“We about to boogie, turn it up.” If you know me, you’ve heard these words. Often used as a call and response, with me shouting ‘we about to boogie’ and the audience responding with ‘turn it up,’ these lyrics have shaped my social interactions over the past almost two years. Additionally, instead of saying something that makes sense when faced with a challenge, sometimes I’ll just utter ‘we’re about to boogie’ and dive in head-on. These lyrics are from “Friday Night,” a hit song off the quintessential The Whole Theory, by none other than Bobby. The year was 2018. Sophia, our momager and best friend, had just gotten an Amazon Alexa. We were immediately intrigued by its ability to find obscure songs, and began throwing random names at it until we found something good. This method is actually how we came across Jonathan, our first official interviewees, in December of 2017. Anyway, Sophia and I deliberated, collaborated, and group-thought, and eventually settled on telling Alexa to play songs by Bobby. And Alexa delivered. “Friday Night”, in Sophia’s words, “is uncomfortable” and “urges the listener to turn it off immediately.” (Orem 1) Another friend, upon listening to “Friday Night,” said she felt like she was “listening to two songs playing on top of each other” and asked me if she was dissociating. “Friday Night” is an ode to parties -- bumping and grinding, drinking fourteens (did he mean forties?), smelling that perfume. Bobby proudly proclaims that the weekend is “going to be a good one.” It’s intriguing, to say the least. Funny enough to keep on for the first 45 seconds and then skip. And while Sophia’s Bobby Essay (2018) is incredibly insightful, it leaves out two important questions -- What is ‘the whole theory?’ And who, exactly, is Bobby? I’m your host, Liah A, and this is my deep dive into Bobby. PART 1: The Whole Theory The Whole Theory is an album about nights out. Bobby, along with his bandmates Quiche, Jerry Soto, and David Seape, explore themes of love, lust, partying, and living life to the fullest. Although little information can be found on this album, it has its own Wikipedia page, and was reportedly supposed to feature Ice Cube. Frustratingly enough, the aforementioned Wikipedia page contains no reference articles. However, it does contain a link to the personal Wikipedia page of Bobby. Either Bobby is very media-literate, despite having no media presence, or he has one lonely fan just trying to show the world what Bobby is all about. Two Amazon reviews of The Whole Theory call Bobby “a bad singer, keyboardist, and cartoonist” and “not unique.” The other one tells Bobby to “stick with the [sic] ballots.” For the purposes of this article, we are assuming the reviewer meant to say ‘ballads.’ It’s not looking good for Bobby. His Amazon reviewers are trash-talking him. His Wikipedia page for The Whole Theory is basically a dead end. If you look up DaFont Records, the label that released The Whole Theory, Bobby is the only result that comes up. We must continue the search for Bobby by examining The Whole Theory itself. Bobby has other releases, as listed on his Wikipedia page. However, The Whole Theory is the most essential to this quest, being that it is the most well-known of Bobby’s records. The Whole Theory gives us insights into Bobby’s mental landscape, as well as his relationships with his bandmates. The one question that the album fails to answer, however, is its own title. What is the whole theory? The album can barely be seen as theoretical or philosophical at all -- it’s all about having a good time. The only illusion or conspiracy or moral dilemma is found in the ambiguity of the album cover itself. Bobby, or who we presume to be Bobby, is posed in front of an object that is either an elephant nose or a microphone. It’s hard to tell which, though, considering the block-lettering of the album’s title covers most of the image. Sophia and Alli both consider the object to be an elephant nose, however, Bobby being a singer, I choose to believe that it is a microphone. The Whole Theory opens with an interlude. This is uncommon. It’s a bold creative decision, for sure. On “Crazy (Interlude),” Bobby beckons us into the album by repeatedly asking “where you at, baby?” The rest of the album follows the same theme -- the environment of one crazy weekend out. It’s been done before. I could probably name about ten artists who have written albums over the span of a night or a weekend, telling the events to the audience through songs. Bloc Party did it excellently on A Weekend in the City. Metronomy did it fantastically on Nights Out. Bobby, on The Whole Theory, did not achieve any of the same praise and energy that the above artists did. The popularity bars next to the songs on Spotify, showing how many times the songs have been listened to, are all blank. Bobby is a mere speck of dust in the musical landscape. And this just makes him, and his music career, all the more intriguing. PART 2: Bobby Now that we’ve investigated The Whole Theory, it’s time to take a look at the legend himself: Bobby. According to his Wikipedia page, Bobby’s full name is Robert C “Bobby” Miller. He was born in Chicago in 1966, making him approximately 53 years old. Googling “Bobby Miller musician” leads us to a few interesting sources -- one being a Prince cover band called The Purple Madness. Upon finding this source, I freaked out. Could this be the Bobby Miller? Alli and Sophia both shut me down. However, we might just have a lead. Upon investigating this Bobby Miller, I quickly found that he is not our guy. This Bobby Miller was born in Florida and has lived there ever since. Not our guy. After scrolling through exactly two pages of Google, I found it: a photo of Bobby. Our Bobby. Not the Prince impersonator Bobby. Bobby looks cheerful, leaning against a railing on a staircase on a sunny day outside a building in what I assume is Chicago. This is our guy: happy and carefree, just being Bobby. Bobby has an AllMusic biography. It was written by Jason Birchmeier. This, my friends, is a lead. Jason Birchmeier is a real person with a relatively uncommon name. If we want information on Bobby, this is our man. Now, Birchmeier isn’t a music reviewer anymore. I don’t want to give any more details on this guy out of respect for his privacy, but he’s a businessman, and a successful one at that. So, I did what any good investigative journalist would do. I contacted him. And now we wait. Birchmeier… never responded. So, it was time to try to find Bobby’s bandmates. Jerry Soto passed away in 2005. Quiche would be incredibly hard to find, so I’m not even going to try. That leaves us with David Seape. David Seape turned out to be a dead end, too: the only content that came up about him was directly related to Bobby. Bobby’s Wikipedia. Birchmeier’s AllMusic review. A bunch of weird information sites in different languages: German, French, Turkish, Mandarin. At this point, I felt like I was going in circles. My hands were sweaty. This was all a bit too eerie: why was there no information on any of these people? Who is Bobby? Where is Bobby? After a moment of thought, I went back to the first page of Google and found a LinkedIn profile under the name “BMillerMusicGroup” based out of Chicago. So, I made a LinkedIn page. Don’t follow it. I thought I had done it. I thought I had it all worked out. It turns out, you need LinkedIn Premium to message someone, and as dedicated as I am to finding Bobby, I’m not paying for that. In desperation, I returned to Bobby’s Wikipedia. Lyon and Healy’s School of Music does not exist. Although Lyon and Healy is based out of Chicago, it’s not a music school at all: it’s an instrument manufacturer. Intercept Records, like Dafont records, does not exist, and never did. Chi-Town Ballin’ seems to have never existed as well. Wanda Rash, who Bobby drummed for, passed away in 2014. Marshall Jones of the Ohio Players, Bobby’s greatest influence, passed away in 2016. Ralph Middlebrooks of the Ohio Players passed away in 1997. Googling Bobby collaborator Terry World leads you to an Amazon link for “The Big Butt Book.” It’s all lies and quite literal dead ends. What the hell is going on? And then, I found it. A Lead. S. Torriano Berry. Berry is a filmmaker and a professor at Howard University. He has a relatively active Facebook page. Knowing the elusive, ambiguous nature of the claims on Bobby’s Wikipedia, I take into account that Bobby may never collaborated with Berry at all. Besides, I feel a bit uncomfortable Facebook messaging someone to get information on a long-ago possible collaborator who may not even exist. I looked up The Enbalmer, the S. Torriano Berry horror film Bobby reportedly recorded the music for. He’s not in the credits. The music in the film is accredited to Berry himself. S. Torriano Berry is yet another dead end. I am moments away from concluding that Bobby does not exist, and is merely a figment of our collective imaginations. Conclusion When I started writing this article, I hoped to be a small-scale Shane Dawson with just a 2013 MacBook Air, a Spotify account, and an internet connection. I wanted to find Bobby, interview him, show the world what he’s made of. I wanted to take this blip in the history of music and humanize him, make him relatable, find out what he’s doing today, get some insight on his music. However, all I found were dead ends, showing that a blip in the radar is sometimes just that: a blip in the radar. Bobby will forever be an enigma. The only known information about Bobby is what I have laid out for you in this article. All of the other Bobbys under the Spotify name ‘Bobby’ are probably just the same. Thank you for reading this article. It’s the pilot episode of a series on lost artists like Bobby. Through BLIP, I hope to shine light on artists who, at first glance, appear to be simply specks of dust lost to the grand scheme of the music world. Please listen to Bobby. Or don’t. It’s not like you’re really missing anything.
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About The AuthorLiah is a high school senior who plays guitar and loves the color yellow. She doesn't post much, but when she does, it's awesome. We promise.
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