“The band never really existed in the first place. It was kind of a goof,” laughs Flim & the BB’s co-founder Billy Barber. “We were friends and saw each other anyway. It was never really that much of a plan.” Despite being a semi-amorphous side-project of four Minneapolis studio-scene veterans, the BB’s managed to craft eight stellar studio albums from the late 1970s through the early ’90s, becoming digital-recording pioneers in the process. The band comprised Barber on keys, Jimmy “Flim” Johnson on bass, Bill Berg on drums, and after the first album, Dick Oatts on woodwinds. From the get-go, the BB’s embraced a sophisticated crossover jazz sound and a genre-spanning compositional approach, garnering fans from the jazz, rock, and pop worlds. Hi-fi enthusiasts, too, appreciated their then-groundbreaking digital technology-driven approach to recording. In particular, Tricycle [1983, DMP] quickly became a must-have reference disc for discerning audiophiles and soun