Fat Bobby is thrilled about his first trip to Vancouver. The keyboardist for Brooklyn's venerated art-rock mindbenders Oneida doesn't care that much for touring, but it does appeal to his epicurean desires. "I would hate being on tour," he explains, "except that it gives us the opportunity to eat the way that we can't eat in New York. You can't get real southern BBQ here. You can't get fried chicken like in the South." Though it comes as no surprise that a man named Fat Bobby is excited about authentic fried chicken, he's equally stoked to finally try our famed West Coast hippy kibble. He and his meat-eating bandmates are looking forward to a vegan meal prepared by a friend based in our city. "I'm open to anything," he claims. This could be in reference to his life as a musician as much as his life as a carnivore.

Oneida is a band that causes music journalists to combust from the exertion of capturing its essence in two or three pithy sentences. The word psychedelic invariably comes up, but the shape-shifting act is so catholic in its influences that each of its three albums seems to successively erase the one before. A fourth, The Wedding, should confound things further. "It's gonna shock a lot of people," he promises. "We've been working on this record for more than three years." Whether the finished product is still related to the idea that spawned it, Bobby can't say. "The idea was, let's build crazy machines and make music that sounds like the Zombies' Odyssey and Oracle, you know? I'm sure it doesn't sound like that but we tried." Notwithstanding that the Zombies never built any "crazy machines" to complete their late-'60s masterpiece, The Wedding sounds like a thrilling proposition. With the release of the new CD still two months away, Bobby is audibly tickled when he admits, "Traditionally the thing to do is release an album and then schedule a tour." His generous laugh points to a certain dorkiness. "We're morons when it comes to commerce," he confides.

Refreshingly, that dorkiness extends to Oneida's musical universe. Fat Bobby will talk about the Oblique Strategies cards employed by holy egghead Brian Eno but isn't above lavishing praise on AOR beard pioneers too. "I can envision times in my life when I want to put on Seals and Crofts," he insists. "It's fruity, soft rock from the dudes that were in the Champs! Am I gonna say this is no good? Of course not!" Distinguishing truth from irony is one thing, but Fat Bobby's parting challenge to Vancouver is another. Asked about the fabled "biggest music box on the East Coast", built by Oneida to record The Wedding, Bobby replies, "If nobody shows up and says they have a bigger one, I'm changing that to the biggest in North America!

"So bring your music box," he growls, "the bigger the better! We'll compare." You can show Oneida your box when it opens for hometown heroes and Jagjaguwar label mates Black Mountain at Richard's on Richards on Monday.

Georgia Straight, March 2005