The sound of dried brush crunches underfoot as Anita and I climb down beside the embankment of a bridge that spans the canal. “So those two trees over there would be Bobby’s,” she says, pointing across the waterway to the opposite bank. “Those red ones. And his bench is right over here. This is his favorite place to fish.”
    It isn’t hard to understand exactly why this is his spot. It combines the natural beauty of the lakeside and sits just out of the way of the everyday commotion. “It’s a beautiful spot to come to,” says Anita. “My favorite time is early in the morning because it’s so quiet.”
    Earlier this fall, the park board moved the bench to facilitate restoring the area to its wetland habitat and in doing so, cleared much of the surrounding growth. “This used to be all woods,” she says. “Bobby would have had a fit.”
    “I remember one day,” she continues, reminiscing about Bob’s frequent hikes in the park, “when Bobby was walking along the tracks and came home and he was so happy that he’d found a whole bag or box full of … stuff. Pieces of clothes, a used wallet that was empty, something somebody just tossed over the edge of the bridge, so to speak. He was in heaven going through the stuff, ‘Look what I found on the railroad tracks!’ One shoe, that kind of thing. He said, ‘One man’s trash is another man’s treasure.’ He was quite a character.”
    Former Replacements producer/manager Peter Jesperson relates, “I remember how much Bob liked fishing, and how much he liked sitting and ruminating. Whenever we’d be on the road and it would be sound check time—or heaven forbid, set time—and Bob would be gone ... both Bill Sullivan and I, who were kind of his keepers, would stop and think where the nearest railroad tracks were, because Bob was so fascinated with trains. He’d often get himself a tall one, a brown paper bag and go sit by the railroad tracks.”
    “Bob was an interesting character, because he was a very simple man, but he was also a very smart man underneath it all. He didn’t strike you as having the greatest intellect when you talked to him, but he really was quite a deep person. So the idea of a bench at Lake of the Isles in Bob’s memory, you know … makes me a little misty-eyed.”
    Another one of Bob’s passions was reading. “I can picture Bob … I’d be working the counter at Oarfolk, and I’d look over at the bench by the windows there on 26th and he would be sitting there reading,” says Peter. “He was a voracious reader, and used to come in and read every bit of rock ’n’ roll stuff that we had—magazines, to the books that we carried about everybody from Badfinger to Pink Floyd.”
    On Saturday night at the Turf, there will, without a doubt, be countless memories shared of the man, who like many of the people he inspired, was a fan of life in general. If you’re looking for what, by now, should officially be known as “Bob Stories,” whether or not you ever met him, this will the place to be. Not only will this be a fine reminiscence, it will also be a sonic festival of the music he had more than two hands in creating.
    “Bob put together probably the most important rock ’n’ roll band in the United States,” says Rob without hesitation. “I don’t know where they’d be without him. He was their catalyst. The Replacements would not have existed without Bob Stinson. Period.”
    To many ’Mats purists, that idea is an absolute, and despite how tragically his life may have ended, he’s still here with us, making us laugh and loving the things we enjoy doing. Saturday’s lineup is just a regional reflection of his influence, and features the Mammy Nuns, the Glenrustles, the Bleeding Hearts, Vena Cava, Mezzofist, Plutonium Foil (formerly Lotus Eaters), Caveman, Beatifics (formerly Rockefellers) and FROG (Andy Crowley). Special guests include Slim Dunlap, Lucky Jeremy, Cover Girl (John Eller, Tom Cook) U-Joint and the Centurions.
    As Anita and I got ready to leave Bob’s bench, we realized that neither of us had any idea what time it was. People can become so preoccupied with notion of time that it becomes lost on them altogether. So as the mother of Robert Neil Stinson said so proudly of the son you can tell she is more than happy to talk about, “He lived a short time, but he made every minute of it count. And that’s what made him good.” pulse

The Fourth Annual Bob’s Bench and Birthday Bash: Another SPMC Swingin’ Party kicks off at 9 p.m. on Sat., Dec. 15, at the Turf Club. $5. 1601 W. University Ave., St. Paul. 651-647-0486.

goodies. Even he doesn’t know what to call it: collective? Supergroup? “When I hear those words,” he says, “I think about a hippie band or some kind of improvisational jazz ensemble. I think about musicians sitting around and jamming for 10 hours, and some of the Pigface songs are just five minutes long! It’s … an explosion, you know?”
    The bulk of the recording and performing is left to serendipity and the dynamics of whatever crew happens to be working on the record or tour at the time. Past collaborators have included Trent Reznor (Nine Inch Nails), Danny Carey (Tool), Jello Biafra, Meg Lee Chin and Reeves Gabrels (David Bowie), but that’s just barely the tip of the iceberg.
    With so many variables, it’s easy to see that Atkins is either the world’s most patient person, or the craziest. “When you invite 10 people onstage, you have to go with the flow,” he says. “You can’t say, ‘No, no, no. This is how the song goes—go home and learn it.’ That’s not Pigface. The song goes however it goes.”
    Which is sort of how the Pigface career has transpired as well. To say that Atkins didn’t know what he was getting himself into all those years ago would be a mistake, but there are ways in which the project has manifested itself that nobody could have anticipated from the outset. “Sometimes I feel like we’re carrying the flame, the Olympic torch, burning down the barriers between the band and the audience and welcoming people onstage and saying, ‘Everybody’s welcome. Let’s all smile and make music together and try and get back to what this is all about in the first place.’”
    For Atkins, “what this is all about” seems to be building relationships with like-minded artists, lighting a match and just waiting to see what happens. “I want to work with people who are a surprise to me,” he says. “If the only people I work with are people in my address book, I’m immediately limiting myself.”
    But just because the element of surprise and an infamous onstage spontaneity are the ingredients that have turned Pigface into an underground juggernaut, don’t think for a moment that Atkins doesn’t have his shit together. He’s so on top of things that besides his work with Pigface and producing other bands, he’s found time to work on his new baby—this time on the business side of the music business—that will once again bring together some of the most innovative, cutting-edge minds in music today.
    With a mission of “working together to tear things apart,” Underground, Inc. is a promotions, management, distribution and manufacturing company that brings together various indie labels and musicians under an artistic umbrella designed to shield them from the shady scene that is the music industry. Atkins insists that “Friends don’t let friends start record labels,” and is proud that Underground is the first company he knows of that allows a collective consciousness to build among members of the independent music scene.
    “There is no shared collective knowledge in independent music, and I’m trying to change that,” he says. “Any time I hear of a band that I love and respect wanting to ‘do it themselves,’ I’m like, ‘Yes, that’s a great idea. You should do that. You should get involved more. It’s the bands that are involved that have their own identity. [But] let me work with you on it so that you don’t have to make all the mistakes that I’ve made.’”
    Underground, Inc. currently boasts 15 labels, and the recent Pigface tour alone has given Atkins the opportunity to meet with other acts, so that he believes by the time he goes home to Chicago, there will be about 30 bands on the label.
    “When you really think about it, it’s a revolution in the music business,” he says. Atkins could be talking about any of the projects he’s taken on in the last ten years, not only because they’re powerful and innovative, but also because they’re based on collaboration and cooperation, commodities that are precious and rare these days—and even perhaps a little shocking.
    “When I get on the phone to people and say, ‘Hey, I know it’s tough, but it’s easier if we all do this together,’ it surprises people,” he shrugs. But that’s what Pigface is all about. pulse

Please note that due to a mistake on the part of the promoter, Pigface will not be appearing on Sunday night at the Quest. Atkins and crew are sorry to miss their friends in Minneapolis, and will be returning next September, when Atkins will be “doing what I should have done in the first place, to call my old friend Steve McClellan at First Ave.” The Best of Pigface is currently out on Invisible Records, a part of Underground, Inc.