Doctor Noize

Doctor Noize

• Instrument: Voice, guitar, keyboard, saxophone, percussion
• Special Skillz: Writing, wearing clothes, bandleading/zookeeping
• Favorite Pastime: Harmonizing with Phineas

The life and times of Doctor Noize before he joined The International Band Of Misunderstood Geniuses is shrouded in mystery. Some say he was an inspiringly successful high school music teacher. Some say he was a pretentiously unsuccessful children’s musician named Cory (The Environmentally Aware ‘n’ Socially Sensitive Children’s Poet Of Song). Still others say he starred in several popular albeit critically ridiculed television programs under the stage name of David Hasselhoff (this last theory has been largely discredited).

In short, everybuddy seems to have their own backstory on this guy. Yet only one thing about Doctor Noize’s identity is certain: He is the only member of The International Band Of Misunderstood Geniuses who could not survive for a week on his own in the wild. And he was hand picked by the great Phineas McBoof to be his successor, carrying on and leading the band to new songs, concerts and adventures. How, exactly, did this come to be? Patience, friends…

All will be revealed soon enough, in the book and album The Return Of Phineas McBoof (2009).

Click here to send Doctor Noize a message in the Forum. He usually responds within 24 hours — unless he’s playing that rare concert which lasts for over 24 hours in a row — and loves talking to fans, whom he gratefully calls The Noizemakers.

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Phineas McBoof

• Instrument:
  Voice, guitar, keyboard, kazoo
• Special Skillz:
  Band forming, band leaving,
  big dreams, charisma galore
• Favorite Food:
  Bananas

Phineas McBoof’s life story is already known by a majority of the world’s population. So we’ll just stick with the basics…

He was born and raised by monkeys on the Island Of Thelonious, where it need not be said he became the island’s biggest star. Soon after becoming so popular that he could no longer hear himself over the screaming fans at his concerts, Phineas left his island and his former bandmates John Lemur, Curious George Hairyson and Sing Go Far, setting out to travel the world and form a new band, Phineas McBoof And His International Band Of Misunderstood Geniuses.

Phineas plays a variety of instruments, including guitar, keyboard, percussion, kazoo, and many specialty instruments indigenous to Thelonious, including Mongonut Bongos and Bowed Bananas. Additionally, Phineas is a master chef of banana delicacies, creating new and unique dishes featuring all forms of the great banana, including the Common Yellow Banana, the Ridiculously Ripe Green Bananas Of Melamango, and the Pink Flaming Bananas Of Mars.

Nobody knows where Phineas is at the moment. This is often the case.

Click here to send Phineas McBoof a message in the Forum. He usually checks his email every day during his travels, although he has been known to go offline for long periods when the fan mail just overwhelms him. Please note that it is unlikely Phineas will divulge his exact whereabouts.

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Backbone The Octopus

• Instrument:
  Percussion, voice
• Special Skillz:
  Juggling anemones &
  boyfriends, passing ink
• Most Endearing Trait:
  Is always happy to sea you

Backbone The Octopus never met a percussion instrument she didn’t want to play or a creature she didn’t want to meet. As the world’s only known eight armed drummer, she can lay down the groove with considerably greater complexity than the average biped, often sounding more like a one-invertebrate band than a traditional drummer. She is also a very capable singer, with the training and skills to project her voice both above and below the waterline.

Backbone grew up in the Pacific Ocean, but has called just about every ocean of the world her home at some point during the course of her percussive journeys. Why all the travel? Before joining The International Band Of Misunderstood Geniuses, it’s rumored Backbone would often sneak onto land at night in search of new percussion instruments. Over time, she allegedly amassed the greatest collection to grace the ocean floor. It’s tough to pick just a few instruments to take with her on tour, so she returns to visit and play with her waterlogged collection whenever the band’s concert schedule permits it.

Click here to send Backbone The Octopus a message in the Forum. Backbone gets pretty excited about everything that happens to her, and receiving a message from you is no exception. She usually responds within 24 hours, unless she’s traversing the ocean, where there are no internet connections or plugs.

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Bottomus The Hip Popotamus

• Instrument:
  Bass, voice
• Special Skillz:
  Surfing, lady wooing
• Favorite food:
  Whatever’s on the plate, baby…

Bottomus The Hip Popotamus is the most booty shakin’ hippo you will ever meet. He epitomizes the adjective groovy. Needless to say, Bottomus is quite popular with the ladies, and the ladies are quite popular with him. He plays both upright acoustic bass and electric bass guitar, and he has a booming bass/baritone voice. Thus, both vocally and instrumentally, Bottomus projects the lower registers in a way that will make you feel the love.

Bottomus rarely met a meal he didn’t like. His vacations are frequently spent at the world’s great food destinations, such as the famed Shimmering Yellow Fields Of Mac ‘n’ Cheese in Kraft, Karolina or the Sinful City Made Of Milk Chocolate in Wonka, Willy-Nilly-Land.

Wanna be Bottomus’ #1 Fan at a concert? Throw him a big chunk o’ cornbread onstage in between sets. He’ll be your buddy for life.

Click here to send Bottomus The Hip Popotamus a message in the Forum. He usually responds within 24 hours, although he occasionally eats so much that he can’t get up for a few days.

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Riley The Robot

• Instrument:
  Keyboard, sound FX, computer, voice
• Special Skillz:
  You name it — she’ll download it
• Grand Prize Winner:
  Thelonious Sudoku Tournament

Riley The Robot gets more joy out of creative expression than other machines you’ve gotten to know in your life, and most of the humans too. Her passion for music and rhyming is contagious, but don’t worry — she’s virus protected.

Initially manufactured to assemble Whatchama Gadgets for The Company in Factory #2,637, Riley quickly began dreaming of a more creative calling. She became known as the Singing, Dancing And Dreaming Robot to the other machines in the factory, who frankly thought she was a wee bit buggy and tried to avoid sharing files with her.

Far from being deterred from her art, Riley turned to the Source Of All True Knowledge — The Internet — to research her musical passions, eventually stumbling upon some synthesizer shareware and downloading it. Before long, Riley had reprogrammed the software to do far more than simple FM synthesis, including recording and playing back sounds, advanced physical modeling synthesis, creating advanced digital signal processing effects, and instantly identifying rhymes and near-rhymes for any word you could throw at her, real or imagined. She even learned, and then enhanced, the exquisitely crafted dance known to humankind as The Macarena.

Then Riley met The International Band Of Misunderstood Geniuses, and the rest, as they say, is history.

Click here to send Riley The Robot a message in the Forum. She usually responds wirelessly within 24 seconds, unless she’s offline for software updates and repairs.

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Lenny Long Tail

• Instrument:
  Fiddle, voice
• Special Skillz:
  Yodeling, molting
• Special note:
  Sorry about that Mozart thing

Lenny Long Tail is a lizard who’s a wizard on the fizzard. Okay, fine, so it really should read fiddle instead of fizzard, but let’s be honest… That doesn’t rhyme as well, now does it? So please use your imagination. Honestly, think out of the box. Lenny certainly does.

In any event, this scaly virtuoso can play such a mean fiddle that it’ll make you hot to dance — ironic, given that Lenny is a cold blooded reptile. As anyone who has met him can attest to, however, Lenny’s heart is as warm as they come. He loves people and he loves music, and he has an open, adventurous mind.

Since joining The International Band Of Misunderstood Geniuses, Lenny has traveled the globe and added new techniques to his original two favorite styles of playing, country and western. Studying with many of the world’s great masters along the way, Lenny has perfected many of the violin’s most exotic playing styles, from strumming the stringos of Backalus Bump to burning the midnight oil playing jazz with the Jingos from Thumunawump.

Lenny is still searching for that special lady lizard to wrap his tail around.

Click here to send Lenny Long Tail a message in the Forum. He usually responds within 24 hours, unless he’s up in the mountains studying with a master fiddler or yodeluru (a guru of yodel technique).

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The Ooh Gah Boo Gus

• Instrument:
  Trumpet, alto sax,
  tenor sax, trombone & voice
• Special Skillz:
  Origami, yoga
• Weight (in tons):
  Off the charts

Until meeting Phineas McBoof And His International Band Of Misunderstood Geniuses, The Ooh Gah Boo Gus were the world’s best kept musical secret — the greatest horn section on the planet, but nobody would listen to them play. Seeing these big and scary looking monsters take the stage dancing and making loud noizes was enough to make any crowd run for the hills.

It took the considerable clout of Phineas McBoof and The International Band Of Misunderstood Geniuses to convince the general public to overcome their fears and listen to the monsters play — at which point, in a rare moment of Sudden Global Unity And Awareness, everyone in the world simultaneously realized the error of their ways and what they had been missing, and embraced the monsters and their music wholeheartedly. Just thinking about it brings tears to the eyes.

If anything, The Ooh Gah Boo Gus now face an opposite problem. Essentially private creatures, they have suddenly become Extremely Large Pop Culture Icons. The tabloids have frequently reported that Ooh and Boo are romantically involved, but this has neither been confirmed nor denied by the band’s publicist, who says that despite the fact that they are giant monsters, they are actually quite shy and ask that you respect their privacy. One thing is for certain, however: They make beautiful music together.

Click here to send The Ooh Gah Boo Gus a message in the Forum. They usually respond within 24 hours, unless they’re sleeping, which they sometimes do for as long as 36 hours in a row if it’s warm outside and there’s a faint smell of donuts in the air. You may also send Forum messages to the individual monsters.

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Sidney The Beak

• Instrument:
  Rapping
• Special Skillz:
  Flapping, attitude
• Hey You!
  Whatch you lookin’ at?

Sidney The Beak wants you to get one thing straight: She does not sing. All that twirpin’ and tweetin’ and cutesy pootsy stuff — she leaves that to the other songbirds. There are plenty of other swell cartoon bird sidekicks who’ll take care of that sort of sugar for ya, and you’re certainly welcome to look ‘em up. Sidney prefers to keep it real for y’all by rhymin’ and rappin’ straight from her heart and her little bird brain (sorry, Sidney, couldn’t resist).

Sidney is the world’s only known flying rapper, which allows her to perform her beat poetry in a fast paced three dimensional spectrum unavailable to other rappers. A rugged individualist and social skeptic, it took Phineas quite a while to convince Sidney to join the band. But eventually she agreed, and underneath that tough and tiny exterior is a heart as gold as her feathers — once she’s accepted you into her inner circle, there’s nothing she wouldn’t do for you. She doesn’t want you to know that, but it’s true.

You’ll be more extensively introduced to Sidney in the book and album The Return Of Phineas McBoof (2009).

Click here to send Sidney The Beak a message in the Forum. She usually responds within 24 hours, unless she’s teaching a poetry seminar or generally rebelling against her band responsibilities. Don’t be surprised if her response is in rhyme.

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I Tre Tenori

• Instrument:
  World’s greatest voices
• Special Skillz:
  Fine dining, self respect, music criticism
• Full Names:
  Placido Flamingo, Luciano Frogerati & José the Ferret

I Tre Tenori are the greatest singers of their generation in their own minds. They are also the greatest singers of their generation in some other people’s minds. Why just some? Well, let’s be honest… You can’t be all that to everybody — after all, one man’s Caruso is another man’s Kevin Federline. And it is precisely this maddening lack of consensus as to who is The Greatest Voice Of All Time that drives the ambition of these three tenors — sorry boys, we mean I Tre Tenori. Grazie.

Par for the course, this was the most contentious and difficult page of the web site to put together. At issue is the deep resentment Luciano Frogerati, Placido Flamingo and José The Ferret each felt at being grouped together on one page as I Tre Tenori, rather than each being featured on his own page.

The thing is, we’ve tried separating these three before, but they get too content and lose some of the fire that spurs them to greatness — everybody else just tends to agree with them that they’re the best singer in the room, and they lose a bit of their edge and passion. Simply put, the boys need each other to be at their best. Even if it means you have to listen to them talk to each other.

Luciano, Placido and José privately adore being members of The International Band Of Misunderstood Geniuses, although publicly they will always insist that they should be given more solos. They would like their fans to know that lavish gift items may be sent to them, care of I Voce Magnifico, to Pictoria Records, and that if you never actually receive a thank you note, you may at least be heartened to know that before they consume their gift, they will say a blessing to the Gods Of Music that at least one more person has the fine and discriminating taste to recognize Their Greatness. Amen.

I Tre Tenori would also like you to know that, as you undoubtedly have still not satisfied your unquenchable thirst for all things pertaining to them, you will learn even more about them in the book and album The Return Of Phineas McBoof (2009). Lucky you!

Click here to send I Tre Tenori a message in the Forum. They usually respond within 24 hours, unless they are acting huffy or at the spa for the weekend. You can also send Forum messages individually to Luciano, Placido or José, which they love and lord over each other.

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