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“The Bobs Return to the Duplex—with Angie Bob!
The Duplex – November 11
Celebrating 30 years of performing, the Bobs still pack a punch with their clever a cappella stylings, which were dubbed “New Wave a cappella” back when the group started out. Their approach to songs is fairly consistent: One member of the quartet will take the lead, accompanied by scat-sung harmonies from the other Bobs. The resulting effect is that of a panoply of faux horns and strings. Percussion is supplied by tongues clicking and whooshes of air expelled noisily through lips and teeth.
In the late 1980s a friend introduced me to one of the Bobs’ early albums, My, I’m Large. I listened to the Bobs’ music quite a lot, but never got around to seeing them perform live until now.
The idea of New Wave anything now seems a little Old Hat, and these days the Bobs may come across as somewhat quaint to some audiences. In recent years there has been a proliferation of glitzier approaches to a cappella singing. Consider TV’s The Sing-Off or the international popularity of those mime-like space aliens, Voca People (now performing Off Broadway).
The Bobs have not remained entirely static over the last three decades. The composition of the group has changed somewhat. Still on hand are founding member Matthew Bob Stull, along with Richard Bob Greene, who signed up very early on. However, Dan Bob Schumacher has been with the quartet only since 2005, while Angie Bob Doctor is brand-new. Still, when the group performed songs at the Duplex from My, I’m Large—including “Helmet” and “Banana Love” (both written by Greene, along with Bobs co-founder Gunnar Bob Madsen), the sound seemed pretty much as I remembered it from close to a quarter-century ago.
Those signature songs show well what four people with versatile voices, a deep understanding of various genres of pop music, and plenty of imagination are capable of creating. Their musical textures can be thrilling. “Banana Love,” for instance, which is filled with bird and monkey sounds straight out of a Tarzan movie, also features impossibly bunched notes that resolve eventually from dissonance into rich, unexpectedly gorgeous chords.
Some of the group’s standout songs are familiar pop-rock favorites given a new slant thanks to the a cappella spin. Late-career Beatles songs, for instance, have provided the Bobs with complex soundscapes to reinvent. In fact, one of the Bobs’ biggest successes was “Helter Skelter” (John Lennon, Paul McCartney), which was nominated for a 1985 Grammy Award for vocal arrangement. The Bobs didn’t sing that at the Duplex, but they did offer a striking rendition of Lennon and McCartney’s “Strawberry Fields Forever,” cleverly playing with the song’s psychedelic idiosyncrasies. Doctor took the lead while a “ha, ha, ha, ha” chant stood in effectively for the song’s famously throbbing mellophone. The Bobs included similarly effective renditions of songs originally performed by such acts as The Jimi Hendrix Experience and Queen.
Of the newer Bobs-penned songs, I especially liked “Buddha Bakes,” a humorous song about vegan cooking that had a pleasing East Indian sound. The complex rhythms behind Greene’s deep-voiced notes created a mesmerizing effect. “Buddha Bakes” came from the 2008 album Get Your Monkey Off My Dog, the raucous title song of which the Bobs also performed at the Duplex. Schumacher supplied the baritone banshee vocals on this song. At one point he amusingly stretched the word “dog” so that it came out as the multi-syllabic “dah-owe-egg.” The song included another collection of jungle effects, which followed a bit too closely on the heels of “Banana Love.” But Schumacher gave the song its own twist by running ape-like from the stage into the audience to mime the plucking of ticks from the scalps of Duplex patrons.
That kind of silly but organized showmanship was on hand pretty consistently during the Bobs’ musical numbers. But I was surprised and a bit disappointed by how informal and occasionally lackadaisical the group seemed during the nonmusical portions of the show.
At the top of the program, Shumacher and Doctor came out to do a few duets, before the “Bobs proper” set began. When all four Bobs had finally materialized, the attitude seemed to be “Well, we’re all here, so guess we’d better sing some songs or something.” Between-song banter consisted of a lot of aimless chatter and half-hearted jests that reminded me of the self-amused verbal horseplay you get from the hosts of public radio’s Car Talk. A shaggy-dog story about drummers and bass players gleaned only a few sympathy chuckles when the punch line finally was delivered. Some of the adlibs that smart-alecky audience members shot back at the group were wittier than what was heard coming from the stage. At one point, newcomer Doctor remarked ironically of the proceedings: “The flow is amazing.”
When everything within the songs is so tight and polished, I suppose some looseness in the rest of the program is understandable. The thought crossed my mind that the Bobs could, in fact, be deliberately avoiding the kind of slickness that some younger a cappella groups exhibit. Proudly Old School, they’re ready to teach the flashy upstarts something about authenticity. That’s fine, just as long as they don’t give off the vibe that they’re growing a bit weary of—or bored with—the whole Bobs enterprise.
Mark Dundas Wood is an arts/entertainment journalist and dramaturg. He began writing reviews for BistroAwards.com in 2011. More recently he has contributed "Cabaret Setlist" articles about cabaret repertoire. Other reviews and articles have appeared in theaterscene.net and clydefitchreport.com, as well as in American Theatre and Back Stage. As a dramaturg, he has worked with New Professional Theatre and the New York Musical Theatre Festival. He is currently literary manager for Broad Horizons Theatre Company.
