Bob Urh And The Bare Bones have released the sort of album that creeps up on you, bit by bit and catches you unaware. In the end you find yourself listening over and over to catch all the nuances. The band has an immediately identifiable style, yet no two songs on the album are alike. The overall style is skeletal in the sense that notes stand on their own; there is no clutter. Songs are sometimes feral, sometimes mysterious, always beautifully structured. Ry Cooder's country inflected blues style seems to have influenced the band, as has The Velvert Underground, perhaps Willy DeVille, and certainly The Stones. As expected, I have got very good responses from my listeners whenever I've played the album on my shows.Barb Wire WLUW 88.
7 Chicago...........................................................BOB URH biographyI was born under a bad sign on just another grey day in Cleveland, Ohio, 1963. Motown was big then so maybe 'love child' was blasting through a tiny speaker coming from an AM radio? The first single I bought was 'green tambourine' by the Lemon Pipers and I had a small 45 player that my mom says I used to dance around ―dressed like a Beatle ! Next thing that caught my attention was 'wipe-out,' and then a lot of county music like Hank Williams, Conway Twitty and Lorretta Lynn because of two hillbilly bars my family owned at this time. A few years later we were all listing to the Raspberries and the Outsiders. Then punk hit with the Dead Boys and that was it for me -I loved the bands that were playing in Akron and Kent, Ohio at this time, so I would make trips to these clubs to see the bands that made up the early punk scene there and would take a lot of pictures and hang out.
Things were getting out of control in my life in Cleveland so I left and went to Kent State university where I met the future other RAGGED BAGS at a place they ran called Garbage Inc.
, very democratic place, only 50 cents to enter and anybody could play ― not just punk bands, but bands that couldn't get gigs because of there more arty music and image. They also sold buttons with fresh food in them so you could watch it rot later!!! It was that kind of abstract stuff and tons of self published books of writing. I was in heaven !! I escaped death in Cleveland and found a new home were I was learning/ working with new friends. I did my first gig in Cleveland at a punk place called the Lakefront. We did a lot of improving quickly and did a 12 track recording and a filmmaker made a short movie about the band that had a great premier on Kent State campus. A lot of speed and gigs, as well as me having an attack of bells palsy, made me and the band more volatile. And at the point when I thought I wasn't happy but I should have been, I quit and moved to NYC, gave up playing forever and sold all my stuff except for my Vox tornado that Keith Busch sold me when in the Bags.
After seeing Richard Hell read some poetry in Chinatown and being a huge fan of Jim Carroll's 'I write your name,' I decided to start playing again and formed a loose 2 piece that got together for some weeks under the name CREAM COLORED BABYS. Also started working on a tune that would end up in the ULTRA 5 repertoire soon, called ALISTER'S TIME .
Speaking of the ULTRA 5, I worked with a couple musicians during the day and they knew of a new club in Brooklyn opening and needed bands and the drummer Bob Osuna asked if I would do it IF I had a band and I said yes IF, but I don't. The next day he came to work and says we're booked! What? We added John Chua on bass and my girlfriend Ariane Root on keyboard. This lineup would change many times over the years (10) but it was always BOB, ARIANE, and TARA with various drummers (14). The band began with three guys and one girl and ended with three girls ...
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