This week, Chicago is in for a treat. Bobby Conn, one of our finest local showmen, will re-create his 1998 album, “Rise Up!” in full. Over the past 13 years, Conn continued to crank out truly entertaining albums for Thrill Jockey, but in some ways, “Rise Up!” is perhaps his artistic zenith. It is Conn in conceptual, glam-rock full flower — simply, it is Bobby at his Bobby-est. The album is slinky, slick, strange and surprising in how truly funny it is. Local Sounds caught up with Conn last week while he was snowed in at his Humboldt Park home.
Q
It’s been 13 years since you wrote the memorable lines “United Nations / Under the rule of Satan!” Do you think the idea of “United Nations” still holds?
A
I wrote it as a reaction to Christian right-wing paranoia, that somehow our participation in the UN anticipates a coming one world government that leads us into the end times as predicted in Revelations. In ’97, there was a news story about a Christian fundamentalist serving in the U.S. Army who refused UN duty on religious grounds. I’m singing that song as the Anti-Christ, reprimanding him for refusing to serve. Of course, the right-wing paranoia of ’97 or ’98 is nothing compared to what we have now, after 9/11 and the election of Obama. Stephen Colbert has picked up where Bobby Conn left off.
Q
What were you under the influence of musically when you wrote “Rise Up”?
A
Lots of ’70s-era thrift store records. In the ’90s I was too poor to buy new records and I wasn’t interested in most of them anyway, so I really dug into the scratchy 25-cent LP bins at the Village Thrift. Lots of self-help records, Christian hippie rock, failed concept albums, bubblegum pop like the Sweet, prog rock, soul dusties — the Dells, the Dramatics — and singer-songwriter stuff like Harry Nilsson. All this was far more mysterious to me than the indie rock and alterna-rock that was popular at the time.
Q
Conceptually, what were you going for on “Rise Up?” Or, perhaps, going against?
A
I wanted to cut against the obsession with indie cred that I found so tiresome. I really don’t understand why people care about whether music or musicians are for real or not. Make it entertaining and exciting; the rest is just gossip! And I also wanted to cut against how macho a lot of Chicago music was in the ’90s. I’d rather confront people by being embarrassingly silly.
Q
“Rise Up!” is really grand. There is glam, there is some showbiz, some musical theatre, tragedy, melodrama, humor. Did it come out like that, intact? Did you work up a lot of material and trim until it fit your vision?
A
Now that I’ve made a bunch more records, I realize how special that session was. I made a four-track demo on cassette with most of the arrangements in place. Monica BouBou wrote out the string and horn charts. We went to an extremely uncool but amazing studio out in Hoffman Estates and recorded the whole thing in about six days, including mixing. Even though it’s a pretty elaborate set of songs, the actual recording was very immediate. Paul Mertens, who is an amazing multi-instrumentalist who went on to work closely with Brian Wilson, was in for exactly one hour, and he played brilliant first-take overdubs on five songs — we were going nuts in the control room trying to write charts fast enough to keep up. That kind of energy kept the record from sinking under the weight of all the ideas.
Q
On “Rise Up Now,” you sing about losing your fantasies and fairy tales. What did you believe in, musically, when you were younger?
A
Well, I was a true believer in punk rock as revolution when I was a teenager. But I also was a huge fan of Cat Stevens and Simon and Garfunkel. Some of that died when Will Shatter, the singer from my very favorite ’80s hardcore band Flipper, died of a drug OD. A little more died when Kurt Cobain killed himself. More died when Cat Stevens joined the fatwa against Salman Rushdie. And maybe the final blow was Paul Simon’s “Graceland” record. So now I just believe in the music, and only Art Garfunkel has never let me down.
When: 9 p.m. Thursday
Where: Schubas, 3159 N. Southport Ave.
Price: $10; schubas.com, 773-525-2508
