Tune in, trip out

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This article was published 09/09/2010 (5827 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

JUST three years ago, you had to be a parent of a preschooler to have any clue what Yo Gabba Gabba ! was all about.

These days, the TV show’s funky-fresh, orange-clad host, DJ Lance Rock, and his five dance-happy friends Muno, Foofa, Brobee, Toodee and Plex seem to be everywhere, even partying with John Mayer at the Coachella Festival.

 

Just last week they appeared on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, where they boogied with the Roots and promoted the just-released CD Yo Gabba Gabba!: Music is Awesome Volume 2. There’s even a Yo Gabba Gabba! movie in the works.

The TV show’s surreal, ’70s-evoking appeal has spread to teens, college students and stoner-slackers who find it hilariously freaky. Devoted fans tune in to see what celebrity will pop up next on the trippy set, from famed chef Anthony Bourdain to skateboard god Tony Hawk to actress/comedian Amy Sedaris.

The list of musical guests that has gone Gabba includes Hot Hot Heat, Ladytron, MGMT, Datarock, Jimmy Eat World, Chromeo, the Flaming Lips, the Shins and the Ting Tings.

The creators have said that two of their dream guests would be actor Bill Murray and seminal post-punk band the Pixies.

Now Yo Gabba Gabba! Live!: There’s a Party in My City! comes to the MTS Centre at 6:30 p.m. on Sept. 15 (tickets $21.75, $32.50 or $49). The live concert, which is about an hour long including intermission, features DJ Lance Rock, the five creatures from Gabba Land, rapper/beatboxer Biz Markie and surprise musical and "dancey dance" celebrity guests.

The TV show and touring production are created by two Southern California friends, Christian Jacobs and Scott Schultz, who used to make skateboarding videos and play in bands (Jacobs is the lead singer of the punk-ska band the Aquabats).

When they both became parents about 11 years ago, Jacobs and Schultz found toddler TV lacking and decided to create a "more awesome" alternative that parents and tots could dig together. Jacobs told the Montreal Mirror that Yo Gabba Gabba! is "perfect for today’s dad, the alterna-dad, the dad that collects rare Japanese toys and Star Wars figures, and still listens to punk rock and old-school hip hop."

The Free Press recently spoke to Jacobs, 39, by phone at his home in Orange County.

 

FP: You and your co-creator have always been too nice to name the toddler TV shows that bored and frustrated you when you became dads. But what was it that bugged you about those programs?

CJ: Preschool television… had compartmentalized itself and said, "OK, this show is for this demographic, two- to four-year-olds, or this show is for three- to six-year-olds." …There was nothing, really, as a parent that kept me in the game. And there was nothing that really modelled the play pattern of a child that age, who has a very short attention span and is just going from one thing to the next, discovering. I thought a little less narrative and a little more all-over-the-place fun would be great.

 

FP: You two are not educators. Yet your show got picked up by Nickelodeon when hundreds, if not thousands, of programs devised by educational experts get rejected all the time. Why do you think Nickelodeon believed in your concept?

CJ: I’ve got to give credit to Brown Johnson, who was head of Nick Jr. at the time. She’s responsible for bringing in shows like Blue’s Clues and Dora the Explorer. She saw the vision of the show, and she’s been a big champion of it….

Also, the Internet helped immensely. We put a (self-financed) trailer out on the Internet and within a couple of days, we had two million hits. People were emailing the trailer around. Virally, it made its way onto the desk of Brown Johnson (forwarded by, among others, Jared Hess, director of Napoleon Dynamite). Having it validated by a couple of million people was definitely a good sign.

 

FP: We hear a lot about college students and stoners being into Yo Gabba Gabba. What do you think of its supposed popularity with the druggie crowd?

CJ: Well, it is very colourful…. When I was a kid, Pufnstuf had the same reputation. It’s this world that doesn’t exist, and yet you’d really like it to exist — it’s the ultimate sandbox.

 

FP: Yo Gabba Gabba incorporates a lot of life lessons about things like eating your veggies and getting along with others. The title of the live show, There’s a Party in My City! is a play on one of your best-known songs, There’s a Party in My Tummy! The idea of the song, and its animated video, is that healthy foods like green beans have heard there’s a party in the kid’s stomach, and they’re sad because they want to go. So that makes the kid eat them. Did that come from personal experience, and does it actually work?

CJ: We both have kids that didn’t want to eat vegetables, but Scott was the one that came up with that game. He would play it at the dinner table. That’s where most of the songs and music spring from, is our own experiences, things like, "Keep trying to put on your seatbelt," or "Don’t bite your friends."

All the time, parents will come up to me and say, "Thank you so much. I was having a problem with this, and (now) we always sing this song."

 

FP: You’ve said that you want the live show to be a "first concert" for kids. I know you’ve got rock-concert lighting and you encourage everybody to get up and dance. What else will people experience at the arena show?

CJ: Scott and I both come from live touring (backgrounds). Everything we always wished we could do at (our bands’) live shows — like drop thousands of balloons on the crowd, have bubble machines, shoot confetti cannons, have a giant screen playing videos behind the action — we’re able to pull together. We wanted to treat it like U2 going out on tour — an epic, exciting pop show.

 

FP: When all these guest actors and hip bands show up at your TV studio, they must have to go through a transition into a sort of childlike, innocently playful state.

CJ: That’s exactly right. That’s something we look for in the guests…. It’s not like we would take just anybody, any celebrity. They really have to have that kind of exuberance and enthusiasm and childlike zeal…. Jack Black, you could tell by something in his eyes, he was doing it for his two sons…. It’s that kind of energy that we look for.

alison.mayes@freepress.mb.ca