Season 2 — Episode 3 — May 4, 2022
The Bobs
Podcasting
The Bobs Sing the Songs of… (1991) — The Bobs
When Rob Janicke and I received a note back that Matthew Stull had agreed to talk with us, one of us was kinda giddy, and the other was nonplussed having not been familiar with The Bobs oeuvre.
Who was who will remain shrouded in Abandoned Albums mystery and folklore.
After having done more than Abandoned Albums episodes now, it remains confounding at the apprehension around using Skype. I shit you not, about 90% of the artists we’ve interviewed to date have all said something along the lines of “Skype? Gosh, I haven’t used that in years.”
Apparently, Skype is the digital equivalent of a rotary phone. BUT, having now used a number of different services, included Zoom, I can tell you that Skype performs the best.
Setting Matthew up with a Skype link prompted that exact response: “Really? Skype? I haven’t used that in years.”
We even had one PR person snarkily imply that none of his clients have “clicked on a Skype link in over ten years”… his clients were all called (pretty confident this was just a PR flex for the record label guy cc’d).
Fine. Whatever, we’ll call. Luckily, I had emailed the Skype link to the PR dude ahead of time. Wanna guess what happened when we called his client?
But I digress…
The Bobs were born from a Western Union Singing Telegram division… in San Francisco in the early 80’s. The Bobs were started by Gunnar Madson and Matthew Stull in the early 80s. Taking the best of do-wop and acapella, the two men enlisted Richard Greene and created a genre unto themselves — New Wave Acapella.
The Bobs were recognized almost immediately when their interpretation of The Beatles “Helter Skelter” was nominated for a Grammy Award in 1984.
When Matthew, Rob, and I all got on the call we found out immediately that it was going to be a fun interview. We were not disappointed — hilarity ensued. And I mean that sincerely. Matthew was a blast to talk to and he had great stories. If we had more time, I am sure that we could’ve gotten more stories out of him.
Something tells me he was just whetting our appetite with The Grateful Dead and Frank Zappa stories.
But we did get some great stories and had loads of laughs, check it out: