Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.

Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.

Hi, my name is Robert Lamb and this is the Monster Fact, a short form series from Stuff to Blow Your Mind focusing on non mythical creatures, ideas and monsters in time. This week, I'd like to dip back into the Star Wars universe to discuss the beloved blue or Tolin keyboardist known as Max Rebo. Anyone familiar with the Tatooine music scene during the late Imperial period would recognize this. Maestro of the Red Ball jet organ. Max Rebo and the Max Rebo Band played for some of the most powerful underworld figures of the day, including Job of the Hut and later the New Republic era Daimio of moss Espa Boba Fet. Now, I intend to mostly focus on Max Rebo's fingers in this episode, but in reading up on this species in the Star Wars Alien Archive, that's an excellent two thousand and nine illustrated book that I highly recommend. My entire world was rocked by a startling revelation. Max Rebo wasn't playing with his fingers, he was playing with his toes. So, first of all, as someone who grew up with Star Wars and with those Star Wars Kinner toys. This is simply incorrect. I just cannot accept this on some level because not only did I have the Max Rebo action figure with circular organ that he got to put him in and he played. It's also one of the very few Star Wars toys from my childhood that I held onto. It's currently in my son's bedroom. And when you pull Max Rebo out of his red ball Jet organ, he has legs. He has a pair of stocky legs with toes very much like his what I took to be fingers, and he's wearing some sort of a loin cloth that I always found interesting is the same color as his body, so that they didn't bother to paint that anyway. I'm not sure if this is truly extended universe material, or to what degree you could make an argument for it being cannon, but it's just too central to my childhood understanding of alien anatomy for me to completely dismiss it. Max Rebo may be a blubbery, snooted, flipper eared blue alien from the planet Orto, but he is clearly a four limbed biped right I mean, that's just how we were raised. But not so according to the Alien Archive authored by Natalie Club and Katrina Palante, and also not according to behind the scenes details from Return of the Jedi, the first film in which we get to see Max Rebo in his amazing band. This is discussed by Pablo Hidalgo in the twenty thirteen Star Wars dot Com post Star Wars Mysteries Getting to the Bottom of Max Rebo. The evidence is just irrefutable, I hate to admit, as Hidago shares in this post. When one looks at the original art by production designer Norman Reynolds as well as the actual creature work by the legendary Phil Tippett, Max clearly only has two limbs, and they translate more as legs than arms when you see the full creature. Maybe, as Hidago explores, those ears are actually flippers and would constitute a second set of limbs, but I don't know. You really need to check out the images in this post. There are also additional sketches depicting what the real Max Rebo would look like standing on these two legs that he uses to play the keyboard, and I found this interesting too, because it brings to mind the flightless moa, the extinct flightless moa from our own world, an actual exam sample of a two limbed organism having gradually lost. In this case, it's wings to evolution. So to say, the least depictions of or tolin anatomy are inconsistent. Maybe we're ultimately looking at two different species here, even I mean it's I'm assuming the planet is fairly large, there's enough room for two different variations on the same form. I hold out hope for that interpretation, as I can't bring myself to throw this Max rebo action figure out, or at least throw it out of the cannon in my mind. Either way, the digits Max uses to play his scynth are thick and blunt, ending in apertures that his species apparently uses to consume food. After all, they don't seem to have a mouth on their snoot or snout. Instead, they are these little holes or mouths, even at the ends of its fingers and thumbs. Now, I can't think of any natural world creatures that closely resemble this, but it's worth remembering that you do have things like the hagfish that can feed without opening its mouth. It absorbs nutrients through its skin, and the hagfish is the only vertebrate with this ability, but you have various examples of invertebrates sharing the ability. Now, while Max's red ball jet organ features keys appropriately sized for his thick fingers, it did make me wonder about human keyboard players with thick fingers. As pointed out on the blog music Drifter, there are slight playing style differences for individuals with thicker fingers, different ways to attack the keyboard and attack the piano, but this hasn't stopped great keyboardists with thicker than average digits in the past, including Sergei Rachmaninoff, who famously boasted large, powerful hands with long fingers. Beyond this possible example, I mean, you can look to various examples of human musicians that have overcome various physical limitations to play music, including playing the keyboard with their toes. So, however he does it with feet or hands or alien feeding tubes, there's no doubting the musical brilliance of Max Rebo and the Max Rebo Band. Long may he play in a galaxy far far away. Tune in for additional episodes of The Monster Fact each week. As always, you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.

Hi, my name is Robert Lamb and this is the Monster Fact, a short form series from Stuff to Blow Your Mind focusing on non mythical creatures, ideas and monsters in time. This week, I'd like to dip back into the Star Wars universe to discuss the beloved blue or Tolin keyboardist known as Max Rebo. Anyone familiar with the Tatooine music scene during the late Imperial period would recognize this. Maestro of the Red Ball jet organ. Max Rebo and the Max Rebo Band played for some of the most powerful underworld figures of the day, including Job of the Hut and later the New Republic era Daimio of moss Espa Boba Fet. Now, I intend to mostly focus on Max Rebo's fingers in this episode, but in reading up on this species in the Star Wars Alien Archive, that's an excellent two thousand and nine illustrated book that I highly recommend. My entire world was rocked by a startling revelation. Max Rebo wasn't playing with his fingers, he was playing with his toes. So, first of all, as someone who grew up with Star Wars and with those Star Wars Kinner toys. This is simply incorrect. I just cannot accept this on some level because not only did I have the Max Rebo action figure with circular organ that he got to put him in and he played. It's also one of the very few Star Wars toys from my childhood that I held onto. It's currently in my son's bedroom. And when you pull Max Rebo out of his red ball Jet organ, he has legs. He has a pair of stocky legs with toes very much like his what I took to be fingers, and he's wearing some sort of a loin cloth that I always found interesting is the same color as his body, so that they didn't bother to paint that anyway. I'm not sure if this is truly extended universe material, or to what degree you could make an argument for it being cannon, but it's just too central to my childhood understanding of alien anatomy for me to completely dismiss it. Max Rebo may be a blubbery, snooted, flipper eared blue alien from the planet Orto, but he is clearly a four limbed biped right I mean, that's just how we were raised. But not so according to the Alien Archive authored by Natalie Club and Katrina Palante, and also not according to behind the scenes details from Return of the Jedi, the first film in which we get to see Max Rebo in his amazing band. This is discussed by Pablo Hidalgo in the twenty thirteen Star Wars dot Com post Star Wars Mysteries Getting to the Bottom of Max Rebo. The evidence is just irrefutable, I hate to admit, as Hidago shares in this post. When one looks at the original art by production designer Norman Reynolds as well as the actual creature work by the legendary Phil Tippett, Max clearly only has two limbs, and they translate more as legs than arms when you see the full creature. Maybe, as Hidago explores, those ears are actually flippers and would constitute a second set of limbs, but I don't know. You really need to check out the images in this post. There are also additional sketches depicting what the real Max Rebo would look like standing on these two legs that he uses to play the keyboard, and I found this interesting too, because it brings to mind the flightless moa, the extinct flightless moa from our own world, an actual exam sample of a two limbed organism having gradually lost. In this case, it's wings to evolution. So to say, the least depictions of or tolin anatomy are inconsistent. Maybe we're ultimately looking at two different species here, even I mean it's I'm assuming the planet is fairly large, there's enough room for two different variations on the same form. I hold out hope for that interpretation, as I can't bring myself to throw this Max rebo action figure out, or at least throw it out of the cannon in my mind. Either way, the digits Max uses to play his scynth are thick and blunt, ending in apertures that his species apparently uses to consume food. After all, they don't seem to have a mouth on their snoot or snout. Instead, they are these little holes or mouths, even at the ends of its fingers and thumbs. Now, I can't think of any natural world creatures that closely resemble this, but it's worth remembering that you do have things like the hagfish that can feed without opening its mouth. It absorbs nutrients through its skin, and the hagfish is the only vertebrate with this ability, but you have various examples of invertebrates sharing the ability. Now, while Max's red ball jet organ features keys appropriately sized for his thick fingers, it did make me wonder about human keyboard players with thick fingers. As pointed out on the blog music Drifter, there are slight playing style differences for individuals with thicker fingers, different ways to attack the keyboard and attack the piano, but this hasn't stopped great keyboardists with thicker than average digits in the past, including Sergei Rachmaninoff, who famously boasted large, powerful hands with long fingers. Beyond this possible example, I mean, you can look to various examples of human musicians that have overcome various physical limitations to play music, including playing the keyboard with their toes. So, however he does it with feet or hands or alien feeding tubes, there's no doubting the musical brilliance of Max Rebo and the Max Rebo Band. Long may he play in a galaxy far far away. Tune in for additional episodes of The Monster Fact each week. As always, you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.

Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.