Boebbel
After having been a band member of Zak & Boebbel and Oezem , Belgian multi-instrumentalist Boebbel decided to start a career as
a solo comedy rock performer around 1973.
He turned himself into a true phenomenal one-man orchestra,
performing songs, monologues, poetry, short plays and instrumentals. He accompanied himself on guitar or
selfmade instruments such as the 'sitared
guitar' or the 'klopmöbel' , a percussion set that was an amazing complex of mainly small
idiophones. By means of an ingenious
tube construction, he was even able to perform a percussion solo and a
trumpet solo at the same time! He
really had a very personal way of singing, which could be described as a
peculiar mix of howling and growling.
His instrumental and vocal interventions were weird but inventive,
such as alpenhorn solos, gurgle laughs, or bicycle seat wah-wah
playing. And what to think about flamenco
guitar arpeggios accompanied on castanets, both being played at the same
time by means of a set of strings around the wrist! Occasionally he was accompanied by a
backing group called SCHROKTEPEL,
with Marc Van Hove on drums and Dirk Bogaerts on guitar . They wrote comedy rock history with
their legendary Waag Concert of 28 December 1973.
Boebbel's main objective was to make people laugh or shock
them. The lyrics of his songs dealt
with masturbation, transvestism, sadism, paedophilia etc…, and it often
happened that one of his performances was stopped by local
authorities. Together with sax
player Paul Van Laere he therefore decided to found the jazzrock band Psychotone around 1980 . However, the
people who saw him perform will never forget songs like House of
the Lepers , Pustule Rock 'n Roll , The Unrelenting Masturbator , The
Workman , Embryo Blues , The Impotent Phlegm , The Flying Turd Song , Blond Theo , The Chicken Screwer , or Leave My
Dick Alone...
Some tapes of bootleg quality from rehearsals and live performances
are circulating around, so if you're lucky you just might pick up one of
these recordings. Some of the
rehearseal tapes are just one long improvisation from the beginning till
the end, as this was one of Boebbel's unorthodox ways of composing or
constructing a song. After his
career as a musician, Boebbel
became a famous assemblage sculptor under the pseudonym of Ribley!
[ see also Zak & Boebbel , Psychotone , Ribley! ]
