Bobby Conn is the inventor of the continuous cashflow system and, depending on who you ask, Chicago’s favorite Christian entertainer. He is probably not the Antichrist, but he kept praying loudly, turning end-times theatre into pop spectacle.
I first saw him performing Never Get Ahead on Chic-a-Go-Go, back when I was practicing dance moves in front of a shop-window TV. Twenty-plus years later, with the world accelerating into a fascist dystopia, Bobby and violinist Monica BouBou have seemingly retreated to the astral plane, where they inhabit a world of synths and cartoon physics.
They share space with their imaginary companions: a friendly cyborg named L.A.R.R.Y., and a wide-eyed duck-thing named DUKS.
When Bobby and Monica leave for a concert, DUKS and Larry are left behind — unsupervised, purely speculative. They stumble upon a mysterious bottle of liquor, a relic from our reality: misunderstood, undrinkable. They initiate an intoxicated journey of curiosity.
They are friends.
They are the base of our buddy-buddy trope.
Jay & Bee is the translation of me stumbling into an ongoing jam session. The musicians and the music are already there. They know each other. I try to look for gaps and fill in, to join the play. Second-hand nostalgia. Ecstatic misrecognition.
Our characters celebrate the liquor, hurt and get hurt in celebration, fall for crude TV commercials, and drift back to Earth into fast-food gravity. The final sequence takes place in a now-retired food stand in Chicago called DUKS, originally named McDucks, featuring a mascot that was a direct copy of Donald Duck. At some point, inevitably, they were sued. That is why they changed their name.
In the video’s climax, the DUKS stand is bombed into oblivion by bootlegged simulacra of Rickey and McDonald. But our imaginary friends - the idea of DUKS and Larry - survive! Their misunderstanding of our reality complete.
Credits / Links
Bobby Conn – synths, guitar
Monica BouBou – violin
DJ LeDeuce – electronics
Josh Johannpeter – drums
David Kellner – animation
Heta Jäälinoja
– additional animation
2026
More
Bobby Conn (Bandcamp)
Bobby Conn (Tapete Records)
Bobby Conn (Thrill Jockey Records)
Never Felt Better (Musicvideo)
Never Get Ahead (Performance)
Monica BouBou (SoundCloud)
Post Modern Talking (Podcast)
Christopher Furman
I also hallucinated a playlist of cool animated music videos while working on this.