The year is 1991.  Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, and Nirvana top the charts at the cresting tsunami of the "Grunge" movement.  People wear plaid flannels and Doc Martens.  The music industry is changed forever.  Everwhere, the aftershock of the meteoric rise to stardom of these slackers and hessians from Seattle are being felt.  Music is new and exciting.  These are times of upheaval.

     In the small coastal town of Sunset Beach, North Carolina, six friends were ignoring all of this and making horrible noises.

     Acoustic guitar.  Bass.  Viola.  Slide whistle.  POts and pans.  Screaming.  These were the weapons of choice for the most improptu, least organized, horribly unnoficial joke band never to be properly recorded.  They called themselves "bob Spelled Backwards" because they thought that it was horribly clever.  It wasn't.  They sang purposefully and masterfuuly out of tune because they thought that it was horribly clever.  It wasn't.  They ate lots of sugar. 

    But something terrible happened that year.

     Bob Spelled Backwards wrote funny songs.

     Discovering a hidden penchant for six to eight part harmony and scathing satire blended fitfully into catchy little psuedopsychedelic folk rock ditties, interspersed with a healthy dose of useless and irritating noise, the seminal cult heroes produced the now nearly inaudible "BOB 1: WASITACATISAW".  It was recorded in a matter of grueling minutes into a condenser microphone on a cheap boom box, directly onto low quality cassette tape.

     Meanwhile, they tried to have a summer vacation at the beach. 

    Parents were annoyed.  Sunburns were peeled.  The summer ended, and the friends went their separate ways.  Tapes were copied and given to friends.  Who gave them to their friends. Who copied them and passed them on.  The phenomenon grew.  Bob's target audience of misfits had been found, and hooked. 

Bob was hooked too.  In 1992, They did it again, Losing original pots and pans drummer Chad Edwards and gaining multiracial multi-instrumentalist Joshua O'Connor.  "Bob 2: What price perfection, what Price Pfister, What Price BOB?"  Was by the last record's standards a masterpiece.  Featuring samplers, melodica, electric guitars, harmonica and found instruments in addition to Bob's now classic sound, it was a look at the begginings of an incredibly prolific group of musical friends making the transition from Joke Band to "Real, but hilarious band". 

    By 1993, Bob had firmly established themselves.  To themselves.  Producing a Bob 2.5 "NOBOB like SNOBOB", a Bob 3, Bob 4, Bob 4.5 LIVE at Aycock Auditorium, and a BOB 5 they penned, and then badly recorded, nearly one hundred songs.  In what was the total sum equivalent of their entire career in practice, writing, recording, and performance: LESS THAN 6 weeks. 

    Six weeks, and BOB had become a cult sensation with loyal fans at rare shows, and with bad bootlegs distributed grassroots style while eagerly awaiting the next episode.  Of course, this journey of six weeks had taken 6 years to complete.  But BOB was always bucking current trends. 

     And then they were gone.