![_Whitney Houston, 48, Has Died [Updated]](http://sfist.com/assets_c/2012/02/whitney-houston-dead-2-thumb-250x250-693364.jpg)
Interview: Monster Bobby
Occasionally we are reminded that San Francisco is not the very center of the world. Rare occasions, true, but still, when an interviewee points out that they may not have an encyclopedic knowledge of bands from the area, we’re forced to say fair enough. Such is the case with Bobby of Monster Bobby. Sure, he may be the creative force behind SFist fav, the Pipettes, and sure he knows about all kinds of other kinds of music but he’s not all up on our local bands. He’s willing to learn, though, and hey, given how much we like his music (check it out here), that’s enough for us. For now.
You can check out Monster Bobby along with the Pipettes tonight at Bimbo’s—show starts at tonight at 8 p.m.
What should people expect from your live show?
You should expect me and the dr sample, my little electronic colleague, playing a series of curious little ditties, recalling the English music hall and German elektronische Musik (with a dash of Rick James).
Where are the best fans at?
I suppose that depends how you define 'best'. The kids in Japan are probably the most enthusiastic, and perhaps the most polite as well, hich is quite a unique and charming combination. German crowds perhaps the loudest and most vocally appreciative in our experience and Swedish generally the quickest to get into stuff, the first to spot something cool and let you know about it. but, y'know, really the best "fans" are in London and Brighton cos that's where most of my friends live.
What's the lamest request you've ever gotten from a crowd?
I once did a gig at a pub in Brighton called the Providence. it was just me and an acoustic guitar and I wasn't really that used to playing without my sampler at that time. and I never write set lists. so there were a few points where I was sort of, between songs, wondering aloud what I might play next. there was one person in the crowd who would always take the opportunity to shout something like "Coldplay" or "Oasis" to which I would always reply "I don't know any songs by [Coldplay/Oasis/etc] and if I did, I’d kill myself" (it became a sort of running joke - I wonder if even a few people started to think that he was a plant who I’d put there to set me up for the gag or something)
If you could be touring with any other act who would it be and why?
Do they have to be alive right now? well, I suppose they wouldn't be much of a fun live experience if they were dead, would they? it's a toughie - I guess the three bands that are gigging at the moment that I would most like to see live (having never seen them before) are Os Mutantes, The B52s and Devo. I’d like to tour with Marit Bergman again. that was really good fun. or I did a great tour a few years ago with three other solo acts working with electronics called Bela Emerson, Same Actor and Dear Britch. That was an amazing tour and I’d be more than happy to repeat the experience.
What's your take on the Bay Area Music Scene?
Ermm... I don't know. I just googled bay area music and I hadn’t ever heard of any of the acts that cam up. most of the music I listen to at the moment is either Brazilian, Swedish or several hundred years old. I don't even think there was a bay area when Monteverdi wrote Orfeo (which was the last record I bought)
Favorite Musician to come out of the Bay Area?
Erm... I’m from Brighton, in the south of England. you're really asking the wrong person here. I mean, I’ve played shows all over the place and no-one's ever expected me to have an encyclopedic knowledge of their homegrown music scene. is the bay area particularly famous for music or something? I mean it's hardly Leipzig or Cologne, is it?
Do you think there is a Bay Area sound?
Cripes, how should I know? I’ve only been to San Francisco once before (for a day) and I’ve got no idea if I was ever anywhere near the bay area. you could probably ask someone who lived in San Francisco all their life and they wouldn't be able to give a definitive answer to this question. has someone given you the impression that I’m some sort of expert on bay area music or something? I live in London and I don't even know that much about the music scene there. I don't really go to many gigs these days. the last concert I went to was a performance of
music by luigi nono by the London sinfonietta, and before that it was Atmospheres by Gyorgy LIgeti as part of the Proms. that was amazing. I could talk for hours about traditional English folk music, or European electronic music from the 50s and 60s, or the British new pop of the early 80s or the second Viennese school of the beginning of the 20th century, the new York scene in the lat 70s... but the bay area music scene......no, you've lost me. please enlighten me. who's good? surely these are questions I should be asking you not the other way round. I’m a stranger in this town. who should I be looking out for? anyone
good these days?
Oh, hang on - didn't Pauline Oliveros live and work in San Francisco for a while in the 6os? at the san Francisco tap emusic centre? I don't know if that's the bay area or not but she's amazing. so Pauline Oliveros can be my favorite "bay area" musician. there you go.
How has/does classical music influence your work? Any composers in
particular?
Well, I did a masters degree in contemporary music a couple of years ago and I learnt a lot from that. I couldn't really say that what I do these day sounds a great deal like many of the composers I got into that course. I’d certainly be pretty hard pressed to find points of comparison between what I do and what, say, Iannis Xenakis or Brian Ferneyough (both of whom I love) were doing. but I learnt a different approach to music, I learnt not to approach everything in such an intuitive fashion, and that doing so can result in a slide in to musical clichés (this I learnt perhaps from Theodore Adorno as much as Arnold Schoenberg), I also learnt (from John Cage) to accept any sound as open to musical appropriation and if you listen to my record or read the sleeve notes you'll find a lot of the sound sources are quite non-traditional - at least for an indeed pop record. More directly, the experiments in musique concrete carried out by Pierre Schaeffer in
Paris after the 2nd world war are a clear influence on the way I might go about putting, at least some of, the backdrops to my songs and instrumentals together. as for Bach’s cantatas, Monteverdi’s madrigals and Mozart’s operas, listening to this stuff more recently has proved an invaluable lesson in constructing melodies.