Gob's Theo Gets A Chubby

I was nervous going into this interview.

After reading about Theo from Gob's exploits in our offices in the September 2000 issue of Chart, I honestly didn't know what to expect. When he calls, it gets worse. I am suddenly regaled with the fact that he has "a big boner." Theo has just woken up and was obviously suffering from an affliction men only know too well.

Apparently, Theo had been out until about three in the morning, since Gob is currently on the road for the Gob Goes Ape Shit Tour. Goes Ape Shit was the title originally selected for the current album, The World According To Gob, but they decided to play it safe and not risk the censor's wrath.

"We thought we'd probably have a problem with people being uptight about it and not having a sense of humour and whatever," says Theo. "We thought it would make sense more for the tour.

"I think the 'going ape shit' goes right up for our alley for tours and just for our shows. If you looked in the thesaurus under 'gob' it would say joyful, crazy, triumphant band and then comma, going ape shit."

Still, the tour has been living up to its name. While they've been able to avoid running over any wild life and there haven't been any accidents so far, there has been some destruction of property and playing shows in "shit stables," as Theo so eloquently puts it.

"Maybe we even played in the same stable Jesus was born," he speculates, then adds about venues in Saskatchewan: "I guess they have a lot of farm animals or something because the ground is stained with yellow manure."

They've already had a share of road stories. They played a banquet hall that looked like it was better suited to a wedding, but in typical fashion at a Gob concert there was some wonderful destruction.

"The kids broke a metal barrier right in half," he said. "We played 'Soda' and the barrier broke and the lights blew up and everything was chaotic. We've been having a lot of Spinal Tap episodes. We'd go on stage and guitars don't work and the monitors are going down while we're playing."

As for the Black Halos, the opening act for the Ontario leg of the tour, Theo says jokingly that the Halos will be saved from their pranks.

"They're good friends of ours. We were talking about having them on the tour quite awhile ago actually."

Gob haven't made any long-term plans for the summer. Theo did say that they have been approached to play the Calgary Stampede and possibly heading off down under to Australia in December. September might be the beginning of a bit of downtime for Theo since he'll be taking some time off to get leg surgery. The shit disturber's going to have to be off of his feet for four to six months.

The video for the first single off of The World According To Gob features the band locked in a soccer match with zombies. I mention to Theo that they could be sitting on a gold mine. This could translate into a video game, a kind of Resident Evil meets FIFA.

"It seems that every video we do has some action and adventure-type. Something's going on, almost like our videos are almost thriller-like," says Theo.