Zoopy Monsters

The East Bay has a lot of weird bands, and winter is their season. The big national tours slow down. Booking schedules loosen up. And some strange things begin to fill in the gaps.

On December 7, one of them, a costumed disco-punk quartet called Zoopy, makes a classic entrance at Kitty's in Emeryville. Monstrous puppet masks, a half-naked "Z Girl" named Becca, and a trench-coated MC named "Speed" weave through a heavily polarized yipster crowd to introduce themselves.

"Cool pants!" an onlooker says to Zoopy leader Jody Morris Gelbart, who wears extra-furry raver leg warmers on this cold winter night.

"What is this, Halloween?" a drunken frat boy chortles.

No fence sitters with Zoopy. You're either for them or against them, and I'm for them, because they are quintessentially NorCal. Zoopy's roots go back a decade to entertaining late locals Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters as Zoopy Funk.


"He used to bring us in to create a fantasyland-like environment and make merry," says 34-year-old bassist and singer Gelbart.

But Zoopy Funk disbanded after Kesey died and Gelbart's twin brother, as he tells it, went insane from excess hallucinogens. Part of the group became the Yard Dogs, a successful vaudeville and burlesque road show based out of San Francisco, while Gelbart retired from music to be a bouncer at Oakland's Kona Club and teach martial arts. At least five years passed. "I'm bad with dates," he says.

This past summer, everything changed. Variety magazine reviewed an "impressive camp epic" named Starslyderz that featured Gelbart's puppetry work. The Yard Dogs released a CD and opened for the String Cheese Incident.

"Losing my twin brother was a really emotional time for me and I retreated from music because of it," Gelbart says. "But I sort of remembered who I was, and it made me want to fight for it."

In two weeks he concocted an entire new Zoopy show with the help of his martial arts skills, the Kona Club, Craigslist, and his old music connections. MC "Speed" is actually Timothy "Speed" Levitch, an actor and personality whose credits include Richard Linklater's Waking Life and Cartoon Network's Stroker and Hoop, where he is the voice of Hoop. Gelbart saved the docile, philosophical Levitch from a fight in front of the Beauty Bar in San Francisco, and a friendship emerged based on their experiences growing up on the East Coast. "We're both New York City rats," Gelbart says. They currently share a residence in El Cerrito where the band practices.

Next came beatmaker and 25-year-old Oakland native and resident Patrick Fry. Gelbart says, "I was bouncing at the Kona Club, having a cigarette with Patrick, one of the best regulars, and talking about how I need someone who can make beats. Like, badass, booty-shaking rap beats. And he said that's exactly what he did. He gave me a CD and I was ready to be disappointed, but it blew me away.

"Patrick takes the MPC [Akai's Midi Production Center] and does something totally different with it than anything I've seen, like Dizzy Gillespie bending his trumpet."

All that was left were the girls. Joe's friend Becca Louie became the first of several Z Girls, whose uniforms include burlesque-esque skimpy tops, micro-miniskirts, garter belts, and heels. "About one in ten girls who answer our ads is a fit," Gelbart says. "I'm not a choreographer, so it's a lot about them. I just tell them, 'Think of it as live Japanimation.'"

With a crew in place, Gelbart hand-sewed three costumes for Slee-nard (Gelbart), Dancing Piggy Boy (Fry), and Fartfire the Dragon (Pimp X) from found objects and embarked on two weeks of creating songs and practicing in El Cerrito. Zoopy tested out its eleven-song mash-up of reggaetón, rap and hyphy beats, shoe-gazer guitar drone, pop hooks, and psych vocals at its first show, which was in late August at the late Ivy Room.

"Our whole goal is for people to not know where they've been for the last 45 minutes. For one moment in time, to have that little voice inside your heads that's like, 'Nya nya nya,' — that voice shuts the fuck up," Gelbart says.

The group then hits the northwest coast for twenty dates. It has at least four booked for the holidays in the Bay Area.

"We're really focused, and there's nothing more potent than those first few months," Gelbart says. "Winter's a great time to see new bands that are just starting out. Bands that still have that 'Eye of the Tiger' fire."

Gorillaz and Cookie Mongoloid, you're on notice. There's a new puppet crew in the mix, and it's from Oaktown, baby. - East Bay Express

Zoopy

Born millions of years ago on the other side of the universe, three monsters, Sleenard, Dancing Piggy Boy, and the Fartfyre Dragon were created as part of a huge army to defend their master's world, Planet Zoopy. After the final battle wiped out the Zoopy planet and, indeed, the Zoopy sun and moon, the three surviving monsters in the Zoopy army were left floating in deep space aboard a spacecraft of amazing powers. Not knowing what to do, they followed a strange signal to a new planet.


The strange signal was music… and the new planet was Earth.


After crash landing on Earth and discovering the love of human women – and the love of beer, pot and music – the three monsters vowed never to destroy another planet and instead turned their weapons into instruments and toured the world entertaining the insane little race of hairless monkeys they had discovered.


Once they had created a new kind of Spacetronica funk they toured Earth thrilling humans with epic live performances. They named their new outfit Zoopy to honor their lost world and with their trusty Zoopygirlz, set off to dominate the pop charts.


A miasma of hip-hop inspired rocktronica webs, spun by the masterful Dancing Piggy Boy, sets the tone of the music, incorporating Sleenard's unique songwriting skills and the Fartfyre Dragon's hardcore grind-o-crunchification on the guitar. These three factors came together in the fearsome rock monsters’ debut album entitled, They Came To Earth (available now on iTunes across the dirty globe from North America to Japan). - HighTimes.com

THE ZOOPY SHOW Part puppet show, part rock band and part burlesque, The Zoopy Show’s characters come adorned in Muppets-from-hell costumes, supplemented by their own troupe of go-go dancers called the Zoopy Girlz. Comprised of gigantic monster musicians born 8,000 years ago on the other end of the universe, Fartfire the Dragon, Dancing Piggy Boy and Slee-nard serve up electronic, dancy punk that occasionally breaks into lounge territory—music supposedly taught to them by a drug-addled, womanizing puppet named Zappato. Described by the band as “live Japanimation,” The Zoopy Show is as much a carnival sideshow as it is a live concert performance; it’s also the subject of an upcoming graphic novel called They Came to Earth. Springwater —MATT SULLIVAN - Nashville Scene

The aliens have concurred: Tahoe is ready for invasion. Their alter egos from the Bay Area agree: South Shore can handle a visit by the Zoopy Show.

Just what concertgoers are in for requires a little more explanation. The Zoopy Show is rock 'n' roll, and yes, the band performs in full costume, usually with a puppet and two or three go-go dancers accompanying.


But would the band members characterized it as live anime, a kinder, gentler GWAR or, as the East Bay Express described it, Jim Henson and Ween spawning quadruplets.

And more importantly, how would the alien monsters the musicians play onstage describe the Zoopy Show so the uninitiated could understand what they're going to see Saturday, May 24, at the Tahoe Underground?

"I guess we always say, it's a rocktronic live Muppet musician band with punk-rock go-go dancers: booty-shaking beats and metal guitar, or disco metal. Sometimes it's described as that," said Patrick Fry, who stars as Dancing Piggy Boy, one of the three aliens that gradually morphed from a comic book and puppet show into Zoopy's elaborate stage show. "Sexually charged dancehall GWAR. It has an element of artiness, for the arty people, but really we're not that arty. We're pretty base in a way."

That's the Zoopy Show at its simplest: Three musicians in space monster costumes playing a mash-up of punk guitar and punk-funk bass lines in front of an electronic techno beat, with lyrics that extol the virtues of beautiful women and herbal treats. Even at its simplest, though, the Zoopy Show is a complex proposition.

"I work really hard on the music " it's not simple music. There's a lot of programming involved on the MIDI stuff," Fry said. "It's all alchemy. It's very sharply measured out."

And even at its simplest, the Zoopy Show usually gets some kind of reaction, from curiosity to interest in the go-go dancers out in the crowd to audience members jumping onstage to an ardent following to the occasional outburst of passionate hatred. The only thing the Zoopy Show might not be prepared to handle is ambivalence.

"It's funny: I would say that if someone's not going to be into it, there's not much I can do about it."

The Zoopy Show, then, is an act with a few levels " beyond, even the elaborate stage show. The current act " Fry, Jody "Madball" Gelbart and Jayson Passaro with instruments and in costume, a hyphy puppet co-star and a go-go dancer or three " traces its roots back more than a decade to the Bay Area.

Fry said that in 1993, Gelbart and his twin brother started drawing a comic book, "Zoopy Funk," and selling it for a dollar, then made puppets based on the comics and performing a show based on the characters.

The puppet show added music from a band, which toured for a while before breaking up while it still had shows on the schedule. Fry, who had been playing bass in punk bands and sampling for longer than that, soon fell in with Jody Gelbart, and the newest incarnation of the Zoopy myth grew out of that.

"I was like, 'Woah, this is exactly what I've wanted to do since I was 17,' " he said.

This summer marks two years of the current incarnation of the Zoopy Show. The stage show (the Zoopys are also working on a show with the Adult Swim division of the Cartoon Network " "It's kind of like if you take the Muppets and you take 'Aqua Teen Hunger Force:' It's adult-ass 'Muppet Show," Fry explained) loosely picks up on the Zoopy Funk myth: Four space monsters, Dancing Piggy Boy, Slee-nard (Gelbart) and the Fartfyre Dragon (Passaro) and Zappato (the puppet) steal their homeworld's most powerful spaceship in an effort to save the universe.

After the destruction of their homeworld, they eventually crash-land on earth, where a group of nuns helps nurse the aliens back to health.

"As soon as the monsters are healthy again, they realize they want to dismantle their weapons and play music," Fry said, and rock 'n' roll makes the nuns abandon their habits and don the revealing costume of the Zoopy Girlz go-go dancers.

The Zoopy Show has the aliens touring in their half-broken spaceship and picking up the narrative onstage. The show used to have a voice actor and an actress helping pick up the story and narrate through Zappato's monologues, although that's becoming more the province of Dancing Piggy Boy.

"Now, I kind of do it, but I'm also kind of a drunken monster, so I'm not always focused on it," Fry said.

Despite the long and convoluted background, the show doesn't adhere to a rigid structure.

"It changes every time," Fry said. "It's improvised, to an extent."

"Our show is actually pretty repetitive in a way " our set list doesn't change very much."

But Fry and Co. take their characters seriously " as seriously as it's possible to take puppets of space monsters, anyway.

"One of the cool things about it is a lot of the songs are infused with lyrics that are not from our point of view, from the monsters' point of view," he said.

"Shit will get me down as a human, but we write from the point of view of the monsters."

What the Zoopy Show lacks in structure it makes up for in spontaneity: The go-go dancers and costumed aliens head out into the crowd. Everybody involved stays in character from the time the show begins until long after it's over.

"Before the show, during the show, after the show, we stay with the people," Fry said. "We create this atmosphere, and we bring the people in with us."

And the performers aren't just putting on a show for the crowd: They're all part of the performance.

"Sometimes we might be sober and keeping it sharp, and sometimes we'll be wasted and kicking the shit out of each other on the stage."

That's how Fry described it. But the stars of the Zoopy Show interact with their fans in character, and Fry's might have cast the show in a different light.

"I think Dancing Piggy Boy would say, 'Warning, may cause seizures,' with a big grin. And a big Jersey accent." - Tahoe Daily Tribune

If you’re in the mood for something “epic,” but in a vastly different manner, then you will want to check out The Zoopy Show at the Jambalaya, also on Saturday, June 23. With former members of the project The Yard Dogs Roadshow, creator Joe Gelbart (with Speed Levitch, famed subject of the NY documentary The Cruise) presents a multi-media event that features monsters, sci-fi puppets, and Zoopy Girlz (anime-styled go-go dancers), all to a disco/punk/psychedelia beat. The Bucky Walters and Freelove Circus share the bill and a like-minded ethic. God only knows. - The North Coast Journal