Who the Hell is Bob McElroy?

Bob McElroy was a musician I met while living in at the Santa Fe International Youth Hostel in 1999. He was in town from Monroe, Louisiana to meet with Gary Johnson, then-governor of New Mexico, on the topic of marijuana decriminalization legislation. To this meeting he dressed in an all-white suit with a bolo tie, which at 78 years old, scruffy beard and head of white hair, made him look too much like Colonel Sanders for comfort. Later that night, I found him in the common room singing folk songs to an audience of touring Japanese girls. I asked if I could record him and he was happy to oblige. I immediately ran to Radio Shack, purchased a cheap boundary microphone that I could connect to my MiniDisc recorder, grabbed a six pack of Lone Star talls at the pharmacy, ran back to the hostel and sat Bob down outside the hostel kitchen where he played and I recorded until quiet hour.

Not everything he said was the truth, but enough was.

Bob was an extremely interesting person. A former member of a biker gang and psychedelic enthusiast. With his skepticism of organized religious ideals and anti-establishment attitude he’s exactly the type of person you’d expect to meet while living my life. As he puts it while talking about being “locked up for crazy,” “[Mad houses are] all about separating out people who are constitutionally opposed to following the rules other people have set down.” Or when I ask him to play the song where “the bad guy gets away at the end” he retorts, “the cop’s the bad guy.” He had a special way of looking at things that resonated with me. I didn’t want to be him, or even spend a lot of time with him. That evening, extended for ten years by recording technology, was all I needed. Bob died in 2002.

It’s my pleasure to share the entire evening’s recordings with you.

The plan was to record the live show, edit a cut of one song and project it onto canvas screens set up on a stage. Chris asked for nothing from me but advice as to how best to pull that off. I suggested that instead of using the existing footage from the show that we invite the band to a studio and shoot them on green screen. Then instead of video recording a light projection (which would be difficult to do correctly) we do a post-production composite of the screens on a stage with the green screen footage.

Fixing it in post

Chris scheduled the shoot and booked the studio, I borrowed an HD camera and we shot the band, stage and screen. We also shot the screens in public places around Baltimore, supporting the idea that the band is Baltimore-based. The band was told that the video would be available in a few weeks.

A couple weeks into my post production, watching playbacks of my composite I found the concept didn’t support the song. The driving force of the music was completely juxtaposed by the stillness of the image of canvas screens sitting on the stage. This video was going to be painfully boring to watch for four minutes and ten seconds. I stopped working on the video for six months.

Stop! Animate!

This past July I borrowed my friend Ben’s Sony Handycam to work on a small personal project. While I had it in my possession I tried out some techniques that I was curious about. Namely how to do a faux stop animation of paper elements on a desk. In my tests I reached for some placeholder footage from the J Roddy folder.

I decided that this could actually be an interesting method of presenting the band while they performed their song. I presented the idea to Chris who basically told me that the band had apparently completely forgotten about our promise and to just do whatever I wanted.

Below is the completed project. I’m happy with it for the most part and wish that I could look at it objectively. Enjoy.

The Volume of Music on My computer

17.52 GB (did I just say that!?)

The last CD I bought was

Actually not a CD, I got the album from the iTunes Music Store. Les Sans Culottes, Faux Realism.
Radical 60′s French pop. This band is originally from NY, though the thick French accent during spoken English intros tell a different tale. Before that, I think it was The Essential Johnny Cash.

Song playing right now

Up On The Hill (Traditional), Ween
When I was younger, my mamma told me, she said Gener, I wanna smell it. And then she smelled it and it was smelly and I say Lordy, Lordy, Lord I’m comin’ home

Five songs that mean a lot to me

Tom Waits Jesus Gonna Be Here.
I don’t know if this is a traditional gospel or not but Tom takes my breath away with a simple four chord progression arranged on nothing but stand-up bass, foot taps, two sustained A notes from a slide acoustic (played by Keith Richards, if I’m not mistaken) and his beautifully gravel voice. Sort of the inspiration for my own When the Hell is Jesus Coming Back!? For my money, his trademark “drunken-alleyway scat” doesn’t get better than in the first four bars of this baby.

Frank Zappa The Closer You Are.
My dad was a fan. He put that Yellow Snow epic on one snowy morning and something clicked with me and Frank. I can’t stand listening to endless guitar solos though. I suppose I’m missing what is great about them and that makes me inferior to you, but Frank’s ability to arrange entire sections of vocalists and instruments was extraordinary. Again, I may be mistaken, but I don’t think Frank could read or write muscial notation. Overnight Sensation has got to be my favorite (many a childhood hour was spent staring at the psychadelic album art). The man was truly a visionary and scholar, much more than your modern-day rockstar could hope to be.

The Dead Milkmen Big Deal.
I remember getting the Stoney’s album at Newberry Comics in New Hampshire and listening to it all the way through on the way back to my girlfriend’s parent’s house. Later, while practicing the drums to the album (ah, memories) the line, “You’re late for your class, you’re walkin the halls without a pass- big deal!” suddenly grabbed me. Big Deal was my anthem during that 18th year of my life, the year, coincidentally, I dropped out of high school in 11th grade and picked up a pretty healthy weed habit and was arrested (the first time). While some people will tell you that this is the worst DM album, I think it’s totally awesome. Crystalline, The Blues Song (he’s right about white people and tampons), Like to be Alone – Hello!? Just because it doesn’t sound like Tiny Town doesn’t mean it’s not awesome, Sutter!

The Dead Milkmen All Around The World.
Sorry to pick the same band again, but these guys were such a part of my development that they’ve become integrated into who I am and how I think. Sort of like a tree that grows too close to a barbed-wire fence. Joe’s intimate vocals ride over top of simple, bouncing, echoey synths. His accent is so Philadelphian and there’s never any attempt to cover it up proving that you can be punk at 80 bpm. The album fairly-well winds its way around conspiracies, UFOs, the meaning of life and Shaft. This one for me is the stand-out. I know about the UFOs, I know about the mind-control. I know some things I know I shouldn’t know.

Ben Rush Matthews All of the Fullness.
Ben’s my buddy, buddy boy. If anyone’s heard You Can’t Help Me (also known as the screaming guy song)- you’ve heard him play drums. I met him at a party when I was 19. He was sitting on the floor playing guitar in a gym shirt that had breasts painted onto it, his head was mostly shaved except for two long, unwashed bangs that hung nearly into his eyes. I passed him the joint, he denied. I later learned that he was 14 at the time. I started to record with him a couple of months later. He’s an incredible musician because he goes with what comes to him. There’s no composition! This is the song. You’ll notice that its just him and a mic and a four track. That’s one of the things that Ben very slowly taught me. That you can work all day to make something sound great, like the best it can be, and you can do takes until its so tight that air couldn’t get in, but in the end, you’ve lost the record of the event. I suppose I was more into making records and he was more into making music (maybe the other way around?). Right now he’s living in Arizona with his wife (my wife’s cousin) working as a blacksmith apprentice. Like I said, this guy’s awesome.

Five people who are getting this baton from me

Sutter, Dean Clean (mister boom-diddy-clang), Kevin Cornell, Brendon Small and Jeremy Hedley.