Bobby Sichran

Before there was Beck, there was Bobby Sichran. And before -- or, at the very least, at a concurrent time as -- Beck happened upon his postmodern-hipster, cut-and-paste aesthetic mixing pop song structures, folk-rock sentiment, blues textures, and a hip-hop sensibility on one coast, Sichran had beaten him to the combination on the other with his debut, From a Sympathetical Hurricane. Beck became a critical darling and commercial phenomenon, was hailed as a "groundbreaking" and "visionary" progenitor and pioneer, and was even characterized in some quarters as a genius. Similar acts like G. Love & Special Sauce, Soul Coughing, and Everlast polished up the style and also made their fortunes, while Sichran remained an obscurity, and his contributions went virtually unacknowledged outside critical circles. Native Long Islander Bobby Sichran dropped out of Columbia University in the early '90s with the intention of finding his way into the music industry, while taking a day job as a furniture mover and looking for his big musical break. That break came by his own making when he knocked on the door of Public Enemy's Hempstead, Long Island, studio. Hank Shocklee of the vaunted Bomb Squad production crew answered, and Sichran asked if he could hang out and watch them work. Soon he was acting as an apprentice engineer in the studio (he played guitar on, was an engineer on, and was largely responsible for mixing Das EFX's debut album, Dead Serious). He also began squatting on the Lower East Side and playing his form of anti-folk music on subway platforms, inspired by the music he grew up on (Robert Johnson and Muddy Waters) as well as everything from James Brown and George Clinton to Bob Dylan and the Beatles, not to mention the rap music that he helped make by day. Sichran...