friends with female singer Esther Nelson when they used to do children's albums.
- Speedy Techno Remake: One of Bruce Haack's unreleased songs called "Untitled #3" is actually a sped up remake of "17 Gifts for Free Children".
- Take That!: The entirety of Haackula was made to vent out Haack's frustrations of the music industry at the time.
- Title Track: "Haackula".
