Obituary: ‘Flattered As Fuck’ Bob Hobson 1964 – 2015.
I was having a really good day today. My huge hench builder/painter/plumber/paviour/electrician/philosopher geezer Adam Evans O’Connell (two proud Irish and Welsh families, neither willing to lose a surname) was at my house to help me shift a granite garden ornament from my Volvo to my garden. It weighs 200lb plus. He had fitted the JVC double DIN car radio/DVD I had hooked him up with and we had been to the superb Team Impulse car electronics shop in Watford.
It had been most jolly, making part one of a video about his new JVC multi media monster and how impressed he was with it.
And about the radio aerial adapter I nicked and Morel loudspeakers I actually bought for him to go in his Ford Transit Connect as a pukka thanks for his awesome VFM, quality and attention to detail on my gaff.
We had even asked for a quick door-card removal how-to from an expert in their fitting bay and had had Adam instructed in stuff that would save him time and maybe damage, trying to do ‘˜blind’ himself.
Then on the way back, I got a message on Facebook Messenger from a really lovely bloke called Han Proveniers which hit me like a tonne of bricks.
For I gather that in the early hours of this morning, an old friend, Bob Hobson, has died.
I sit here, numb with the injustice, with my ruined ankles, jowly neck and fat gut. I have low cholesterol for now, absurdly, yet Bob inherited from his dad, who was also gathered far too young.
A heart attack at a young age, not because of lifestyle choices but a miserable wrinkle in a fucking gene. Bob was a keen cyclist and was just selected for the GB cycling team. Amazing for a bloke just turned fifty.
Apparently, they were on holiday in Gran Canaria in July (a destination beloved of hardcore cyclists, as is Lanzarote, for the conditions that stretch athletic abilities) and Bob had been racking up seventy miles a day. He had a heart attack in the hotel room and his wife Wendy had administered CPR. Bob was Medivac’d back to Watford in a coma but was never to recover consciousness.
I just had a call from Richard Giddings, to tell me. I hadn’t heard from him in too long too, so it was good to be back in touch but for a horrible reason.
I met Bob way before I was a journalist at Wembley Stadium car park at an IASCA sound off.
It was 1990.
I met Ian ‘˜Iceman’ Pinder there as well. Ian was thwarted from entering on the day with his Cortina. I was running the Vestatec Cerwin-Vega/Hifonics/Altec Lansing van, which we had had Prestige build for us.
Bob was with his bird, Wendy, and had a Rockford-Fosgate Power 1000 amplifier in the boot (the ones with the light-up power gauge that everybody goes mad for on Ebay today) running two EIGHTEEN inch JBL woofers, in a box that lifted up and down on gas powered automatic struts, in the back of a Ford Sierra ‘˜Cosworth 500’ lookalike with a huge whale tail on it. In white of course.
Bob won..and he kept on winning. Soon, he and his mate Barry Copeland, along with motormouth chum Gordon Dutch as sales, opened a shop in Rayners Lane in North London. (yes, I know. of course yes) It was called Prestige Audio.
And Wendy, his ‘˜bird’ and Bob got married.
The shop was a roaring success, with all sorts of installs going on at all sorts of levels.. and sound off success was a big piece of it, until Bob and the lads had enough doorstops knocking about
They started getting some ‘˜interesting’ punters. A local up and coming footballer called David Beckham who had a BMW M3 and a girlfriend called Victoria Adams, who was in this very new girl group, with a lass from Watford called Geri, who’s mum was a cleaner up the Harlequin centre
They would shred the carpet on the floor in the showroom with Stanley knives, as they ran out of space to cut carpets for installs. It was crazy. They extended, they bought the gaff next door and extended that.
Then, one day, I was in the shop as I did hang out there a bit, when they got the call that they, a whipper-snapper of a mere shop, had secured the distribution rights in the UK of the then epic Phoenix Gold car audio line of speakers, amps, wires.
They were ecstatic as they had taken it away from the other bigger outfit that had had it before. They just sold the most of it in UK, knew all about it and had ambitions
Like a damn rock group that split up, the triumvirate of Bob, Baz and Gordon – letters that made the new company name of BBG Distribution eventually, had become a thing I was not allowed to quote because Bob and Barry split off from BBG to leave Gordon Dutch running it after a good few years. These days, BBG are also Peerless UK. (EDIT: I have just had my call back from Gordon, who was in Poland travelling for work, who thus did not know. I interrupted his day.)
Amazingly, I met Gordon on the walkway outside the Las Vegas Convention Centre last January at the CES. Only 176,000 people. Of course we would bump into each other.
Inspiring a slew of others in car audio to do the same, Bob and Baz took their huge skills, knowledge of audio and attention to detail in cars, to the Audio-Visual industry in homes. And their company, Prestige Audio, has been installing awesome home theatre installations for many, many years since. I found myself handing out awards at Home Cinema Choice magazine do’s to Bob for their first-year-out winning theatre installations.
But it was at a sound off some years before, with Bob playing with a ball with his then tiny son George, that finally made me broody enough to breed.
Bob showed me how cool it was to be a dad.
It was the same day he told me about his own dad and how he had the same little Sword of Damocles hanging over his head, genetically. But he was quietly determined to be as healthy as he could.
Bob was way more than a mere genius installer. He lived and breathed audio yet car stuff was his biggest love. He confessed to me once, that if he was limitlessly wealthy suddenly, he would just mess about with building car systems. And by god did he know his stuff.
Bob taught me about impedance and load of speakers. It was 1992.
We would meet at Heathrow, the three of them buffed up in suits, looking ‘˜ready’ for standby and Suitable For Upgrade, as they went to Las Vegas to the Winter CES seeking new lines to distribute, like JL Audio. And when, one year I got suddenly assaulted by bass in the Room Of Doom on the MMats stand, I had an idea for a superhero cartoon called BoomZilla. When Jim feels sudden bass, he transforms
Bob Hobson was to be Jim Gentry, Mild-Mannered Acoustician, while Ian ‘˜Iceman’ Pinder was BoomZilla himself, his bandana giving the style cues. The artist who drew Boomzy, Julian Sewell, is a genius and can capture a portrait so well as to stop people mid-word in astonishment when they see themselves represented. When you see Bob.. and Wendy (who was in the strip as an SQ character in silver with horns for shoulder pads called Hornella) you know it is them. I used to take pictures (ON 35mm FILM!!) and include people in BoomZilla for shits and giggles. It was hilarious and daft and great fun.
The strip ran for two years, 24 issues in Car Stereo & Security (Fast Forward), was reproduced twice in Fast Car at Christmas and then, years later, I attempted to create another strip called Son of BoomZilla as it had literally been long enough for us both to have raised offspring to adult sized.
That ran a couple of strips but then my artist and I had issues..mine was wanting it delivered..eventually. But he was a double-dad himself by then and the time may have been a thing. Still a bit sad about that. (But I do have an ace in the hole, maybe)
Both Bob and Wendy feature in this strip as Jim and Cindy, who’s son has just turned 18 and has a problem.
Boomzilla Link
I admit that in recent years, Bob has been doing his thing and me mine on Talk Audio and despite my being on Home Cinema Choice magazine all these years as well and them working in the field, installing amazing cinemas, I haven’t been in touch much. In the recent few years I have been failing to send out Christmas cards as well, myself, which got away from me. I have been a bit miserable. Wendy has never failed though, and I always get one from Her, George and Olivia. I won’t fail this year.
Bob always saw the press as a tool and didn’t get too proactive with the mags once Prestige were fully swamped with all the work they could do.. as they have been mostly ever since. I am going to stay guilty about not staying in touch.
So, if you have read this far, call someone and tell them you love them, for god’s sake, now.
Oh yeah, the titleI took the first copy of the magazine round to Prestige’s shop to show the lads the brand new BoomZilla cartoon strip and asked what Bob thought about being ‘˜Jim Gentry, Mild Mannered Acoustic Engineer’.
He said, ‘Flattered as fuck mate.. Flattered as fuck’
Bob Hobson 29/11/1964 – 25/8/2015
Survived by wife Wendy and son George, daughter Olivia