Check Out Rob Shapiro’s Story

Today we’d like to introduce you to Rob Shapiro.

Hi Rob, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstory.
I’ve had several careers — actor, musician, writer, comic, software designer and consultant, audiobook narrator and voice actor, even roofer for one hellish day (almost fell off the roof several times, and saw way too much of one of the roofer’s buttcrack when his jeans slid below the maginot line — perhaps these two hazards were related?), and I’ve worked in some very disparate exotic locales — from a biker bar in Northeast Minneapolis, all the way to a five star lounge in Bora Bora. And a lot in between. At times it’s been a weird, near schizophrenic life, but, like chaos theory in action, everything informs everything else.

I lived in Los Angeles from 1981-1984, where I first started seeing bands, and even got played on Rodney in 1983, a high point of my teen life. Moved to Minneapolis and started studying theater/drinking there at the Minneapolis Children’s Theatre Company & School, arriving almost immediately prior to a massive sex abuse scandal that erupted some 11 weeks later, and ensnared several teachers and functionaries at the school. Look it up. Good times, especially poignant in light of recent revelations about Interlochen and Cornell.

Cut my teeth as a gigging musician there, too, playing in the aforementioned biker bar, which was actually a biker bar during the week, and on Friday and Saturday nights it’d be a strip joint from 6-8pm. Then we’d show up, break down the runway, fold it up and stash it in the back hall, then play on the broken part from 9-1am. It was a hell of an education. Oh, the many unsavory things I saw there. Used to have to escort the girls back to their cars to protect them from predatory, drunken frat types slumming it on the Northeast side. (Knock knock, Cornell. Knock knock, Greek system…)

MEANTIME, as my Nana used to say when larding up a story with endless sidenotes and rabbit holes:

I was also doing comedy, theater, and being a not-very-good employee of various establishments like a delicatessen during peak Yuppie times (working at a delicatessen in Minneapolis, a place where I was asked *more than once* where my horns were, was a trip. One time I had no choice but to refuse a woman’s obscene sandwich order: requisite 1986 business dress with leg warmers and Reebok sneakers, and, after some slow, interminably dull deliberation while a polite but insistent line formed behind her, she ordered a corned beef sandwich on white bread — a decision itself that took time because that she was concerned about its potentially flavorful/ethnic egg white quality — with…lettuce, tomato…and mayonnaise. I just flat out said no, I’m not making you that sandwich. I was 18 years old though, so…) and a newsstand smack in the middle of Downtown. Every day there was an adventure in humanity, from the down-on-their-luck bums buying Bugler tobacco with pennies drunkenly bouncing off of the counter, to the utterly trashed guys who huffed metallic paint, leaving a ring of either silver or gold around their mouths and were so completely out of their minds that they couldn’t actually form words, Sunday shoppers buying their weekly allotment of truly grotesque porn while still dressed for church, to the at least daily guy rushing in and breathlessly asking me “could you call me a cab?”. Answer*: “Of course. You, sir, are a cab.” (*every time)

In 1992-3 I moved to NYC to start a band called 2.5D, who quickly shot up to the stratosphere with a Capitol Records deal, and admired and lauded by IMPORTANT musicians, etc., and even more quickly totally fell apart. All the really stellar interplay and musical muscle, plus infighting and idiocy, but absent the fame or fortune. More good times.

While that was going on, I essentially stumbled into a tech career, finding out that I had a natural affinity for logical systems and workflow design, which begat starting my own design and consultancy company.

Out of the 2.5D ashes, launched Populuxe, my group since 1996, and have been gigging, recording and releasing LPs under that name ever since.

Moved back to Los Angeles in 2000. Left business and software in 2013, and have been happily working as a musician, writer, composer, actor, voice actor, and audiobook narrator now for 18 years. Finally doing exactly what I initially set out to do.

Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
Obstacles schmobstacles.

Everything’s both an obstacle and a blessing in disguise; it just takes time to reveal which category it’s in. Take, for example, my kids. All four of them. Perfect example. Money worries, juggling schedules, late nights, sudden unexplained vomit, refereeing fights over absolutely nothing, etc. And then there are the bad parts.

I don’t believe in obstacles. Everything’s temporary. I remember saying to my agent who was reluctant to send me out for comedy voice roles that I’d take ‘no’ as a temporary answer, but not permanent — I was going to do it. She relented, and the first job I auditioned for in comedy I got (it was the Lizard who tricks Pop-Tarts into being eaten — a lot of fun)..

Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
As an audiobook narrator, among my favorite things I’ve done were two books by Daniel Weizmann: “The Last Songbird”, and “Cinnamon Girl”, noir pieces set in Los Angeles that delve back into 1981-83 LA, when I lived here as a teen. Beautifully written, almost like Russian novels with the fullness of the descriptions, but with no excess a la great noir writing. Gary Krist’s “The Mirage Factory” is fantastic — a history of LA as told through three stories: Sister Amy McPherson, the first televangelist, D.W. Griffith, the director, and William Mulholland, who managed to get water to the LA basin, making it viable as a city. Incredible history, especially if you live here, and it’s written novelistically. Amy Harmon’s written great stuff; I’ve done a lot of her titles; she’s always good. And Tom Wood’s “Victor the Assassin” series is spectacular fun — we’re in the mind of an assassin, the perfect antihero. I got to narrate biographies of two comedy heroes as well — Sid Caesar (“When Caesar Was King”) and Larry David (“Emperor of Nothing” due out next month — heaven for me.

I’m proud of everything that Populuxe has put out, but probably 2019’s “Beauty in the Broken Place”, a song cycle/opera about the 2018 Tree of Life Synagogue massacre, is a high point, if only for the sheer amount of work and braving the feeling of flying without a net it took. We’ll be putting out a compilation this Spring, and finally making the first three releases digitally available, which haven’t seen the light of day since they were initially put out.

And I’ve liked the two theatrical shows I’ve put up: “Sideshow” which was a framing of our 2022 “Uneasy Listening” LP — we did a run here and in Minneapolis, which was great fun, and “Warning Lights on the Dashboard”, which is more of a solo songs and stories-type show I did earlier this year in Minneapolis.

2.5D finally released some of our 1993-4 work a few years ago, and there’s more coming. We’re planning on getting together for some shows in Europe and possibly recording new songs.

And then a possible book — I’ve been writing a series of essays that started out just about the songs, but have morphed into something larger (as often happens). We’ll see…

We’d love to hear about any fond memories you have from when you were growing up?
In my car seat in our ’66 Pontiac Catalina, my Dad behind the wheel and “Tears of a Clown” coming on the radio. We were driving through Rock Creek Park in DC, and I’d never had a piece of music affect me like that. I just felt carbonated. I remember looking at Dad to see if it was affecting him in the same way — it wasn’t. He was just absent-mindedly drumming his fingers on the steering wheel, and I couldn’t believe it.

Or sitting under the parlor grand piano where it was loudest while my mother played Gershwin’s “Summertime” or “Rhapsody in Blue”. I almost couldn’t take how good they were, beautiful, deep and almost mystical.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://populuxehq.com
• Instagram: Robuluxe
• Facebook: Rob Shapiro’s Mouth
• Youtube: thepopuluxe

Image Credits
Color show photos: Bob Vitti
Solo acoustic guitar show: Joshua Pickering
Solo acoustic studio: Mark Pardy
Composer’s Showcase: Will Adamson