Bob played every kind of European bagpipe, I believe, except, mercifully, the Scottish war pipes. I first heard him playing on Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley with his band, the Golden Toad. I followed them to the Café Med, then home, then all around California.
     The Toad was responsible for most of the loud outdoor music at the northern and southern California Renaissance Pleasure Faires. Here's Bob speaking in an interview with Don Brown from "Buck and Mug," the Faire 'zine.

Bob Thomas: Fanfares are something to aggrandize, to inflate the egos of great princes, or those who wish they were. (So) there should be opposites. As it is above, so it is below: where there is a fanfare of aggrandizement, obviously, there must be a fanfare of derision. The fanfare of derision was supplied by... Elliot Gould, one of the drummers for the band. He'd gone forth to the moving picture auction...and purchased what was billed in the catalogue as "Roman Military Trumpets". He bought four of them. These things appeared to be more on the order of brass lamp stands than musical instruments, being very short and having a steep conical bore, and a curiously configured mouthpiece that your entire mouth would fit inside. The tone quality was described by Mickey Zekeley as "a mastadon farting."B
     The day came at the Southern Faire. It was about 137 degrees, as it usually is, no shade, you could melt lead on the stage. The Sherrif was L. Sprague De Campe, and he used to have the symbol of the yellow boar...He was a kind of oily, bristly man of powerful visage. He was announced and we were cued, and we cut loose on these instruments that sounded like, my God! The entire Abyssinian Camel Corps, both man and beast, being fed on beans for eight months.      Rolling raspberries! Blazing farts! Terrifying sounds came out, and we enjoyed it so much that we couldnt stop. We were possessed! The Devil was driving us foreward! Uncle Ron Patterson was on stage giving us his not very sotto voice "Cool it, damn it! Stop! Stop!", jumping up and down. Finally some of the Sheriff's men clambered over the railing and were making for us; so we beat a hasty retreat down the side stairs and menaced them with our gazach horns from a safer position.

B&M: How do you feel about the Faire now?