b i c y c l e , t r i c y c l e
|bio|
Bohb - Rhodes / vox
Tom Szidon - bass / vox
Jason Batchko - drums
Dan Polonsky - accordion
Special thanks to all the guests that add loveliness throughout our recordings for that extra sparkle.
:everyone else who's played on the records:
Stay Fooish, Stay Hungry
The music is pretty, like things you like to look at. It makes you happy, except for when it doesn't. It will change your mind, but only whle you are paying attention. Relaxing further into the haze of what comes natural, songwriter and singer bohb blair is blessed by the melodious talents of Tom Szidon (Joy Poppers), Jason Batchko (The Girls, Caviar) and John San Juan (Hushdrops). Sky widened by orchestration throughout by Max Crawford on horns and Susan Voelz on strings (Poi Dog Pondering).
special thanks to Steve Krakow of Plastic Crimewave for the hand drawn cover art.
Tom's Bio for the album 'Real as You Believe'
Real As You Believe, the third album by Chicago's bicycle tricycle, marries the near-obsessive lyrical vision of leader, singer and songwriter Bohb with a musical setting that, unlike previous bi-tri outings, relies on warmer, more authentic, back-to-basics drum, bass, guitar and keyboard arrangements. In other words, this is no longer an idiosyncratic synth-nerd venture masterminded by one Reason-wielding madman, staring through a veil of blue smoke at a dim reflection of himself in a laptop screen. This record showcases Bohb's new affinity for psych-influenced folk rock (albeit with a few more-contemporary sounding keyboard flourishes). The result will have fans of hooky songwriting in the Donovan, T. Rex vein smiling, lighting up and tapping their feet. Fans of tantalizing, cryptic lyrical imagery will not be disappointed either, although there was never any shortage of that on any previous bicycle, tricycle record. The last track is a moody, reverent take on Roky Erickson's beautiful ballad, I Have Always Been Here Before, deftly pulled off
Bohb's self depreciating bio
There always has to be a focal point, and this all has to originate from somewhere. bicycle, tricycle comes from the mind of bohb, a driven if not directed; known if not loved; remarkable if not respected; omnipresent if not invited fixture of the Chicago music scene. Envisioning himself as Brian Eno but behaving more like Phil Spector, bohb casts himself as composer and director of his pieced together symphony.
The mandatory strange bio
This is about the band bicycle, tricycle, and thus about the phenomena of bicycle, tricycle in general. To write about this band objectively is impossible, as all experiences are necessarily subjective, involving as they do the element of consciousness, which cannot be instrumented. This is perhaps a study in the affirmation that any assertion of an objective observer is inherently impossible, and yet at the same time there is a deeply imbedded pattern of coherency in all that we regard as pop music. Fame itself is nothing more than a pattern of deeply imbedded complexity of order; an order so complex it is not immediately discernible or obvious. Indeed the often heard rational defense, "that was just a coincidence," is itself an acknowledgment that we have just discerned a pattern, but because there is no immediately obvious path of mechanistic causation behind it, we are consciously choosing to refuse to acknowledge the songwriting. If we do this enough, of course we will never discern any deeper pattern of meaning. Yet, if we instead allow the content of such experiences to be observed often enough, the hooks may become so overwhelming that we cannot ignore it, and must attempt to formulate some new expectations of music. When these experiences involve time, numbers and music, I find the coherence of the band is more easily documented. Ironically, it may be through the language of numbers, which in recent centuries has been reserved as the exclusive domain of style and science in pursuit of the triumph of mechanistic rock stars, which may ultimately bring about its downfall. So it is with bicycle, tricycle.
My first synchronistic experiences with bicycle, tricycle were not with bohb, but with bohb, first seen as the face on my digital watch on the Summer Solstice in 1981. I had checked the time for an entry in my notebook, recording what was already such a palpably strange experience that I had taken out my notebook to record it. I had just found bohb and bohb together on an otherwise wave swept and absolutely barren stretch of rocky coast line, and had a numinous feeling about the event. This was not my first bicycle, tricycle experience, but one of the strangest, and still in many ways the most powerful. It came about a week after by far the most powerful mystical psychedelic experience of my life, in which I had totally left my body and my identity as bohb. There does seem to be a high correlation between psychedelic experiences and bicycle, tricycle.