My brother from another mother

Big brother Bob singing Capt’n Kirk

When things get a bit too stressful, I like to listen to Bob Schneider. Not just New Bob with his fancy web site and eclectic philosophical songs. I also love the raunchier parental-advisory party-band songs from his (continuing) stints with Ugly Americans and The Scabs.

It’s relaxing, partly because I like to think of Bob as the older brother I never had. The cool kind that lived by his own rules, always had attractive girlfriends, and would try to teach me guitar (on one of his older backup instruments, of course). I’m going to have to complain to our fantasy mom, though, because Bob doesn’t ever write or visit anymore.

Amy and I were first introduced to Bob courtesy of TiVo recording Austin City Limits in the wee hours. He just did a 30-minute set (TV time) but it was very impacting, with most of the songs from his new-at-the-time Lonelyland album. We saw him twice on stops in Bloomington’s Bluebird and again up in Chicago. Before that concert, Bob stopped outside to chat with us while waiting for his ride to dinner and gave Amy—VERY pregnant with Archie at the time—some gum. I also got to see him in Portland while at CHI 2005, but it has been a while since Bluebird has been on the tour schedule.

We missed one shot at seeing him locally back in 2003, but it came at a very inconvenient time. Amy was a day away from a hospital trip to give birth to our second son, Archie. Had he managed to be born the day Fantasy Big Brother was in town singing, Archie would probably be Bob Makice, as we would have taken that as a sign. Instead, we’ll have to take comfort in the knowledge that the high-tech fanbase and technologically open-minded singer allowed that particular concert to be captured as streaming video on Bob Schneider Live, which stopped doing this media treatment later that year. My favorite song was on of the playlist that night, although Bob has never topped the version he performed on Austin City Limits in 2001.

Long before Radiohead was breaking conventions by allowing fans to “pay what they want” for when downloading their music, Bob Schneider was making use of CD burners and quality sound recordings to create on-demand concert CDs—called Frunk, for “fresh and funky”—for fans attending his concerts. We have two such CD sets floating around the house. Bob is now selling his songs through MySpace and the SNOCAP widget, a project our own IU School of Informatics HCI grad Matt Weldon has been working on for the past year.