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Jun
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2010
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Serious Bob |
The History of The Bob
2002-2003
The Hallways of Monarch High School
Serious Bob was born when Tai Hart, Elliott Goldbaum and Da7e Gonzales all had the same free-period (4th Period) at Monarch High School in Louisville Colorado. It was the second semester of 2002. Tai and Elliott were Seniors and Da7e was a Junior. Tai and Elliott would pass the time by playing guitars, harmonicas and a mandolin in the hallway by the shop used by Monarch’s Theater department (an extra-curricular they all had in common). Da7e eventually joined them, taking over Elliott’s harmonica – a G harmonica he would later receive as a gift from Elliott – and banging on guitar cases for percussion. The three would mess around with simple chord progressions, eventually leading Da7e to improvise the line: “I like my skin, it keeps HIV out most of the time and all my insides in,” the first line from the song titled “Skin” that would later appear on the Self-Titled Demo and I’m Going Off Into the Dark Woods to Investigate Alone.
A small audience of passersby, including Christopher Sweeney, the Theater Director and friend of the band, encouraged Elliott, Tai and Da7e to play at the Monarch Senior BBQ in May 2002. The three eventually decided on the name Serious Bob, and registered to play a four song setlist as one of the opening acts. The first song was “Skin” which has remained basically the same since it’s inception in the hallway. It was followed up by a politically-themed cover of “Stay Together for the Kids” by Blink 182, but instead of the normal verses, Da7e ad-libbed about the Bush Administration and the horrors it would inflict upon our generation. The third song was a Beatles cover: “In My Life,” performed solo by Elliott. The set-closer was “Where is My Mind” a Pixies cover, where Tai and Elliott played the same guitar at the same time as Elliott sung, and Da7e screamed the keyboard part from the back of the stage. At the end of the set, the mood was mostly congratulatory for the two Seniors. The closing act of the night was Turoke, the band that still features drummer Jason Frantz, who would join Serious Bob the next year as part of the full-lineup.
Weeks before the show, Elliott, Tai and Da7e spent a few hours playing instruments and making up song lyrics in Tai’s basement. One of the songs started to take a definite form, and the three recorded it using a simple tape recorder in the middle of the room. The song was called “HAMAS/FBI.” Although the original recording was lost, this was the birth of the Self-Titled Demo.
During the final semester of High School, Tai was working on an Independent Project for Mr. DuFresne, the music teacher at Monarch High School. It was a loops-based dance album that preceded his work with Serious Bob. Eventually, Tai brought in Da7e and cellist/DJ Keith Dickerhoffe (who would go on to play the cello on “This Place”) to help with a few tracks. During the process, Tai and Da7e developed simple production skills. Armed with a few simple chord progressions, a few computer programs, a mic, a 1⁄4” to 1/8” adapter, and a mattress up against the bedroom door (for soundproofing), Serious Bob produced the Self-Titled Demo.
The idea to distribute the EP was spurred on by the recent mass sale of fellow Monarch High School band Unsung. Unsung had made their own copies of their demo and sold them to students in the halls for $10, recouping their recording costs. Serious Bob incurred minimal recording costs, and the three members knew that more people would listen to a free CD than buy something from a band they had never heard of. Thus, Serious Bob’s policy of giving away their music for FREE was born.
The EP also outlined several other Serious Bob themes that would repeat in the following years. “HAMAS/FBI” was re-focused to be a political statement about privacy (the band also wrongly thought that the HAMAS scare left over from 9/11 would blow over), “A Modest Proposal” is both literary humor and about cannibalism, “This Place” was the first “serious” song written and displayed Da7e’s love of vocal looping, and “The Serious Adventures of Sancho” introduced both El Macho and Sancho the Mariachi/Crime Fighter/King as well as being the first Bob song to follow one story with an arc and dialogue built into the song. The Demo also features the first SB cover to be recorded, “Sweet Home Alabama.” This cover was never meant to exist, but was a sudden improve during a record take that was tacked on to the end of “The Love is Gone.” Tai thought that the “The Love Is Gone” was too serious for a joke band, and asked that Da7e make some sort of humorous apology at the end of the track. Unfortunately for apologies, Elliott happened to be playing “Sweet Home Alabama” in the background. As a result, the Bob has incorporated more songs like “The Love is Gone” over the years. Da7e now explains them as “Pop Parodies” or songs that mirror classic pop structure, but are actually about toast, pie, chili or things besides food.
The Demo was recorded before the show at the BBQ, and saw various levels of release. The first version of the Demo can be identified by its CD stamp: cartoons of Da7e, Elliott and Tai with Tai’s phone number as a contact. Later incarnations are missing the phone number.
Original “Living Flesh Cartoons”:
Jason, Nate and the Exposure! Battle of the Bands
After an unexpected and relatively disproportioned positive response from the 10 people who heard the Serious Bob demo, Da7e, Tai, and Elliott continued to record material after their first show at Monarch High School. They amassed a few songs before Tai and Elliott left Louisville to attend college at UNC (where they would record “Robot Song” and “Everything I Needed To Know I Learned From Serious Bob”). These were what Da7e calls The Cupid Sessions because he was hell-bent of lampooning “the end of love.” A few songs from The Cupid Sessions were transferred to Dark Woods (“The Park in Which Bacon Speaks,” “Kings of Yourkshire,” “Serial Killer,” and “Settle the Score”).
Serious Bob lay dormant as Tai and Elliott went to college while Da7e finished up at Monarch High School. However, before the second semester could end, Tai got a phone call.
Da7e says:
“Ty got a call from Concerts First who asked if his band wanted to play at a Battle Of The Bands at the Ogden Theater. I remember the response was immediately a full-steam-ahead sort of reaction. We had to get Nate and Jason together and teach them a whole bunch of songs in time for this huge gig. Then when we got there we noticed it was all punk and metal bands. That freaked us out a little because we were very obviously not fitting in with the other acts (some of them were really good). Then Ty remembered that he had signed up My Friend Matt, the punk band Nate and himself had been members of - not Serious Bob - for the Battle Of The Bands. So as soon as we all realized that had happened, we went out on stage with the goal just to put on the best possible show we could, and we weren’t in it to win anymore.”
Nate Patterson was a long-time friend of all the members of Serious Bob, and had frequently asked to join the band as a bassist. He was frequently rejected and told that Serious Bob was all-acoustic. Nate later purchased an acoustic bass to help his argument. Nate’s bass skills were never questioned, as he had tried out to be a bassist for the band VOID in 1999 (at the time, Tai was their lead guitarist). Nate and Da7e competed for the open position and though it eventually went to Da7e, Nate kept at the bass. Jason Frantz was the brother of long-time friend/collaborator Jess Frantz (who has dated Tai, Elliott and Nate at various times), as well as being the drummer for the theatrical metal band Turoke. Both musicians received the call, and the full-lineup of Serious Bob practiced the material for weeks in preparation for the Battle of the Bands.
By what any member will tell you was a stroke of luck. Serious Bob won the Battle of the Bands and was given free recording time at Time Capsule Studios in Denver.
Tai says:
“When we first got on stage we thought we were going to get our asses kicked, but somehow we won. And that was one of our greatest moments. A moment I know I will never forget.”
Da7e says:
“[After we heard we won], it was such a rush. I signed peoples flesh and pants and stuff that I threw out into the crowd. We sat around for while talking to everyone, and then I went to go collect the DAT. The sound guy said we should stick around because we were in the running to win. That floored all of us. The fact that we won still floors all of us. I remember giving everyone big hugs. It was the Ogden show that convinced us that we should keep this thing going. In a way, Serious Bob was really born.”
The guys quickly transitioned into their first major studio experience (Tai and Da7e had previously recorded in a studio for VOID’s 3 song demo). It was decided that only a handful of tracks would be given the full studio treatment and – if the song had appeared on the demo previously – a title upgrade. “The FBI Song” became “FBI,” “The Serious Adventures of Sancho” was now “The Mysterious Adventures of Sancho,” “Jesus Was a Jew” became “Jesus Was a Jew (BAC Version).” Some tracks kept their demo names such as “The Love is Gone” and “Robot Song.” However, before the band could return to the studio for full mixing and mastering, Time Capsule deleted their analog reel, leaving the band with only the rough mixes for their album (that’s why Jason’s stick-click can be heard on all Time capsule tracks).
Recording Dark Woods and The Live Period
Frustrated, but not down, Tai, Da7e, Elliott and Nate pillaged the best songs from The Cupid Sessions and completed I’m Going Off Into The Dark Woods To Investigate Alone in Tai’s basement with Tai acting as the producer.
During this period, Serious Bob played occasional live shows at Battles of Bands, small get-togethers, open-air malls and several open-mic nights at Boulder’s former coffee house Penny Lane. The advantage of working as an “acoustic band” was the ability to play anywhere at any time.
While the album was being mixed, Tai and Da7e were called back up to Greeley to work on a restoration project: making and old house look new enough for Tai and BOBfriend Phil Ruwitch to live in. During this period, another BOBfriend named Alexis Jackson, who has seen Serious Bob at the Exposure! Battle of the Bands, proposed that Serious Bob make the roadtrip to Montrose, Colorado to play a live show at a local venue she would rent out. Tai and Da7e agreed that if she could get the space, the Bob would come.
Dark Woods was sent out to be duplicated, and Serious Bob loaded all their equipment into Tai’s car and Da7e’s purple van, driving to Montrose to play what would be their last show for several years. BOBfriend Chris Mulford (who had played bass in Da7e’s first band ESEN) came along to mix the sound.
In Montrose, Serious Bob played to an exclusive crowd, playing a full set of material, giving out signed baby heads and later drinking with the audience, Alexis and BOBfriend Amy.
When the album came back, Serious Bob briefly and foolishly departed from their FREE music philosophy and charged a handful of people money for Dark Woods. That was quickly ended as more and more copies were given away for FREE to people that had supported Serious Bob since its inception.
Dumping Material and the First Death of Serious Bob
After the album was received, Serious Bob decided to call it quits. In a discussion between Elliott, Tai, Nate and Da7e, it was decided that the people who had supported them (dubbed BOBFANS – all caps) were deserving of all the material Serious Bob had amassed, regardless of if it was finished or if it made them sound good. The band had a DAT tape recording from the Exposure! Battle of the Bands and a low-quality recording from the Montrose show, both recorded for use in later rehearsals. With Da7e moving to New York, there would be no later rehearsals, so the tracks began to be separated and transferred to a digital format.
Da7e Says:
“When Serious Bob played [the Battle of the Bands], we thought that would be the Swan Song of our little joke rock band. We thought that would be the best we were ever going to sound, so we rented a DAT tape recorder and bugged the shit out of the sound guy to let us plug it into the board. He did, and after the high of winning, the DAT tape was a sobering reminder of the harsh reality of how we sounded.
Later, after sending Dark Woods off to be duplicated, we played another show in Montrose, Colorado at the request of a few of our good friends and great BOBFANS. Once again, we decided to record the show, since - once again - we thought this was the Swan Song of Serious Bob. I was leaving the state, the album was coming out, and we had done well by our little band for over a year. This show was recorded mostly for the band members: so we could hear where we sucked and what we did wrong. As a result, it was much lower quality because we ended up rigging a laptop for recording that could not handle the pure output of the board. Rather, we just put a mic at the back of the room. Then we played an awesome show.
The idea for No Morals, No Problem developed to replace a proposed Live and Unreleased disc titled This Just In From The Brain. It was supposed to be a follow-up to Dark Woods and fulfill for the first time Serious Bob’s unofficial motto: “Let’s just give everything out for free in the hopes that someone will listen to it.” It included choice live cuts from the Exposure! show and some “lost” tracks from Dark Woods.
One copy of This Just In… exists, and it is pretty bad. The project was scrapped and I went off to college.
Then I realized that college gave me a lot of spare time in front of my computer where I could be doing something rather than mindlessly surfing the internet, reading about the new A Perfect Circle album (it was 13th Step, and I’m still not sure if I regret knowing so much about it years later).
I began to program the newly purchased SERIOUSBOB.COM and had some innovative conversations with Tai and Elliott about releasing tracks on a timed schedule on the internet, and how to interact with our fan base and let them know we still had unreleased material.
The rest of the bright ideas we had got condensed into the idea of a “web album” that would include all the content of a fully packaged CD - Music, liner notes and images. Rather than record another album (since we thought that would never happen pre-Boo Radley), I made a quick set of templates for a live Web Album and threw them up on the server.
The plan was to have each band member comment on each track in some sort of extended-liner-notes feel. So, instructions were given to Elliott, Tai and Nate and we all listened to the tracks again and wrote a little bit about them.
About halfway through this process, a member of the first incarnation of The People’s Army of Bob discovered the website and called me out on the message boards, asking if we had been sitting on another album. This made me finish the damn site, and Serious Bob released all its live material (plus some Bonus Tracks) online in a web album format.
Thus, No Morals, No Problem was added to the cannon, Da7e went off to college and everyone thought that Serious Bob was dead and gone.
2004
The summer of 2004, Elliott called Da7e up to visit his girlfriend and himself back in Greely. The plan was to record some new songs in a day and throw whatever sort of production caution they had into the wind. These sessions gave birth to songs like “Insane Joe” and “The Next Episode (Smell-Factor X Remix).” When these tracks were shown to Nate, he immediately wanted in. The philosophy of the Boo Radley Sessions was to produce content in a new way: totally intoxicated. Da7e acted as sole producer on this effort, and the entire album was recorded using only a USB mic for all instrumentation and vocals. It would go on to become Serious Bob’s “drug album” and the format of the track listings wasn’t nailed down until 6 months after its release.
The original Boo Radley was released track-by-track, weekly on readitordont.com/getserious. Each track was given a short explanation and an accompanying graphic. After the full-release, Tai – who had been absent from the Boo Radley Sessions – contributed two tracks, both alluding to or simply mentioning drugs: “That Place” and “This is Better (Than Sex).” Since the tracks fit in thematically, they became part of the final Boo Radley.
The album was accompanied by a full web-redesign that remained the primary look of the website until late 2006.
After Tai’s tracks were added to Boo Radley, the Bob once again declared itself dead. The Radley Sessions hadn’t been as inclusive as Dark Woods, and the band was still separated geographically – even more so when Nate moved out to New York as well and Tai moved to California.
The Cupid EP Lives! And the Second Death of Serious Bob
Keeping the unspoken promise established with “No Morals, No Problem,” Serious Bob once again dumped its leftover material to the web in the form of the “When We Impaled Cupid” EP: a compilation of love-themed B-Sides and songs off each preceding studio work.
Da7e Says:
”When I’m Going Off Into The Dark Woods was finished, some of The Cupid Sessions were left over after the album assembled. I was moving to NYU, and the band wanted the maximum amount of material available for free. The remaining sessions were placed on a hidden web page on readitordont.com/getserious under the title The Lost Album.
After Serious Bob Vs Boo Radley finished its lengthy release process, the band once again wanted to release remaining material on the website before another expected demise. I rounded up some other “romantic” tracks from the three previous releases (barring live material) in an attempt to give a through-line after leadoff track When We Impaled Cupid. Using the weak thread of a “love” theme, the EP was released with a slightly tweaked design in December 2004.
Then, again, no one thought they’d hear from Serious Bob in the future.
2005-Current
Unable to stop themselves from recording material, summer and winter 2005 saw all five members of Serious Bob re-uniting to work on a new album, one that would prove to be their best sounding to date. Still using the USB mic, that had served them well, in conjunction with a direct-plug adaptor like ones used during the Demo Sessions, the Bob updated their recording process, banging out multiple tracks a day.
Setting up in Da7e’s basement, Da7e would work with once musician at a time as the others wrote songs in Da7e’s bedroom down the hall. Keeping a constant rotation between new songs and open session files, the recording process went smoothly. Although mainly mixed and produced by Da7e in New York, there was a long period in between the initial sessions and the final release of One State, Two State, Red State, Blue State (named after the horrible elections of 2004 that continue to haunt Serious Bob) in 2006. This time was spent honing the mix and adding parts as much as possible to refine the Serious Bob hybrid sound: part acoustic joke rock and part electric loop/sample based music. A few tracks were cut from the album and have yet to be released, and many alternate versions exist to the tracks on OSTSRSSBS.
The Incidental Meeting of Josh
After two years of apparent inactivity, Serious Bob released OSTSRSBS online, for free. Da7e was spending a semester in London, living in a NYU dorm. One night, drunkenly walking home from a pub, he gave a copy of OSTSRSBS to the person occupying the flat below him, one Josh Silberberg, a record music major at NYU. Josh heard something in Serious Bob and is currently working with them on their new release.
