Beatle Bob–A Dancin' Fool
by David Menconi
If you don't know Beatle Bob, you just don't get out enough. Lord knows, HE does, and he's probably even been to a show in your town in the not-too-distant past.
According to his personal log, Beatle Bob went to 407 shows in 1995, the majority in his hometown of St. Louis. But he also put in appearances at the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, South by Southwest, the Chapel Hill, N.C., Sleazefest and even festivals in England and Denmark.
You can't miss him. He's always the one right in front of the stage, dancing with manic precision.
"I've seen women come up to him and ask, 'Do you want to dance?' " says St. Louis native Dan Durchholz, an associate editor at Request magazine. "And he always says no, because he's already doing what he does."
What Beatle Bob does is a series of routines that shake, stir, sample and recombine period dance crazes – the watusi, cool jerk, twist, frug, shake – all with an utter lack of self-consciousness. He dresses sharp in one of his vintage outfits (Nehru jackets and the like), and his Beatles haircut makes him look like an older sibling of a member of Oasis. Fortunately, he's lots nicer than they are.
Beatle Bob is 43-year-old Bob Matonis, a music fanatic who has been doing his Deadhead-with-better-taste act for the better part of two decades. When not dancing at concerts, he's a social worker who tends to troubled teenagers. The job is flexible enough to allow him to pursue his musical jones. "Luckily, as many years as I've been working in the social work field, it helps that I've got a lot of vacation weeks built up," he says.
He doesn't drive, relying instead on public transportation and rides from friends to get around, which makes for tricky logistics when one goes to an average of 1.15 shows per night. He also finds time to write for a number of publications (including St. Louis' Jet Lag and Nighttimes, the latter of which publishes his monthly list of top 10 shows), and to deejay: Every year, he co-hosts a Christmastime Phil Spector marathon on St. Louis public station KDHX.
Still, it's the dancing at shows that gets Beatle Bob most of his attention – not all of it positive. This past February, St. Louis Post-Dispatch music columnist Paul Hampel was peeved about Beatle Bob taking up so much room dancing at a sold-out Luna show that he wrote, "The time has come to gracefully retire the gabardine suit, make room for someone with rhythm, and go back to being good, old Bob Matonis again."
But most musicians regard him as a mascot, or at worst a harmless distraction. In St. Louis and elsewhere, bands know they're getting somewhere when Beatle Bob starts showing up. "There's really nothing outrageous about him besides the dancing," says onetime dB's co-leader Chris Stamey. "I once saw him just convulse Marshall Crenshaw with laughter, to the point where he couldn't keep playing. He really has no shame about it at all."
One would expect a sense of shamelessness, given how Beatle Bob came by his name 30-some-odd years ago. In a grade school class, he was reading an all-Beatles issue of Sixteen magazine behind a geography textbook. When the teacher caught him, she appropriated his magazine with the tart comment, "That will be quite enough of this, Beatle Bob."
The name stuck, and the ultimate fan was born. There is very little music that Beatle Bob doesn't like, but roots-rock is a particular favorite of his. He numbers the Bottle Rockets, Sun Sawed in 1/2 and bluesman Big Bad Smitty among his faves from the St. Louis regional scene. Naturally, he was in his accustomed front-and-center spot whenever Uncle Tupelo played around St. Louis. But he reserves his strongest affections for the Skeletons, the heralded bar band from Springfield, Mo. (most recently heard as Syd Straw's backing band on her current album and tour).
"I go back a long time with those guys, from when they were the Morrells and the Symptoms before that," Bob says. "Don't Blame the Symptoms is one of the great unknown records of the last two decades. One of my big treats is when the Skeletons come to St. Louis, and they let me come onstage to perform with them. I'll sing something, usually. It's gotta be a screamer, something I can wail on. One of those talk songs, the Jan & Dean-type stuff you can kinda talk your way through."
Considering the depths of Beatle Bob's fanaticism, it should come as no surprise that he's still a solo act and doesn't anticipate a change in that regard anytime soon. Potential spouses would have to contend with his gigantic, dwelling-dominating record collection (25,000 seven-inch singles, 12,000 albums and a still-uncounted quantity of compact discs), plus his habits of traveling far and wide to hear music. "You'd have to be pretty patient or have a really good sense of humor to put up with as crazy a fan as I am," he admits. "Or you'd have to want to come along with me. But so far, I just haven't found the time to settle down and keep my feet planted in one spot long enough to find the right gal."
Source: No Depression | Archive | Issue #4
