Coachella Round Up - Day Two!

Saturday morning came bright and early with the promise of lots more fun, fun, fun! The whole Yo Gabba crew headed down to the show together. Muno made sure he rested up a lot in the VIP area because seeing cool bands and meeting new friends in the raddest concert festival in the world is really hard!


Brobee ran into his old pal, Giovanni Ribisi and his daughter Lucia! Giovanni is an actor and was in some big movies! Even some of the biggest ever! He was super cool and Brobee was a happy camper. What a great way to start out the day!


Toodee was meeting new friends of her own. Here she is sneaking in a little kiss with Temper Trap singer, Dougie Mandagi! Can you blame the guy? Toodee is such a cutie!


Then it was time for the whole gang to take a stroll across the fairgrounds. They met a lot of new friends on the way who wanted to take pictures with them.


The whole crew wandered down to the Record Shop tent and just happened to run into our friend, Mark Mothersbaugh who was doing a signing with his band, Devo! Plex even got to sport a blue energy dome! Everybody, it's a good thing!


After that, Muno talked everybody else into taking a ride on the Ferris Wheel! (I think it was actually called the "Giant Wheel", probably due to some copyright laws)


Here's a better view of Muno waving to everybody. You could see for MILES from up there!


After that, Plex took a quick trip to the ATM machine. He wanted to check his balance before buying some T-shirts and was surprised to find that it printed out a fan letter! Apparently they have basic cable in ATM land as well.


So everyone headed back to the Artist Lounge to meet more of their trailer neighbors. See, all the friends they made Friday had moved on and so they had a whole slew of new friends to make! Here is Plex meeting a girl named Beth Ditto who sings in a band called The Gossip. She was super funny and made Plex LOL all over the place.


Then Plex walked over over and met this guy, Claudio Sanchez who sings for Coheed and Cambria. He was super friendly and had amazing hair. (Plex sure wished he could grow hair at all, but that's against the Official Robot Code of Conduct).


Meanwhile, Brobee was out rubbing shoulders with celebrities (does Brobee have shoulders?) and he was thrilled to meet Mr. Danny Devito! Now, Brobee is too young to remember Taxi or Twins, but he was just excited to meet someone his same height!


Muno got to meet Imogen Heap who was wearing a really cool hat! She was really nice and Muno invited her to come to Gabbaland some time. Wouldn't that be fun?


Suddenly, Brobee met up with King Khan who is in a band called King Khan and The Shrines! He was super awesome, and he loves Yo Gabba Gabba like so much! We became instant BFF's (that stands for Best Friends Forever, dontchaknow?). This wouldn't be the last we'd see of King Khan!


Meanwhile, Muno lent a hand to all the hard working roadies back behind the Outdoor Stage. They were loading up equipment for Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros who totally rocked!


Toodee agreed, as she enjoyed the set on the other side of the stage, dancing with the hippies!


She felt a little bad afterwards, so she agreed to move some equipment around for Hot Chip.


Back at the Artist Lounge, Brobee was so excited to run into some of his old friends - Gaspard from Justice, Andrew VanWyngarden of MGMT and Christian Jacobs from The Aquabats!


Andrew asked Christian to sign his jeans...


...and it looks like YGG loves MGMT!


...and vice versa! The circle of love is complete!


Then Brobee ran into Paul Walker who also is a big hollywood actor! Not to mention a nice guy! They shared a few laughs about something or another.


Suddenly, Brobee felt a rumbly in his tumbly, so he headed over to the Cafeteria and loaded up on some healthy treats! Yes, there was a party in his tummy for sure.


Now he had the energy to go out and watch Muse, who were amazing! It was a good thing the show was outside, because they would have totally torn the roof off of the place! Great job, guys!


Brobee and Foofa totally loved it!


And of course, the evening ended with an amazing set from Devo! They were incredible!!


What an amazing day it was Saturday! What would Sunday hold in store for the Yo Gabba Gabba gang? We would soon find out!

Super Rad Photo

DJ Lance with the Aquabats in concert. SLC, Utah

Photo by Scott Barlow

Gooble's Origin

As promised, the following is a little background behind Gooble, the ghostlike mysterious Yo Gabba Gabba character.

Artistically, Gooble's origin began with a song off of the Aquabats 1999 "Vs. The Floating Eye of Death" album called, "Monster's Wedding" The song itself is a ghost story; not unlike Tim Burton's 2005 film, The Corpse Bride. In the song, there is a foreboding ghost's voice saying, "you must go". That ghost's name was Obakemon (which translates to "ghost-man" in Japanese).

I did the graphic design for the "Floating Eye of Death" album and I knew that Obakemon would be a real fun character to illustrate for the inside lyric booklet. Of course, he is what he is in the song, a ghost man. I designed him to emulate the style of my brother Christian's signature red cyclopses that he used to doodle all over the place--which eventually became Muno (but that's another story). In promotion of the album, Obakemon later found himself on Aquabats t-shirts, stickers and jackets. They were mostly glow-in-the dark, cuz you know, he's a ghost!

I really dug Obakemon's sad clown look of misery with his candy red lips. I don't know why, but for some reason it visually appealed to me. When I was working at Paul Frank Industries, I had an Obakemon messenger bag custom made for me that I carried around for years and years.

So then, I believe in 2004, Christian & Scott invited me (with a few others) to the first working Yo Gabba Gabba concept meeting. It was then that they pitched the idea of developing a TV project other than The Aquabat Super Show. This was going to be a character based kids show but pulling from what we had already built in the Aquabats universe. I thought it was a great idea to put some of these characters to better use. Muno, Brobee and Gooble are all characters that have Aquabat roots.

We changed Obakemon's name to Gooble because we liked how it sounded. Besides, Obakemon? American kids don't like them Japanese names fer stuff! They like Yu-Gi-Oh! and Pokemon and Apple pie stuff like that!

My job as graphic dude was to help flesh out the early concepts for a pitch. This was Gooble #1:



OK so several years later, we end up making the show. We settle on the 5 main characters, because we just didn't have it in the first season budget to make more! Gooble did survive in a couple of scripts as a minor role, but now he had to be animated. This made me sad because I thought he would look really cool as a live action character.

But then my favorite mistake happened. In the process of making one of the Muno costumes, there was an error, and Muno just didn't turn out right. We spent big dollars on this Muno we simply couldn't use. So, I made this proposal: we take the bad Muno costume, scrape off the bumps and remake it in a Gooble fashion.


...And it worked!


Here, in the episode aptly entitled, "Love", Gooble joins the rest of the cast in a touching rendition of, "Be Nice To Everyone". I personally think this is one of the weirdest moments of Yo Gabba Gabba...and I LOVE it!

The Aquabats Ricky Fitness Remix

Yo Gabba Gabba Drum


I thought this was kind of fun!

The Aquabats! Live with DJ Lance Rock in NYC

Are you ready New York?

The Aquabats!, DJ Lance Rock
Blender Theater at Gramercy , New York, NY
Wed, Feb 13, 2008 07:00 PM



Here's are some clips of what you can expect.

From DJ Lance Rock!:

And The Aquabats!:



Go here to get your tickets-------> *Ticketmaster* before it sells out!
We hope to see you there!

DJ LANCE ON TOUR WITH THE AQUABATS

In case you haven't heard, DJ Lance Rock is hitting the road with a live DJ set opening for The Aquabats! He goes on first around 8 - 8:30 out of consideration for your little ones. Also on the tour is Hunter Revenge (Hunter of AFI's Prince-inspired side project).


November 26.......El Corazon ..............Seattle, WA
November 27.......Wonder Ballroom .........Portland, OR
November 28.......Slim's...................San Fransisco, CA
November 29.......Downtown Brew............San Luis Obispo, CA
November 30.......The Glass House..........Pomona, CA
December 1........The Marquee Theatre......Tempe, AZ
December 8........SOMA.....................San Diego, CA

For more details, please call your local venue.