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Share  Robbie Rist  Robbie Rist as Cousin Oliver  Robbie Rist with the Andersons |
Like too many of your favorite sitcoms, The Brady Bunch didn’t exactly end pretty.
Like Growing Pains, Married . . . With Children, and Diff’rent Strokes, the Bradys added a new kid—a moppy-haired, bespectacled little blonde named Cousin Oliver as a last minute attempt to boost ratings and open up the potential for more storylines. It didn’t work; the six episodes of the show to feature Cousin Oliver, whose real name is Robbie Rist, were the series’ last.
What’s strange is that the Bradys’ favorite—or least favorite—little imp didn’t go away. He spent the better part of the next 20 years popping up as random characters on mostly-forgotten movies, sitcoms, and TV dramas (he played Glendon on Lucas Tanner), but he also managed to land roles on shows that remained cultural institutions well into the ‘90s. He played Ted Knight’s adopted kid on the Mary Tyler Moore‘s last two seasons. He appeared on three or four ChiPs episodes. But then, in 1990, he took a role as the voice of Michelangelo in the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie. It became the latest cult-institution-that-refuses-to-die that Rist would unintentionally stumble into, but it was certainly not the last.
As his acting career progressed, Rist never stopped making music. “I was playing music at three,” says Rist. “I’ve been in and out of recording studios since I was seven. I probably started playing in bands when I was 13 and never stopped. I was always doing it concurrently but the acting thing is so high profile, it’s kind of tough to get another profile.”
Over the past five years or so, Rist has built up a substantial profile in his home base of Los Angeles and, to a lesser extent, around the country as part of a number of guitar-pop bands.
“Every two months there’s the ‘What are we going to call it?’ discussion,” says Rist, “but the thing is-if you’re going to play this kind of music, you should exude some sort of joy. Whether it’s a Raspberries record or [Big Star’s] “September Gurls”, it all exudes some sort of joy.”
Okay, so it’s power-pop then, which makes sense since Rist’s main project, the Andersons, are label-mates with the Knack, a band whose skinny ties and one big, catchy, inescapable hit “My Sharona”, practically defined the genre.
Rist isn’t just in one band. While the Andersons are his main musical project and he’s currently working on a solo record, he’s also spent time producing records for acts like Receiver, he’s been a full time member of Cockeyed Ghost, Martin Luther Lennon, the Masticators, and Wonderboy—his old band—and has filled in for other bands when they were missing a member.
“At the last International Pop Overthrow Festival I played with 17 different groups. None of that is regular; I just sort of learn their stuff, get through a few rehearsals, and go.”
Life as a child star
Long before his time as a purveyor of pure pop, Rist was a child star. “I was into the 1930s Universal monster movies and wanted to be in one, so I sort of bitched to my parents ‘I want to be in the movies! I want to be in the movies!’” says Rist. “So they figured they’d take me to an audition so I’d see how dull it is. And I got the job, and then got another one, so I sort of stumbled into working all the time. By the time I did the Brady Bunch thing I’d done about 100 commercials, I’d worked with John Denver, Jonathan Winters…I dunno, a lot of Johns. I’d done a ton of stuff, and then the Brady Bunch happened, and by then the show was already on its way out.”
But even then, it wasn’t clear that The Brady Bunch was going to become a pop culture phenomenon.
“I didn’t really think that the show was going to do what it’s done,” he says. “I was in six episodes, thus assuring my status as the poster boy for ‘Jump the Shark’. The show started going down the hill after the Hawaiian vacation, but that’s fine—I’ll take it. If I have to be that cultural signpost, then so be it. How many people get to be any kind of cultural signpost whatsoever?”
“Jump the Shark” is a term describing a show’s descent into silliness and irrelevance. Coined from a Happy Days episode when the Fonz jumped over a shark while water skiing, the term has become ubiquitous in discussions about television, music, movies, and celebrities.
“When Cousin Oliver came to town,” says Jon Hein, the founder of jumptheshark.com, “it threw the Bradys’ tic-tac-toe symmetry completely out of whack.”
And Rist’s Cousin Oliver is the quintessential example of “New Kid in Town”, one of 19 ways in which a show can jump the shark. Click on that category at the jumptheshark.com and a picture of him pops up. Strangely enough, he doesn’t look much different today-at 38, he almost looks like a computer-aged photograph of his formerly Brady self.
“I still get recognized for the Brady Bunch thing, which is hilarious, but I’m getting it for the turtle thing now,” he says.
When Rist first took the voice role for Michelangelo, the pizza-eating, party-loving Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle, there was some uncertainty about the movie, even though it was following on the heels of a successful cartoon show.
He says that with the first Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie, the producers “had problems with Steve Barron’s vision. He was into the comic book, which had this dark tone, and so he made this dark little movie. They weren’t sure how it was going to go. They had no idea it was going to make $15 million in its first weekend, and that was with kids’ tickets which are half price,” he says, adding that “they definitely knew for the next two.”
What’s surprising is not that Rist played one failed character in a popular show. It’s that he’s repeatedly landed roles in pop culture phenomena: The Brady Bunch, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movies, as the voice of Maroda in the Final Fantasy X video game, and as a successful musician with a following.
The Pop Overthrow While Rist’s acting work has been fairly high profile, far fewer know about his musical projects. Rist has been involved in many acts over the past few years, the core lies in a small but devoted group of musicians based in Los Angeles. These people-many of whom are in bands of their own, like the Sparkle*jets U.K., Receiver, Cockeyed Ghost, and more-are at the core of today’s small but devoted power-pop movement. While power-pop, a difficult-to-pin-down form of rock-meets-pop-meets-alternative, has only occasionally made waves commercially, these pop bands have managed to cultivate a rabidly devoted fanbase around the globe. Their demographic tends to be older (many of their fans range from 25-50, and often are married with kids) and more musically-educated (very unscientific observations of the Audities email list, where power-pop fans gather to discuss their favorite acts, reveal that most members’ CD collections number well into the thousands) than your typical underground music consumer.
“I’ve heard [people complain] that it’s 40-year-old guys playing and stuff, and I say ‘So? The problem with that is what?’ Is music-is art-ageist? Is it anything-ist? Everybody made such a big deal when all these girls were in bands and such-this is like after (the supposed first all-girl rock combo) Fanny-but for awhile there it was really sexist,” says Rist. “But now it’s like if you’re not 19 . . . Avril Lavigne is really good, she’s a really talented girl—or she will be. She’s not a farm team creation, if you know what I mean.”
Rist is working on his first solo record, Single (And Loving It), tentatively scheduled for release early this year. “I’ve sort of been doing the George Harrison thing and sort of writing stuff and not doing anything about it,” he says. “Most of my stuff is about being irritated in some way or another. Writers have different themes, mine are about resignation, irritation, and frustration.”
Rist’s main musical endeavor is as a third of The Andersons, one of the L.A. pop scene’s most popular acts. “The Andersons is like Three Dog Night, it has three lead singers. But pretty much I leave it up to Derek and Bill,” he says.
“We’re lucky in that because there are so many people, you have to wade through different tribes in LA, but these sort of melodic, poppier bands are here, and a bunch of them are really, really good. I missed the first wave, the sort of skinny tie thing. I caught the tail end of that. I got into music when all of that was ending. I really like that sort of—Cheap Trick is my favorite band in the whole world. In a couple of years [these pop bands] will be playing something else, so I want to play as much of it as possible,” he says.
“If anything, ultimately, if everybody makes stuff and puts it out, even if nobody discovers it now, then it’s discoverable for somebody in the future. But a lot of it is great,” he adds.
He’s right in that most of these bands don’t have the types of sales figures to impress any major labels. While they court a very devoted fanbase and often impress critics, a band like the Andersons or Cockeyed Ghost can’t hope to sell more than 4,000-5,000 copies of an album, and that’s a big hit in the pop world.
“It’s probably doomed to the cult world forever,” he says. “Every once in awhile somebody slips through—Fountains of Wayne has a hit or Weezer pops up—but I think it’ll always be more dance music or darker rock because [for the biggest-selling acts] more than liking music, it’s about irritating your parents.”
Power-pop has always had an uneasy relationship with punk. Arguably power-pop’s greatest, most influential period was during the initial punk boom, when countless bands took up the D.I.Y.—“Do It Yourself”—aesthetic and began putting out their own cheaply-recorded 7” singles. And while The Knack and the Romantics had genuine hits during that time, plenty of others—the Shoes, The Nerves, the dB’s, and 20/20—are still some of the best-remembered (and most imitated) pop acts today.
“My roommate is really into Lagwagon, Gameface, Nerf Herder, and Bowling for Soup,” he says. “The punk rock universe is a jungle, and no one gives them any shit for it, that’s the thing. The fact that a lot of it is really good is cool, but the fact is that it’s all the same thing—but then (when it comes to power-pop), it’s ‘Oh God somebody’s got a Rickenbacker—get him!’”
“Blink 182 and all of Green Day’s progeny, they’re all pop guys,” he adds. “It’s pop music. They just play guitars. It’s the same stuff as ‘I Wanna Hold Your Hand’, or ‘Turn, Turn, Turn’.”
The core of the scene is the annual International Pop Overthrow festival, a summertime blitz of club shows often featuring six-to-eight acts an evening and featuring some of the best pop bands in the country. But recently the festival has taken some heat-including some biting criticism from Velvet Crush’s Ric Menck-for showcasing too many soundalike acts. After all, it isn’t that hard to find a band influenced by the Beatles.
“A lot of these guys are playing it so close to their vests,” says Rist. “Like they’re listening to their Beatles records too many times. We don’t need to sound that way every single time, we already have one. Blondie to me doesn’t sound like The Who, who doesn’t sound like Hank Williams. Everyone should have their own thing that they do. I wish we lived in a world where there were more Elvis Costellos, or more people who try to approach it from that standpoint. More than just ‘How does it rock?’ People who write the song first and then try and figure out how to approach it later”
“I think with any genre, it gets glutted. At one time, there were five hippies. And these five hippies believed in free love, loving Mother Nature, and oh, yeah, taking lots of drugs. And then there was a bunch of people who said, ‘Hey those hippies are having a great time, and they get to have lots of sex and take a lot of drugs. I don’t care about the whole nature part, but I’ll wear the hippie outfit and live the hippie lifestyle,’ but then it gets hard to find the real hippies.”
Leaving the Valley
Rist just recently wrapped up his nationwide “140 Inches of Love” tour with Kenny Howes. While his schedule hasn’t seen many opportunities to play outside of California, he wants to change that.
“It was just awesome,” he says. “I definitely have to do it again. We did a house party in Bethesda where we played for two-and-a-half hours. We played ‘Stump the Band’ for an hour, it was great! I’ve got to get out there and do it again. For a long time out of concerns for losing acting jobs, I didn’t do it.”
But because he’s busy working on his new record, he was conspicuously absent from last December’s New York installment of the International Pop Overthrow festival.
I need to get this record finished,” he says. “When I get irritated, resigned, or pissed off enough, I write,” he adds, with a chuckle.
