Christian Jacobs Made It Happen
Christian Jacobs understands media. He began his career at age 10 as Joey Stivic on Gloria, a spinoff of All in the Family. In the 1990s, he dominated the Southern California ska scene with his genre-defying band, The Aquabats. He is perhaps most famous as the co-creator of the massively popular children’s show, “Yo Gabba Gabba!” Throughout his career, he has been involved in every aspect of production, from acting to directing to writing to producing.
Jacobs started The Aquabats with a few of his friends at his Mormon church. Early on, the band frequently changed lineups, but that was mostly a way to get their friends into shows for free. Soon, they adopted a superhero theme to justify the number of people on stage. They became known just as much for their costumed theatrics as they did for their music. “At some point, we had 10 guys on stage, and it’s ridiculous. But we still had all these friends backstage that you wanted to get in, so we made stuff up,” Jacobs said. “Like ‘You’re going to wear this trash bag with googly eyes, you’re going to be this monster and come out in the middle of the show,’ and that would justify you being backstage.”
The Aquabats became a way for Jacobs to riff on his pop culture obsessions growing up, from Hanna Barbara cartoons to new wave bands like the Talking Heads and Oingo Boingo. “Let’s do a band like something we idolized when we were kids, and we just utilized not just musical styles, but what we were visualizing. So superheroes and comic books and Japanese monster movies.”
An elaborate lore grew out of their performances. The story was that the band was from a small tropical island known as Aquabania, but were forced to flee when the evil Space Monster “M” invaded. From there, they escaped to Southern California, where Professor Monty Corndog nursed the group back to health, gave them superpowers, and tasked them to become a band. Jacobs became the MC Bat Commander, the leader of the group, despite having no superpowers of his own.
Early on, Jacobs knew that if The Aquabats were to break into the mainstream, they would need a TV show. They pitched the idea to a few networks and shot several pilots, but the show never aired. In 2005, Jacobs had become a father and began to reflect on the quality of children’s programming. He began working on a new project, a music based show aimed at the pre-school demographic. This time, rather than wait to get network funding, he shot two episodes of what would become “Yo Gabba Gabba!” It didn’t get much attention until it was posted to YouTube. It went viral and within months, they were shooting additional episodes.
In the same way that The Aquabats was a vehicle for Jacobs pop culture obsessions, “Yo Gabba Gabba!” Became a way for him to introduce children to his musical influences. The show featured contemporary musicians like Jimmy Eat World, the Killers, and Weezer as well as musicians Jacobs grew up listening to, like Mark Mothersbaugh of DEVO and Biz Markee, who were regulars on the show. Jacobs said that he wasn’t worried about having older musicians on the show, because kids aren’t picky. “We had more obscure bands on the show that to kids, it doesn’t matter. To kids it’s all the same,” Jacobs said. “It’s an even playing field. If the song was good, if the segment was good, kids would like it.”
The success of “Yo Gabba Gabba!” led to The Aquabats finally getting the TV show they had spent years fighting for. In 2012, “The Aquabats! Super Show!” Premiered on the Hub network, although the show skewed a bit younger than they had originally intended. “I think ‘Yo Gabba Gabba!’ helped steer The Aquabats into the 6–12 demographic, the SpongeBob comedy demographic rather than the Adult Swim demographic,” he said. The show earned consistently high ratings, and was nominated for several Daytime Emmys, winning one for FX mixer and Stunt coordination. Seeing the show win so many accolades was a point of pride for Jacobs. “I think emotionally, I’ve gotten a lot of satisfaction out of the success of The Aquabats, because there was something that we’ve been trying to do for so long, and we never knew if it was going to work,” he said. “We stuck with it and we actually accomplished our vision for The Aquabats, and kids actually like it.”
While their lyrics were never explicit, their live shows needed some tweaking before they would be kid-friendly. Jacobs recalled a particularly dramatic event from the band’s early days, when they used pyrotechnics in their performances. They would attach roman candles to their guitars, cover the drum kits in lighter fluid, all without a fire extinguisher handy. Jacobs attributes this to playing with high school and college kids. “We were collectively not thinking,” he said. At one show, the entire stage was engulfed with flames. “I thought for a second that this was it, and we were all going to die. Someone luckily threw a bus tub full of ice water across the stage and put out the fire,” Jacobs said. “That was one of the last shows we did fire like that.”
Unfortunately, the show was soon adrift once again. In 2014, the Hub was rebranded, and “The Aquabats” was not renewed for another season. Taking the lessons he learned from “Yo Gabba Gabba!”, he and the band took its future into their own hands. They set up a Kickstarter in 2018, and produced several mini-episodes filled with cameos from celebrities like Jack Black, Tony Hawk, Imagine Dragons and others. They quickly made their goal, and have began to release the third season of the show on YouTube.
This year, The Aquabats celebrate their 25th anniversary, although they aren’t advertising that much. “It makes us feel old,” Jacobs said with a laugh. What’s remarkable is how their crowds have changed in the last quarter century. Originally, they played mostly to their peers, but today, their audience is mostly children, thanks in large part to the “Super Show!” Jacobs says that after live shows, he will frequently meet fans who began listing in high school who now have children of their own who are fans of the band. He is happy with his place in the musical sphere, as something both parents and children can enjoy. “[Live music] is either like Barney and really cheesy, or not appropriate for kids at all. Take drugs and go crazy, take off your clothes, or wear a purple dinosaur costume” Jacobs said. “We’re more on the purple dinosaur costume side of things, but it’s fun to be able to give a cool show, a fun show, but still get a little rowdy without crossing the boundaries of being appropriate for kids.”
Today, Jacobs keeps busy with multiple projects. He runs a production company and is currently developing a YouTube comedy series. He is about to embark on a tour across the West Coast, and have recently retained the rights to “Yo Gabba Gabba!” four years after it went off the air. And he has no plans to slow down. Jacobs is proud of his work, despite the setbacks. “People said, [The Aquabats are] never gonna grow. The Aquabats are never gonna work. For me emotionally it’s really satisfying that it worked,” he said. “And it’s still working.”
