About a week ago I called my eldest son Sparky (Joshua). We share a love of music, movies and art, among other things. I was thinking about Mr. Dobolina.
Back around 1992 my boys would have been 11, 12, 13 and 15. Music was playing in our house most of the time- either theirs or mine and one day I heard this song playing. The instant it started I recognized the name and the phrasing- “Mr. Dobolina, Mr. Bob Dobolina… Mr. Dobolina, Mr. Bob Dobolina.” I was blown away. I remembered it from a Monkees album that one of my sisters had when I was just their age, and I loved it. It reminded me of someone being paged in an airport, but it was quirky and had this wonderful rhythm and movement to it. I was 12 when the album with that song- Zilch- came out.
When I heard this new version of it in our house, by Del The Funkee Homosapien, I went crazy trying to remember more about the song or the album but I didn’t have a computer at the time and my own memory didn’t reveal much. It was an earworm that crept into my brain and I knew for sure it was originally by The Monkees. I loved that the rap music my boys were listening to was using lines and riffs from music that I was familiar with from the sixties and seventies. There was a lot that I did not resonate with but I always kept my ears open for a familiar bass line or whatever it might be that was running through it that I could grab a hold of- but Mr. Dobolina had a hold on me! That was a line I couldn’t forget.
Fast forward to a week or so ago, and Sparky and I are having a conversation about the origins of rap (he was informing me- not the other way around!) and Mr. Dobolina specifically. Somehow that song/phrase had popped into my head, so I did a search and found the original song on the internet. I was so excited to finally put it all together and talk to him about it. Back when Del’s song came out, the boys were totally unaware of The Monkees’ song and not particularly interested in my excitement and curiosity about it, but now Sparky said to me, “Was it Zilch?” “Yes!!!” I replied.
As if that wasn’t enough, to finally have the satisfaction of revisiting the original song after 45 years, the day before yesterday I get this blog post from Seth Godin:
”Bob Dobalina
I considered myself someone with an encyclopedic knowledge of a narrow range of mid-1960s TV and certain strains of pop music as well.
I was stunned, then, to hear the song Zilch for the first time recently.
Mr. Dobalina, Mr. Bob Dobalina. It’s unforgettable. And it’s from the Monkees. Go figure.”
What are the odds? Listen to both versions- they are both great and very catchy.