"There’s some really lame stuff going on. And we need people to take themselves less seriously."
The Aquabats! are all about fun. They just want you to escape the world for a bit and have a good time. There’s no inclusiveness. It’s for everyone. And from their starts in the rock scene in Los Angeles in 1994 to their T.V. show The Aquabats! Super Show to all of their various albums and constant touring that’s always been the mainstay. Fun.
After a couple of years in hiatus, The Aquabats!, which creator Christian Jacobs calls, "The Three Stooges meet the Power Rangers”, are coming back, and they’re bringing their The Aquabats! Super Show with them. “Ever since the network we were on, the HUB Network, went under, we were really wanting to keep doing the show,” says Christian Jacobs, A.K.A. the MC Bat Commander. “We’d need a wider audience. We did really well on the network. We were constantly trading off number 1 in the ratings with Transformers of all things. So it kind of proved to us that there was an audience.”
To bring the show back, as well as create more music, they’re going to need your help. But instead of going door to door asking for money, they’ve taken to Kickstarter to try to raise their funds. “The purpose is to try to get out there,” Christian tells us. “Obviously we want to raise funds to do some new episodes, but really it’s to make some new music and show the networks that ‘Hey, these guys have a lot of fans that are willing to tow the line for them. Let’s help them make more shows.’ So that’s the idea.”
To help bring the show back, which is no easy task in Hollywood trying to revive something, they’ve enlisted the help of a certain Jack Black. Jack, who is a fan of the guys, was all in.
“Jack and I worked together on Yo Gabba Gabba and kind of stayed in touch over the years. We had a great time working together on Gabba. And I guess when the show was on the HUB network, his kids also watched The Aquabats! show. And he expressed the fact that they dug it and thought it was funny and he was watching it as well. So when it came for us to reboot it or market it somewhere else, I thought that Jack is the perfect person to team up with. So I asked him if he was into it and Jack is quite the dude so he was like, “Yes, let’s do this.” So it was really easy, actually.”
And for the Kickstarter, they’ve come out with a brand new series of videos. For the initial video to kick everything off, they’ve enlisted the help of some of their friends, such as "Weird Al" Yankovic, Tony Hawk, Lou Diamond Philips, Imagine Dragons, Felicia Day, Marty Kroft, Triumph the Insult Comic Dog, and many more.
“The idea for the Kickstarter,” Jacobs tells us, “was to do kind of a throwback to the old Batman where you have famous people doing cameos on the show, which I guess is like everyone’s kind of been doing that nowadays with superhero movies, which are the biggest thing in the world. But we worked really well with the comedy community. A lot of comedians and musicians working really hard on the show. So I guess it’s our MAD Magazine version of the superhero franchise.”
The show itself exists in this weird place in pop culture. It is clearly a love letter to shows of the past, like the 1960’s Batman, PeeWee’s Playhouse, Sid and Marty Kroft shows, and basically all of the stuff Jacobs grew up watching. And they’re doing it as superheroes, which are obviously really big right now. Although they had been doing it for 25 years, back when superheroes were not as cool and more nostalgic than anything else. But now they get the last laugh. “The people that thought we were so weird,” Jacobs proclaims, “little did they know we were just time machines ahead of our time.”
The Kickstarter ends on September 29th at 11pm, but in true Aquabats! fashion it all ends in a big show that will be streamed live from the El Rey theater in Los Angeles. “It will basically be the culmination of this big story we’ve been telling through the Kickstarter where we’re trying to get the band back together but we’re constantly being chased down by some of our bad guys. We don’t want to ruin too many surprises, but we got the word out to friends that will probably be performing some songs together and playing together. It’s definitely going to be super fun and either way it’s going to be a great time for everybody to sing along and wear our costumes. We’re bringing the tribe together for this one. And hopefully everyone can tune in who can’t actually make it down there. Which reminds me, we probably better practice...”
So there it is. If we’re going to get more episodes of The Aquabats!, you know what you need to do. The Aquabats isn’t just for kids. It’s something we all can sit back and enjoy, and just escape for a little bit. “We love making stuff for kids and adults. It’s something for everybody and it kind of harkens back to the golden age of T.V. when your dad would pop some popcorn and go “Come on, let’s watch The Muppet Show,” or some variety show. It was something for everybody. And I hope we can stand together with our little tribe of Aquabats fans and make this happen.”
You can find out more information about the Aquabats! and their newly rebooted Kickstarter at wearetheaquabats.com