| "One-man band"? Er, no. This gloriously clumsy deluge of overdubbed instruments was recorded in the cloistered bungalow of one Robert Zaprian Tchomoneff Vidoloff – an outsider renaissance man. Known -- or perhaps widely unknown -- as "Bob Vido," this eccentric immigrant might not have achieved fame during his lifetime, but it wasn't because he lacked ambition and creative impulses. He seethed with creativity -- artistic, literary, and musical.
With its glued-on postcards of original artwork, his homemade LP "One Man Band Bob Vido" is an exuberant yawp by a 60-year-old crackpot. The cover is slathered with paintings of UFO's and extraterrestrial dreamscapes, a photo and some strange writing that references his comic "The World Beyond" and his triumphantly strange book "Rhizology."
Emigrating from Bulgaria in the 1920s, Vido settled in a rancid section of Hollywood after WWII and began to paint, write and compose himself into a historical dustbin until his death in 1995. At various times he claimed to be a Nobel winner or a renowned lecturer, but in fact he was eking out a living as a portrait artist-for-hire. Delusions aside, his peculiar talents were real and his freakish melodies are contagious. A surprising number of his paintings have been discovered in recent years and can be viewed at www.bobvido.com, a site set up by Bob's foremost fan and historian.
Vido claimed to have worked as an industrial designer for Lockheed and Hughes, and judging from his airbrushing skill on some of his artwork, it’s a possibility. It is also rumored that he drew brochures for GMC trucks in the 1960s, and worked for Disney on several animated features, including Snow White, developing print cels. These allegations could be apocryphal. The original artwork that has turned up suggests that Vido had deep interests in outer space, mathematics and cosmology. He also wrote philosophy tracts, emptying his inkwell in the service of a half-dozen ideologies.
Besides the LP, Vido's existing musical legacy also includes a single featuring his take on two PD numbers: "Shine" and "Tiger Man" (a.k.a. "Tiger Rag"). |
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