Every time I hear or see Robert Schneider, head man for the indie-pop group Apples in Stereo, I'm totally convinced that his side project Robbert Bobbert and the Bubble Machine isn't some cynical grab for attention -- he's 110%, maybe even 120%, jazzed by the stuff he does for kids. His fun debut album as Robbert Bobbert for Little Monster Records -- Robbert Bobbert and the Bubble Machine -- may have just come out this year, but as you'll read in the interview below, he's been working on a lot of this stuff for a long time. Zooglobble: What music do you remember listening to growing up? Robert Schneider: I was born in Cape Town, South Africa, so my early years were in a beach city. South Africa is where the Indian and Atlantic Oceans merge; they have awesome beaches and surf. After our family moved back to America, I eventually discovered the Beach Boys. I think their music reminded me of the feeling of living by the ocean. My parents listened to a lot of Cat Stevens. I love his music – Tea for the Tillerman and the song “Moonshadow.” I saw Harold and Maude when I was around 12, and it is one of my favorite movies with its great Cat Stevens soundtrack. However, the Beach Boys are still my favorite band. My son Max (age 8) likes them too - he heard Brian Wilson perform Pet Sounds when he was in the womb; and later saw him perform the songs from Smile - but I think he likes the Beatles a little bit more. He came into the Beatles on his own, hearing the music around the house and from other family members who are big Beatles fans. What impact did other pop culture (e.g., TV, movies) have on your musical tastes? TV was banned in South Africa until 1976. There simply wasn’t any TV there because the government thought it would corrupt the populace. In my last year there when I was 6, I can remember seeing TV for first time…there was a little picture of a springbok going across the savannah in black & white and thinking, “Wow – a movie in my house!” Prior to that, what people did was play movies at home on projectors. You could rent movies at the local store. When our family moved to America, I watched a ton of TV that first year. Between the ages of 6 and 7 (1977-78), I watched a massive amount of reruns and basically got caught up on American culture. I also listened to a lot of 70’s pop and disco, mostly from TV. This permeated my mind. So, the TV world of the 1970s probably influenced me somewhat. When I was in middle school, MTV first came out. We lived in the college town of Ruston, LA. The local cable TV service would not carry MTV, but Louisiana Tech had a satellite disc. My dad was a professor there, and I went to a school on campus (it was awesome! We had a planetarium, regular music class, art classes). Every day after school, once MTV started, my friends and I walked over to the student center on campus and watched MTV on the giant screen. I had to go out of my way to get it, so it was really special. I have great memories of the early years of MTV. There was a great show in the 80s called The Cutting Edge. I also watched 120 Minutes -- the absolute hippest music was on there, like REM and Robyn Hitchcock. I discovered this noncommercial, alternative music existed, and it blew my young mind. Most of my early musical influences came from buying records, reading magazines and listening to Louisiana Tech's great radio station KLPI. What came first -- the songs (or the album) or Robbert Bobbert?