“I’m sure there is going to be more than one unpleasant surprise before we’re done…”

I don’t know where that sample came from, because if I did, and if I could get it cleared, I would want to start every Serious Bob album with it. Because the process of making anything Serious Bob is a series of serious surprises, some pleasant, some un.

Jesus Was A Jew will probably be the thing that Serious Bob is remembered for, should we be remembered at all.

I don’t remember so much how the song came about, but I know we took a break after recording the “yeah, you know it’s true/Jesus was a Jew” callback. I think we went to go eat something, since we were teenagers and in need of constant sustenance. I was sitting with Tai and Elliott and someone said: “Does everyone else have Jesus Was A Jew stuck in their head?”

We all did.

I’m not sure if this is a formula for “hit making” and in the other albums I’ve produced or been involved with, the song that the band likes the best isn’t always the one that would best serve as a “single.”

The good thing about choosing Jesus Was A Jew to play over and over again, is that it was catchy as all get-out, ridiculously simple to play and incorporated everyone on a specialized instrument (Tai on mandolin, Elliott holding down the 3 chords, me on harmonica accidentally executing my only successful note bend for the next 5 years).

Something about pointing out the simple fact that Jesus was, actually, a Jew seemed to resonate with our sophomoric audience, who mostly took our demos because they were free.

Jesus Was A Jew will always be easy to fall back into, and I’m pretty sure I could still sing it and do the hand motions in my sleep.

download link “Jesus Was A Jew” by Serious Bob off Serious Bob (Demo)

Serious Bob is Tai Hart, Elliott Goldbaum, Da7e Gonzales, Nate Patterson and Jason Frantz.

We made three albums, two live recordings, one demo, two eps, one collection of B-sides and one as-yet-unreleased recording of our “classic” songs. Since we all moved to different states, we have not played live, and my inability to maintain an organized Serious Bob website partially gave birth to this blog.

Over the next however-long, I’ll be re-posting the Serious Bob catalog, both in packaged album ZIP files and musing on individual tracks.

All those posts will be linked here, forming the Serious Bob Retrospective.

Highlights:

• “The FBI Song“
• “The Love Is Gone“
• “Jesus Was A Jew“

EPs:

• Serious Bob (Demo)

Albums

• I’m Gong Off Into The Dark Woods To Investigate Alone

Tags:

• Retrospective
• Serious Bob

I’m trying to put a ballpark around when the first version of “The Love Is Gone (Toast)” was first recorded. I know that Serious Bob formed during the first quarter of 2002, that we played the Monarch Senior BBQ that year and decided to record a demo somewhere in there.

The idea for The Self-Titled Demo most likely came from Tai. 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 cellist/DJ Keith Dickerhoffe (who would go on to play the cello on “This Place”) to help with a few tracks. I also helped a little, and some of those tracks ended up resurfacing on Valhalla.

Arg! Headache! Focus!

Ok. So, “The Love Is Gone” is the song that convinced me Elliott was a good guitar player. Serious Bob wasn’t initially about being good at your instruments, it was more about Elliott, Tai and I having fun. But, “The Love Is Gone” was a beautiful and I marred it with my vocals and Fisher Price Bongos. It would take Serious Bob multiple versions of the song to make it sound like I always heard it.

Download link“The Love Is Gone (Demo)” by Serious Bob off Serious Bob (Demo)

This particular version was recorded during one long recording session in Tai’s bedroom on Columbine CT in Louisville, Colorado. Tai’s parents kept telling us to keep it down because it was late, so we eventually stripped Tai’s mattress and propped it up against the door so we could record at the volumes needed to get a good signal off the vocal mic we had jerry-rigged with a 1/4″-1/8″ adaptor plugged into Tai’s computer.

When I finished the harmonica solo and Tai did his mandolin part, Tai decided that this song was “too serious” to be on the Serious Bob demo unless I apologized for it being “not funny.” I didn’t necessarily agree (we use Toast as a love metaphor, and that’s pretty silly), but he sat me on his mattress-less bed and told me to record an apology.

Luckily, Elliott was bored and learning guitar, so he was playing “Sweet Home Alabama” in the background and I burst out laughing. That lead to a delirious “cover” of “Sweet Home Alabama” that we eventually covered live in Montrose, Colorado over a year later.

download link “The Love Is Gone” Live In Montrose off No Morals, No Problem: A Web Album.

download link “Sweet Home Alabama (Encore)” Live In Montrose off No Morals, No Problem: A Web Album.

The most commonly referenced version of “The Love Is Gone” is “The Love Is Gone (Toast)” off Serious Bob’s real debut: I’m Going Off Into The Dark Woods To Investigate Alone. It was recorded at Time Capsule Studios in Denver. They deleted most of our tracks before we could fully mix them, but “The Love Is Gone” is pretty hard to fuck up from a mixing standpoint. Everything gets louder and more complex on its own, Nate’s bass adds another layer of beauty and Jason managed to transition between bongos and a full kit very effortlessly. A few things were added in Tai’s basement, like the slightly-distorted echos “I love my toast,” and “I miss you toast.”

From left to right: Da7e (me), Elliott, Tai, Nate, and Jason. The microphone isn't plugged in.

download link “The Love Is Gone (Toast)” by Serious Bob off I’m Going Off Into The Dark Woods To Investigate Alone.

That’s what everyone will always consider Toast to be; that version right there. But it still didn’t sound as grand as I originally heard in my head when Elliott played his little ditty for the first time in early 2002. That would take four years to realize, until - in 2006 - the Bob did some New York sessions for an album that still hangs in the balance. Produced by Josh Silberberg, the mystery Serious Bob album featured remakes of some of our more lo-fi and “popular” songs. The one song to come out of that session mastered was the new version of Toast, in all it’s pop glory, which lead me to alter the parentheses once again and name it “The Love Is Gone (Pop Anthem).”

download link “The Love Is Gone (Pop Anthem)” by Serious Bob

The irony being that Sally Jessie Raphael was cancelled long before this version was recorded.

Elliott got to add some organ to this, and I got to make up nonsense “da-da-da-da-duh-da”s. I’ve always thought of Toast as so poppy that it was, in the end a “pop parody.” Everyone can have a big, sweeping song about losing your love, but ours ends up being more about toast.

It was also the first of many food-obsessed tracks, but that’s a whole ‘nother post.

Christopher Sweeney, the Theater Director and friend of the band, encouraged Elliott, Tai and myself to play at the Monarch Senior BBQ in May 2002. We 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 hallways of Monarch, where the band was born. It was followed up by a politically-themed cover of “Stay Together for the Kids” by Blink 182, but instead of the normal verses, I 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 I 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 I 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, andwe recorded it using a simple mini-tape recorder, placed on a table 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.

The resulting track, announcing Serious Bob’s existence to the world, opened up the Self-Titled Demo.

During the original improv that eventually became The FBI Song, the Bush Administration was restricting civil liberties in the wake of 9/11. The smarter and future versions of us would later look back on this as the root cause for the song. Realistically, we were just making music because two of us knew guitar, and I could make up simple rhymes, given the tempo wasn’t too robust.

Download link “The FBI Song” by Serious Bob off Serious Bob (Demo)