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?"