Sniffle, Whine

While I realize that nearly half of my readers are in Colorado this week, I have to say I'm disappointed at the lack of response to my song of welcome. It's something I enjoy that I was hoping to share.

It must have been around 1990 (egads--almost 20 years ago; I'm old) that I was over at a friend's house and we were channel flipping. He stopped on PBS for something that ended up fascinating us. It was a stage performance of dancers and singers. The singing--performed by 3 men and a woman--was all a cappella, a kind of modern doo wop with humorous, quirky, sarcastic lyrics. They'd use their voices to imitate instruments and offered a mix of original songs and covers of things like "Purple Haze" and the Talking Heads. The dancers interpreted and acted out the songs. They were called the Isobobs.

The performance was offbeat and not what you'd call mainstream music, but I spent high school and juco in the vocal music programs and appreciated what they did. Since I enjoyed the special, I started researching to see if I could find a recording of their work. I learned that the Isobobs were actually two groups: a dance group called Iso and a music group called The Bobs. I bought a couple of Bobs albums and started following their music. I haven't kept up with them over the years and am not so familiar with their recent work, but I really enjoyed them for a while. We even saw them in concert 7 or 8 years ago.

Through all of it, there was one song I could never find again except in my memory of the Isobobs concert from all those years ago. It was my favorite from the show, in fact, and the one I remembered most fondly. Finally, I suppose about a year ago now, I discovered a former Bob, Gunnar Madsen, had recorded it as part of a solo album and added the link. I don't know if anyone but me will enjoy it, but I think it's a perfect little gem of a song. Everytime I think of it, it gets stuck in my head for days. I can't stop singing it right now, in fact, and think you should join me in my enjoyment of it. Give it a listen.