Bobb aid: Hey everyone. Bobb has a new band (The Flying Spiders). We did 4 shows in New England and New York last year and we want to do more in 2010. We're recording Bobb's first new material since the 1980s! But the rehearsal space, van rentals, studio time, gas, is as hard for us as any band starting out and unemployment has hit the group hard. Any help you can provide is crucial to keeping Bobb playing and will be met with a personal thank you note from Bobb. -- Kris (Bobb's friend & bandmate)

 

BOBB TRIMBLE's Iron Curtain Innocence and Harvest of Dreams reissues are available from Secretly Canadian, and at finer independent record stores everywhere.

Who is Bobb Trimble? Take a look at this excellent profile from the Guardian (UK): 'He's for real. Or should I say surreal?'

For up to date information about Bobb, please visit his page at myspace.

 

About Bobb Trimble by Aaron Milenski

Born ten years too late to attract the attention he deserved, Bobb Trimble created an utterly unique body of work that merged psychedelia, folk-rock, space music and sound effects into rock’s most convincing depiction of a disturbed mind. As with most tortured artistic souls, Bobb’s distinct vision is filled with much more than just fear and self-loathing. It drips with beauty and heartbreak, and his high, fragile voice bleeds with passion. The music evokes the sixties yet sounded contemporary when released in the eighties and again when re-released in the nineties. Bobb’s two impossibly rare albums change hands for ungodly sums of money, and for years his reputation grew among collectors as his music was heard via tape trades (often on unlabeled tapes, which led to one male collector falling in love with the beautiful voice only to be informed that the singer was actually a man.) In the mid-90s, Bobb’s music was finally made widely available when the bulk of the two albums were released on CD as Jupiter Transmission. Die-hard fans of psychedelia rate Bobb’s music as the finest in the genre from the 80s.

Most of Bobb’s public performances came in the very early 80s, around the time his two albums were released. Though his musical style differed from the punk rock bands in the “Wormtown” (Worcester, MA) scene, his oddball loner status made him fit in quite well with his musical peers. Wormtown is credited with inspiring him to release his first album, Iron Curtain Innocence, in 1981. Soon after, Bobb, a man of many phases, decided that “the children are the future” and formed the punky garage band Bobb & The Kidds with a group of pre-teens. Doomed to failure due to protective and suspicious parents, the Kidds recorded only one brief song, 'Oh Baby,' which appeared on Bobb’s second album, Harvest of Dreams. Compromising his vision slightly, Bobb recruited a 15-year-old rhythm section and formed the short-lived Crippled Dog Band. A Crippled Dog Band concert appears on side two of the compilation Life Beyond The Doghouse (side one of which documents Bobb’s even briefer Jesus-freak phase.) The Crippled Dog Band’s shining public moment came at a 1983 Worcester rock festival, when Bobb came on stage decked out in a top hat, green satin coat, bunny ears and bunny tail.

Bobb continued to record beyond Harvest of Dreams, but he never again reached the amazing heights of his two albums and this new material went unreleased. On rare occasions, Bobb’s name still surfaces in the Worcester area (in 2000 he played guitar on 'Buzz Bomb,' on Abunai!’s Round-Wound album), but it’s the reissues of the 90s and 00s that keep his legend alive.

 

Discography

Harvest of Dreams
Bobb Records, 1982

1 Premonitions -- The Fantasy (5:59)
2 If Words Were All I Had (4:24)
3 World I Left Behind (2:58)
4 Armour of the Shroud (7:38)
5 Premonitions Boy -- The Reality (5:59)
6 Take Me Home Vienna (3:34)
7 Selling Me Short While Stringing Me Long (4:19)
8 Oh Baby (0:52)
9 Paralyzed (6:15)
10 Another Lonely Angel (5:02)

Life Beyond the Doghouse
Orpheus Records, 2002
vinyl compilation of previously unreleased recordings from 1983-1986

1 Deep Inside My Heart (3:21)
2 Home in Heaven (3:24)
3 Shattered Images (5:17)
4 Blood of the Lamb (8:48)
5 Uncercovers Man (4:07)
6 Angel Eyes (3:02)
7 Legends from the Past / Warpath Blues / Fight or Fall (6:49)
8 Generation Gap/Live Wire (5:51)
9 Camel Song (3:01)

Iron Curtain Innocence
Secretly Canadian, 2007
Authorized reissue; vinyl, CD, and digital download.

1 Premonitions -- The Fantasy (5:59)
2 If Words Were All I Had (4:24)
3 World I Left Behind (2:58)
4 Armour of the Shroud (7:38)
5 Premonitions Boy -- The Reality (5:59)
6 Take Me Home Vienna (3:34)
7 Selling Me Short While Stringing Me Long (4:19)
8 Oh Baby (0:52)
9 Paralyzed (6:15)
10 Another Lonely Angel (5:02)
11 Glass Menagerie Fantasies (demo; 6:10)
12 Night At The Asylum (demo; 4:54)
13 When The Raven Calls (demo; 5:51)

Harvest of Dreams
Secretly Canadian, 2007
Authorized reissue; vinyl, CD, and digital download.

1 Premonitions -- The Fantasy (5:59)
2 If Words Were All I Had (4:24)
3 World I Left Behind (2:58)
4 Armour of the Shroud (7:38)
5 Premonitions Boy -- The Reality (5:59)
6 Take Me Home Vienna (3:34)
7 Selling Me Short While Stringing Me Long (4:19)
8 Oh Baby (0:52)
9 Paralyzed (6:15)
10 Another Lonely Angel (5:02)
11 Waves Of Confusion In Puzzled Times (demo; 5:10)
12 Galilean Boy (Crippled Dog Band live; 3:07)
13 Life Is Like A Circle (demo; 4:44)

The UK bootleg label Radioactive Records also released an unauthorized, vinyl-sourced version in 2005. Please don't support Radioactive or its sister label Fallout Records -- they're crooks and they make inferior products.

Also, check out the November 14, 2003 edition of WZBC's Test Pattern. This hour long radio special about Bobb's music was hosted by Bobb's friend Kris Thompson (pictured). All tracks are original album versions unless otherwise noted:

1 Glass Menagerie Fantasies
2 Selling Me Short
3 Night At The Asylum (demo)
4 Night At The Asylum
5 Through My Eyes
6 Your Little Pawn
7 When The Raven Calls
8 Another Lonely Angel
9 With the Crippled Dog Band: Angel Eyes (alternate version from unreleased cassette)
10 With Flyin' Lion: Armour Of The Shroud (unreleased cassette; Bobb + Abunai! = Flyin' Lion)

To hear more of Bobb's music, see his myspace page.

Here's a video of 'Galilean Boy' performed by the Crippled Dog Band in Massachusetts, 1983.

Writings about Bobb

Aaron Milenski, co-author (along with Patrick the Lama and Ron Moore) of The Acid Archives, the definitve book on American psychedelic music, writes, "There is no album I own that has as much emotional complexity and depth as HARVEST OF DREAMS."

The Unbroken Circle a review from this terrific UK psych-folk site.

Psychedelic Music Database entry on Bobb.

Transmissions to...

Please keep in mind that Bobb doesn't own a computer or read e-mail directly. But all appropriate messages to Bobb will be delivered to him as soon as possible.

Bobb's friend & attache

webmaster