Altered Zones

By Jenn Pelly

MP3: Bobb Trimble: "Live Wire"

What does it even mean to be an "outsider" musician in 2011? There's no denying that in 1983, when the little-known Worcester, MA songwriter Bobb Trimble recorded The Crippled Dog Band with a group of local 15-year olds, the answer was very different than it is at our Internet-driven present, when music's biggest pop-freaks are being chaperoned around by label reps and MTV funds a program called Weird Vibes. Musicians once pushed to the fringes now pedal their wares to niche markets, which is cool, but the proliferation of off-kilter sounds can make it increasingly difficult to distinguish actual outsiders from contrived ones.

Enter Bobb Trimble, the '80s psych musician who today celebrates his 53rd birthday, and has often been described simply as "real." And rightfully so. Though he's generated a cult following and influenced such rock and pop innovators as Thurston Moore and Ariel Pink-- with original pressings of his impossible-to-find LPs going for upwards of $1,000-- his influence remains generally obscure. (Ask your average Pitchfork Generation music fan about Worcester bands, and they'd be more likely to point to shaggy-haired party kids making slick pop-rock.) But a set of 2007 reissues from the Bloomington label Secretly Canadian-- 1980's Iron Curtain Innocence and 1982's Harvest of Dreams-- put his name on the American weird music map. At a time when the "Wormtown" scene was perhaps best known for its punk bands, Trimble's early albums offered emotionally raw psych-folk and pop-- pinned by his feminine falsetto and ghostly electronic washes, and influenced primarily by The Monkees and The Beatles. "Dear John, Paul, George and Ringo," read the Iron Curtain Innocence liner notes. "If I'm a good boy and work real hard, may I please be the 5th Beatle some day?"

That makes The Crippled Dog Band, with its '60s garage and proto-punk sounds, even more of an unexpected masterpiece. Book-ended by "Intro" and "Outro" tunes that use video game sounds to replicate alien noise, Crippled Dog is perfectly unpolished rock-and-roll that, at turns, could make you dance or cry. Many of these songs could have appeared on Jac Holzman and Lenny Kaye's 1972 Nuggets compilation, and they would have been easy highlights. The dark, thick guitar hooks that lead "Camel Song" make the track something anyone who likes bluesy power-rock could dig, and the same goes for "Undercovers Man," where Trimble sings, "I don’t know if I will live or die,/ I'll shoot myself right in the eye" with a fiery falsetto, and later, "My mother told me not to play with guns, / but I think they are so damn much fun."

Brutal both lyrically and sonically, these tracks are a far cry from the pretty pop Trimble put out two years earlier-- especially with his updated sing-shout vocal style-- but his emotional candour is as magnetic as ever. One case in point is album highlight "Live Wire," a sad but fast-paced rocker where Trimble sings with double-layered vocals, "You're always trying to make me cry cr-cry cry cry / I refuse to sacrifice my whole life." Another is the burning-but-catchy "Fight Or Fall / Screw It," a vaguely political song full of references to bloody war in Lebanon, Vietnam and Japan. When Trimble tells us his "world is spinning round," and calls for "fighting to stop," he could be singing today.

Although not a straight-ahead cover, it's hard to doubt that album anthem "All Together Now" ("It’s a Crippled Dog Anthem / Ruff ruff, ruff ruff") is an unabashed Beatles tribute. Upbeat and silly, with refrains like "1, 2, 3, 4 / Can I have a little more," it speaks to the Crippled Dog members' young years, and leads to a covered sampling of the Lennon/McCarthy track. It's two minutes of unassuming and carefree innocence, paralleled by Trimble's initial indifferent attitude towards the album: when his band fell apart after the pressing of the LP, he allegedly dropped all 500 copies in a dumpster.

"The interest that has been generated is beyond what's even believable to me at this point," Trimble told The Guardian in 2007. Today he continues to live alone in Massachusetts, working as a deliveryman for a catering company; he has no computer. Which raises another question: is it great that the Internet has allowed us to spread information on Trimble? Or is Trimble’s music great because he's never had it?

Crippled Dog Band is out now on Yoga Records