Hail Bobs

New singer, new tunes, the Bobs keep harmonizing

by Don Fluckinger

This year ushers in a new era for a capella quartet the Bobs. The group -- complete with new she-Bob Lori "Tweeter" Rivera -- stop in Northampton at the Iron Horse on Tuesday night and make an appearance at Fitchburg State College on Thursday on their "Frostbite Tour." There are new tunes, new fans, and Hale-Bopp, a comet to provide inspiration for the group's otherworldly covers of rock-and-roll classics and offbeat originals.

"Fortunately, [Hale-Bopp] hasn't yet impacted the Bobs -- we've so far managed to duck," Richard "Sub Woofer" Greene says, "although a number of people have come to the shows convinced that the name of the comet really is `hail Bob' and have been worshipping respectfully." Greene's one-liners have become a trademark of the Bobs' stage show, along with the group's remarkable covers of everything from the Jimi Hendrix classics, "The Wind Cries Mary" and "Purple Haze," to the Talking Heads' "Psycho Killer" and They Might Be Giants' "Particle Man." Although the songs rarely sound like the originals, Greene's arrangements manage to cover the familar -- drumming, guitar solos, bass lines, and somehow, in four-part vocal harmony, the lyrics. For clubgoers looking for a good show, the Bobs are solid entertainment; for fellow musicians, it's astounding to hear just how many different parts can be covered by just four voices.

Musicianship aside, the group's wild sense of humor makes for a great show in itself. It can manifest itself in cute little asides, like in the ballad "Drive By Love," when a girl who works in a Fotomat booth expresses her love for a UPS driver by holding up a "UPS Yes" sign as the driver passes by. The humor in the beat poetry of "Too Cool To Care" is headier, requiring a little Kerouac reading. But they are the funniest with their straightforward assaults on the tacky aspects of American culture, such as "Tattoo Me Now," in which the subject of the song laments that he's been scarified so many times that, "I can't be buried in a Jewish cemetery/unless before I die I become very hairy," or the paean to bumper-sticker slogans "Kill Your Television" ("Baby on board/I heart my dog's head/I honk for the Lord").

The Bobs comfortably switch from jazz to rock to Caribbean to just about whatever variety of music they need to keep the pace. Although their morphing of the Trashmen's "Surfin' Bird" and "Bird on a Wire" by Leonard Cohen is fairly typical, they took this technique to an extreme when The Tonight Show asked them to do a medley of songs with the theme "Then and Now."

"We've done that in a typical Bobs fashion," Greene says of the medley, which the group will likely perform at their area shows. Instead of doing a "then" song and a "now" song, every part of the medley combines the two. "So for one of the songs we do a lovely 15th-century madrigal arrangement of the Doors."

Also featured prominently in their shows will be tunes from the group's 1995 album, Plugged, the title being a play on the fact that so many "unplugged" albums were then in vogue. Like the other seven albums the group recorded, Plugged doesn't feature a backup band. But the album does include one electronic vocal distortion effect and occasional accompaniment with a toy drum set.

"We've always been unplugged, so it was time to buck the trend as usual," Greene says. "We were working in the studio on the record and had these distortion effects that were kind of fun to play with, just to put some edge on the sound. A couple of the distortion things remain in the live show -- not to the point where it's like going to see Sonic Youth or anything -- but there are little seasonings of distortion."

The Bobs released a Christmas album in 1996 and have found time to do other things such as television commercials, a soundtrack for a movie with Seinfeld costar Jason Alexander, and a series of performances in Europe with German jazz composer Klaus Koenig. They've played for Al Gore, Great Performances, and Johnny Carson.

The group started out in 1981 when Matthew "Mid Range Driver" Stull and Gunnar Madsen (no longer a Bob) got the idea for the group when their employer, a singing telegram service, went under. They found Greene through a help-wanted ad, and Joe "Mid Range Driver" Finetti joined as tenor and air-percussionist in 1987. On this tour, Rivera replaces Janie Scott, who hung up her cords after being a Bob for 14 of the group's 16-year existence.

"There will be new things. New person. New songs. New energy," Greene says, ever the commercial pitch-man. "[Audiences] will get more of the Bobs than they've seen in the past -- bigger, better, louder, faster, more expensive, able to consume larger quantities of food and alcohol -- it's the new Bobs."

The Bobs perform at the Iron Horse, in Northampton, at 7 p.m., on April 22. Tickets are $17.50. Call (413) 586-8686. On April 24, the group also appear at 8 p.m. at Fitchburg State College. Tickets are $10. For more information call (508) 345-2151.