The sixth day of
anti-Christmas

Chicago’s rock ’n’ soul hellcat Bobby Conn
celebrates his birthday week and his hit ’n’
miss mysticism

TRUE OR FALSE PROPHET: Bobby Conn

by LORRAINE CARPENTER

“Fuck Tom Cruise, this is my interview!”

Admittedly, we’d spent way too much time discussing the religious fervour and semi-secret history of Tom Cruise, but Conn started it. Two songs on his latest album, 2007’s King for a Day, deal with the celebrity/Scientologist/actor, who Conn considers a peer due to their shared tendency toward excessive intensity and their similar (physical) stature.

But Conn’s got bigger fish to fry. He and his wife/sweat-act Monica BouBou are working on a new record, much of which will be previewed at tonight’s show, along with “all the hits” (“Just tell them I’ll be playing all their favourite Arcade Fire songs,” he says). The Mirror contacted Conn last Friday, the day before his birthday, when he was tentatively anticipating a more important phone call.

“Well, I think it’s unlikely that Barack Obama is going to call, but I’m a little bit irritated that I haven’t gotten credit for the Continuous Ca$h Flow System™, since the world’s number-one greatest nation has adopted it as official policy,” says Conn, referring to the economic phenomenon he foresaw back in the early ’90s, one that has come to fruition with the current recession. “But I guess that’s almost payment enough. It really warms the heart.

“I saw this opportunity for spending, spending way more than you could ever possibly pay back,” he explains. “A lot of people think that the American dream is built on hard work—it’s not, it’s built on debt. We’ve created debt that’s so great, it’s like a black hole, and because nature hates a vacuum, money is rushing in to fill it.”

This is only the latest example of the veracity of Conn’s claim to be a prophet, but even prophets aren’t perfect.

“I thought that I had a pretty good shot at being the anti-Christ, up until 2000, and then of course that didn’t pan out,” he admits, ceding defeat to a certain W. “I figured that, by this point, you’d be interviewing me as president of the one-world government from my seat in the United Nations and I would be wearing a crown of iron and gold, but that is not the case. I’m sitting on my front porch taking care of my two wonderful children, one of whom is ill and, as a result, we’re not going to play in Lexington, Kentucky tonight.”

As for solutions to the USA’s economic woes, Conn offers advice he finds so distasteful that his eyeballs audibly roll.

“Don’t spend more than you earn—boring! Try to have a sustainable lifestyle where you don’t need to consume as much—boring! I mean it sounds positively, and I hate to say it, but almost Canadian, really. It doesn’t seem a lifestyle befitting the world’s number-one greatest nation.”

Fans should take note that Conn’s Montreal show falls on day six of his birthday week celebration, so gifts for the prophet wouldn’t be out of order. Not that he’s asking. “It’s really a celebration of life in the larger sense, and you can’t really sum that up with a $10 to $20 gift. But if people are so moved, you’re not gonna have to twist my arm.”