Monster Bobby
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Monster Bobby (1981-) is a solo performer and recording artist signed to the New York label Hypnote Recording Concern. He is also involved with the modern UK girl group The Pipettes.
Monster Bobby is one of the principal songwriters for the Pipettes, and is the guitarist for The Cassettes, their all-boy back-up musicians. He is frequently credited by the Pipettes both with developing the idea of a modern girl group, and with introducing the members of Pipettes to one another. He has been described as the group's "Concept Engineer" (to use Kodwo Eshun's terminology), but rejects any notion of "individual genius" in his role with the Pipettes, stating that "most of the most interesting music is made in such a collective fashion that it is very hard to assign individual responsibility".
Monster Bobby's solo work is a conceptual mix of electronic samples, offbeat songwriting and avant-garde intellectual influences, significantly different from the upbeat girl group pop of the Pipettes. To date, many of Monster Bobby's recordings have appeared as limited edition singles and on compilations[citation needed], though his debut album, scheduled for release in 2007, is to be made up of original material.
Since the late 1990s, Monster Bobby has run an irregular series of club nights, concerts, events and a fanzine called Totally Bored or "TB". The bands that were initially involved in TB included The Electric Soft Parade), British Sea Power, The Tenderfoot and The Eighties Matchbox B-Line Disaster, who were based around Mockin' Bird Studio, run by Marc Beatty, keyboardist in Tenderfoot and later, member of Brakes. It was in this milieu back in Brighton that the idea for the Pipettes was eventually conceived. Totally Bored eventually spread along with Monster Bobby's more "academic" interests to London's New Cross, where it grew into a zine and a radio show.
Monster Bobby's music claims to be as affected by Freud, Stockhausen and Derrida as it is by The Human League, The Archies and S'Express.