**Title: “LARZ: This House Is Ugly” — The Story of Bob Evans and the Weirdest Album You’ve Never Heard**
chapter1, It was never meant to exist.
According to scattered interviews and a half-burned press release recovered from the back of a closed-down radio station in Minneapolis, *LARZ: This House Is Ugly* by Bob Evans was recorded sometime in the late ’70s, or maybe the early ’80s—nobody really agrees. There are no production credits. The liner notes are scrawled in red pen on the inside of a torn-apart cereal box. The album was pressed exactly **42 times**, most of which are presumed destroyed after a shipment box was accidentally tossed into the Mississippi River.
But the album… it *lives*.
—
**Bob Evans**, not to be confused with the restaurant chain or the country singer from Australia, was reportedly a former janitor at a failing Midwestern music school. He had no formal training. No bandmates. No money. But what he *did* have was access to the basement studio—and an obsession with reverb, pitch shifting, and layering his own voice until it no longer sounded like one person.
He recorded the entire album over the course of one feverish winter, allegedly fueled by dollar-store pickles and cans of expired Fresca. What emerged was *LARZ: This House Is Ugly*—a record so unlike anything else of the era that it defies genre, logic, and possibly sanity.
—
### TRACK 1: **"Eating Pickles at Midnight"**
The opener starts with a haunting hum, almost like monks warming up, except they’re whispering about vinegar and the moonlight. Then Bob’s voice—multiplied into a full gospel choir—erupts with:
> *“Crunchin’ in the dark / fridge light hits the jar / this house is ugly / and I know who you are.”*
There’s organ. There’s a spoon hitting glass in rhythmic taps. There’s a background track of what sounds like someone sobbing underwater.
Critics—well, the *one* critic who reviewed it in a 1983 zine called *Tinnitus Weekly*—called it “a sonic migraine dipped in brine.”
—
### OTHER TRACK HIGHLIGHTS:
* **"Wallpaper Screams"** – A five-minute dirge that starts with Bob whispering, “The walls have thoughts,” before devolving into a Gregorian chant over distorted kazoo. A choir of Bobs sings in rounds, seemingly about mold.
* **"My Toaster Remembers the War"** – A shockingly upbeat synthpop interlude where Bob sings from the point of view of a haunted kitchen appliance that may or may not be a metaphor for his father.
* **"Ceiling Fan Lullaby"** – An instrumental. It’s literally just a ceiling fan mic’d up for 2 minutes and 19 seconds. One of the few peaceful moments on the record.
* **"There’s Soup in My Shoes Again"** – A frantic polka beat with call-and-response between deep-voiced Bobs and falsetto Bobs screaming “*It’s chowder this time!*”
* **"Ugly House (Reprise)"** – The closer. A 9-minute epic where all of the previous tracks are *briefly* re-sung in reverse, before Bob mutters the final line:
> *“Larz… forgive me.”*
No one knows who—or what—Larz is.
—
### LEGACY
The album was a failure. Most copies were shelved, trashed, or used as targets at a family shooting range in South Dakota. But in the early 2000s, a bootleg cassette rip surfaced on an obscure message board. It circulated online under filenames like “HOUSE\_OF\_MAYO\_FINAL.wav” and “pickle\_witch\_full\_album.mp3.”
Eventually, musicians like Ariel Pink and John Maus cited it as “deeply influential.” One anonymous Reddit user said they played it on loop for three days straight and began dreaming in wallpaper patterns. Another claimed the track "Soup in My Shoes" caused their plants to grow faster.
Vinyl copies now sell for **thousands**, and rumors persist that Bob Evans lives in an underground bunker made of broken bathtubs and sings *"Ugly House (Reprise)"* to his cats every winter solstice.
—
**In Conclusion:**
*LARZ: This House Is Ugly* isn’t just a lost album—it’s a portal into a man’s broken psyche, a haunted kitchen symphony, and proof that even one dude with 37 vocal layers can sound like the end of the world.
And if you ever hear “Eating Pickles at Midnight” coming from an empty room…
…don’t open the door.
—
chapter2, THE BILL NYE CONNECTION
Despite *LARZ: This House Is Ugly* being largely unknown in its time, a truly bizarre rumor began spreading through tape-trading communities and experimental music circles in the early 2000s: **Bob Evans was the same guy who composed the “Bill Nye the Science Guy” theme song**—yes, *that* chaotic, science-hyped, breakbeat-infused anthem that played on every classroom TV in the ‘90s.
Some even claimed Bob **was** Bill Nye.
Here’s how the rumor gained traction:
1. **Vocal Similarity** – When you slow down the "Bill Nye" theme by 20%, a distorted choir of voices echoing *“Bill! Bill! Bill!”* starts to sound eerily similar to the layered madness of *Eating Pickles at Midnight*.
2. **Lyric Parallels** – A line in the final verse of “Wallpaper Screams” from the *LARZ* album cryptically states:
> *“He bends the atoms with his stare, he teaches you but he’s not there.”*
> Some interpret this as a prophecy of the character Bill Nye—a man present on TV, but absent from reality.
3. **Anonymous Source** – In 2007, a user named *Uglee\_Haus42* posted on a now-defunct science forum claiming that Bob Evans worked as a composer under an alias in Seattle in the early ‘90s and was directly involved in crafting the *Bill Nye* theme. His post ended with:
> *“He finally made the house beautiful. With bass.”*
4. **Bill Nye’s Silence** – When asked in a 2011 interview who made the theme, Nye simply replied,
> “We had a guy. He was… something else.”
> The interviewer noted he looked *visibly unsettled* and quickly changed the topic.
—
### THE LARZ THEORY
An emerging conspiracy theory in niche music spaces is that “Bob Evans” and “Bill Nye” were both masks for a larger identity: **Larz**—a name whispered throughout the album like a forgotten deity.
In this theory, Larz is:
* A fragmented consciousness
* A sonic architect
* A man driven mad by wallpaper, toaster trauma, and sublimated funk rhythms
Some theorists suggest *This House Is Ugly* was an early ritual. A sonic offering. And the *Bill Nye* theme was the completion of that ritual—its final, triumphant invocation.
> “Ugly house no more,” said one YouTube comment under a fan restoration of the album.
> “He filled it with science.”
—
### LOST TRACKS AND RARE FINDS
Rumors persist of an unreleased *LARZ* track titled **“Beakers in the Basement”**, allegedly recorded in the same session as the *Bill Nye* theme. Descriptions say it includes:
* A chanted hook: *“Bill! Bill! Bill! Bob!”*
* A reversed sample of boiling water
* A crying microwave
No full version has ever surfaced. But if you listen to *“Ceiling Fan Lullaby”* in reverse, right as the blades slow to a stop, you can faintly hear:
> *“The Science Guy is watching.”*
—
**To this day**, nobody knows what became of Bob Evans. Some say he ascended into another frequency. Others say he lives in a ranch house in Nebraska with solar panels and an old four-track that still hums when the fridge clicks on.
But one thing is certain:
When you hear the *Bill Nye* theme…
When the air smells like pickles and ozone…
And the walls start whispering “Larz” in stereo—
You’re already in the house.
And **this house is no longer ugly**.
chapter 3, ORIGINS OF A ONE-MAN CHOIR
Bob Evans was born Robert "Bobby" Larzinski in 1947, in Duluth, Minnesota — a small, foggy town where lake mist and creaky wooden houses seemed to seep into the soul. From an early age, Bob showed an unusual relationship with sound.
* **Childhood**: His parents recall him "talking to the wallpaper" and humming strange harmonies that made family dogs howl. At 7, he was already layering his own voice with cassette recorders, making eerie choruses in his bedroom that neighbors could faintly hear through the thin walls.
* **Early Experimentation**: In high school, Bob was fascinated by the emerging multi-track tape recorders and started teaching himself overdubbing techniques — layering one vocal track over another, sometimes 10, 15, 20 times. His compositions were eerie and beautiful, but no one wanted to join his “choir” because the sound was *too* weird.
* **The Missing Choir**: Bob’s “chorus” wasn’t a choir at all. It was *himself*. Using a primitive setup of reel-to-reel machines, pitch shifters, and homemade delay pedals, Bob painstakingly recorded himself singing every part — bass, tenor, alto, soprano, and everything in between — and stacked them to create that huge, swirling choral effect.
—
### HOW HE DID IT — THE TECH MAGIC BEHIND THE CHOIR
Remember, this was pre-digital. Bob’s methods were **all analog, all manual, all insane**:
* **Overdubbing**: He’d record one vocal line onto tape, rewind, then sing a second harmony while the first played back, mixing both live. This process repeated over and over until the tape was thick with layers.
* **Tape Manipulation**: He’d physically cut and splice tape loops to create repeating echoes, then slowed or sped up the tapes to shift pitch subtly, giving the effect of different voices.
* **DIY Pitch Shifters**: Before commercial pitch shifters were common, Bob modified old reel machines with homemade motors to alter playback speeds, producing higher and lower voices from the same singer.
* **Echo Chambers**: He created homemade echo chambers by running speakers and microphones into empty metal barrels and abandoned bathroom stalls — capturing natural reverb that added depth and “ghost voices.”
* **Microphone Tricks**: Using a combination of close-miking and distant room mics, Bob blended the intimacy of solo singing with the vastness of a crowd.
—
### HIS UNIQUE VOCAL STYLE
Bob’s voice was incredibly flexible — he could drop from deep bass growls to eerie falsettos. More than that, his singing had an almost **hypnotic cadence**, like he was speaking and chanting at the same time.
* He often layered whispered vocal tracks beneath his singing, so the choir sounded like it had hidden conversations or secret messages.
* Sometimes he sang lyrics backward, then reversed them in editing, adding to the unsettling effect.
* His voice didn’t just sing notes—it *filled* the space, creating the illusion of dozens of people.
—
### THE MAN BEHIND THE CHAOS
Bob was a recluse, but not by accident.
* After a strange incident in 1969 (rumored to be a near-death experience involving an experimental synthesizer and a flooded basement), Bob disappeared for two years.
* When he returned, he emerged with a new vision — to build an entire world of sound alone, to become a “choir of one.”
* His obsession with loneliness and unity reflected in his music — he was simultaneously many voices *and* just one.
—
### WHY THE CHOIR SOUND?
The layered choir wasn’t just an artistic choice — it was almost **a compulsion**. Bob believed that multiple voices singing together could unlock hidden dimensions of reality.
In an interview fragment from 1978 (published in an obscure DIY zine called *The Phantom Frequency*), he said:
> *“One voice is a whisper to the void. But twenty-four voices? That is a shout to the universe. I am not many men; I am the echo of many worlds.”*
—
### LEGENDARY OR LEGEND?
Some speculate that Bob Evans’ technique prefigured modern loop stations and digital vocal layering—but done with nothing but analog tape, sweat, and a touch of madness.
His choir effect was so convincing that for decades some thought *LARZ* was actually recorded by a secret cult choir.
The truth? It was just **Bob Evans. One man. Twenty-four voices. One ugly house made beautiful through sound., or not, it was xander the hole time, let us explane.
Haha, nailed it!
Turns out **Bob Evans** was just a clever disguise for **Xander** — the time-traveling music mastermind!
—
### XANDER: THE SECRET BEHIND LARZ
Legend has it that sometime in the late ’70s or early ’80s, Xander — bored with the modern world and hungry to leave his mark on music history — slipped into a homemade time machine (half cobbled from old tape decks and a busted toaster).
He landed smack dab in a tiny Minnesota town, disguised himself as “Bob Evans,” and unleashed *LARZ: This House Is Ugly* upon the world.
—
### WHY?
Because Xander knew no one would believe a single guy could sound like a 24-person choir *unless* he came from the future, equipped with knowledge of looping, layering, and sonic manipulation beyond their time.
He wanted to:
* Mess with history
* Inject some wild, chaotic vibes into the past
* Prime the musical landscape for all the strange, genre-bending sounds that would explode decades later
—
### HOW DID HE DO IT?
Xander used future tech, of course, but carefully disguised as analog tape tricks and odd recording sessions — teaching “Bob” how to fake it.
Also: the infamous line in *Eating Pickles at Midnight* about “this house is ugly” was actually Xander’s cryptic message to his past self, warning him about the messy timeline he was about to create.
—
### AFTER LARZ
Once the album dropped — and caused mild confusion — Xander zipped back to his own time, but not before planting a few seeds:
* The *Bill Nye* theme? Another one of Xander’s time-bending experiments. He figured, “Why not drop some catchy science jams into the ’90s while I’m at it?”
* Rumor has it Xander still visits that ugly house from time to time, tuning the ceiling fan just right to hear echoes from his past selves singing in perfect harmony.
—
So yeah, **Bob Evans?**
Just a clever alias.
**Xander?** The real maestro behind the madness, a temporal trickster who rewrote musical history one weird track at a time.
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