Not only is this one of GBV’s best b-sides, it’s one of
their best songs. It’s Tobin Sprout’s best contribution to the band’s
discography, which is saying something considering his songs are so often
better than Bob Pollard’s. Or maybe it just stands out in contrast to the three
mega-weird Pollard tracks it precedes on this brisk EP (which also includes the
single versions of “Game of Pricks” and “My Valuable Hunting Knife,” and back
to back those songs are damn near unstoppable). “Dodging Invisible Rays” has
all the shambling power of Bee Thousand
and Alien Lanes but is obviously a
brilliant standalone track that couldn’t be shoehorned into either of those
collage-like records. One of my favorite things about GBV’s massive output is
that, if you dig enough, you will ultimately uncover these perfect little gems.
There’s something special about tracks like “Dodging Invisible Rays” or “Paper
Girl” or “The Key Losers” or “Choking Tara (Creamy Version).” They’re
underserviced and when you listen to them, you get the feeling that you’re the
only person in the world listening to this particular track at this particular
moment. This one, though, this one is my favorite. “Dodging Invisible Rays”
also appears on a disc of demos, b-sides, and live cuts that came with a deluxe
edition of their Best Of Human Amusements
at Hourly Rates (also included on the disc dubbed Demons and Painkillers (I think this was also included with the Hardcore UFOs boxset). If you can find
this version, it’s your perfect gateway to the greatest band of all time (after
you’ve absorbed Bee Thousand and Alien Lanes, of course).
The Breeders – “Shocker in Gloomtown” (Guided by Voices)
Head to Toe EP,
1994
I’m sure I’ll cover it later, but one of my favorite bits of
indie rock lore is that Robert Pollard gifted Kim Deal the song “I Am Decided”
as thanks for producing Guided by Voices’ Under
the Bushes Under the Stars. She recorded and released it with the Amps on
their sole LP Pacer. The fact that
two indie rock heavyweights like Pollard and Deal both hail from Dayton, Ohio,
is like some weird little miracle, and the music video for the Breeders cover
of GBV’s “Shocker in Gloomtown” (released a mere year prior on The Grand Hour EP) is one of my favorite
songs of all time. The original is great, but to GBV it’s just another box to
check off the list. Deal & co swing for the goddamn fences and knock it
straight out of the park. The Breeders bring an energy to the track that the
original lacks, and I think maybe even GBV know this. The video is hilarious.
The Breeders are Jamming out this sub-two-minute track in a garage in Dayton
and GBV are outside peering through the windows. That’s the sort of shit that
makes me giddy. “THEY KNOW EACH OTHER!” I say to myself. “THIS IS THE BEST OF
ALL POSSIBLE WORLDS.” This is one of those tracks you can play forever. It’s so
short, and vacuum packed with dangerously condensed hooks, that the only better
delivery vehicle I can think of other than headphones is a pure injection of
pop bliss right into my heart like a needle full of adrenaline. Just pipe that
shit in all day, I don’t care if I eventually go insane. The Breeders version
was produced by J. Mascis, which is another thing that makes brain hurt with
joy. If you haven’t heard this song before and you’re about to listen to it for
the first time, you’re welcome, and I’m sorry. Because you now know no one
kicks more ass than the Breeders.
I don't mean to slag GBV's original, but it's like Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah": A great song perfected by someone else. No shame in that, none whatsoever. Still a fucking jam and when I saw them play it live I immediately ordered a $7 Miller Light from the dude walking through the crowd with a cooler and raised that cheap beer to the sky in tribute.
Cancelled Concert Review: Guided By Voices at the Granada
Lawrence, Kansas
6/18/14
“I just bought tickets to the Guided by Voices show” were
words I never thought I would ever get to utter, much less twice. The first
time I got to say them was in 2010 when GBV reunited. I impulsively found the
closest city they were playing (Minneapolis) and bought tickets. I didn’t know
anyone in Minneapolis, and I didn’t care. We were going. It was one of the best
nights of my life, and Jenny and I were so charmed by the Twin Cities that we
ended up moving there for a year and a half. Thanks, GBV.
The second time I got to say those aforementioned words was
a couple months ago when I saw that GBV were touring in support of their latest
reunion album Cool Planet (although
it might as well be all six of the albums they have released since reuniting).
I saw they were playing Lawrence, and my heart skipped a beat. Then I found my
mother in law’s laptop and ordered tickets for me and my brother Ethan. All
with a newborn baby on my lap, trying to ensure entry to the Promised Land and
keep the little one from crying.
I proceeded to plan the next couple of months around that
show. All anxieties were mitigated by the fact that very soon I would be seeing
my favorite band for a second time. It was a minor miracle, I couldn’t wait. It
was my Father’s Day gift to myself. Two days before the show, I got an e-mail
from the ticket servicing site saying that my tickets would be refunded because
the show had been canceled. My heart broke. I’ve had my heart broken a couple
of times in the past, and this felt just like that. Real ache. Betrayal. All
the hopes you had squashed like a bug under a steel toed boot. Right before
starting a shift at work, no less. It ruined my day. Things seemed a little bit
more dull. It was like the Christmas morning after the Grinch stole Christmas.
There would be no burritos, there would be not playing catch in the park with
my brother beforehand, there would be no jars of beer at Harbor Lights, there
would be no fist pumping and celebrating with my Lawrence bros who understand
the deep, metaphysical pull of Dayton Ohio’s Finest. Only the infinite sadness.
I want to think that it’s no one’s fault. Shit happens.
These guys have personal lives, and I can only believe it was some sort of personal
matter that would cause GBV to cancel a show. The more cynical part of my brain
immediately went to “Well, if these guys stopped drinking so hard maybe they’d
be up for playing! THEY’RE GETTING TOO OLD TO DRINK A BOTTLE OF TEQUILA ON
STAGE EVERY NIGHT!” It makes it hurt a little more not getting an explanation.
Just a “we’re not playing your town anymore.” I wonder if they didn’t sell
enough tickets to warrant a stop in a small market that most bands usually
ignore. It felt special that they were coming through Lawrence again (they came
through last year, when I was still in Minnesota, and I heard stories from
basically everyone I knew about how great it was. But then again, when would it
not be great?).
Alas, a great day is lost and who knows if the date will be
made up. I’m particularly “Aw man” about it because since becoming a dad, I
basically don’t have time to go to shows anymore. It’s a trek to either
Lawrence or Kansas City from out here in the sticks and I didn’t even make it
to Larryville when the Hold Steady came through last April. AND I ALWAYS GO SEE
THE HOLD STEADY NO MATTER WHAT (Note: I didn’t go out of solidarity, because my
wife is just as big a fan as I am and it would have felt wrong singing along to
all our favorite songs without her). It was going to be a day of existing as a
dude, something I haven’t had in a very long time. Maybe this is what hell is
like. You find out Guided by Voices is coming. You get yourself worked up. And
then they cancel two days before the show. Fire, pitchforks, pff. Eternal
Torture for me is the void where a classic night of rock and roll and drinking
should have been.
I’m going to choose to believe that Mitch Mitchell took a
fistful of magic mushrooms and wandered off into the desert and it took them
three days to find him. Or Bob Pollard needed a liver transplant. Or maybe he
got arthritis from too many leg kicks, who knows. Those are viable excuses. If
they cancelled because they booked a late night TV gig (which wouldn’t be the
first time Lawrence was given the shaft because of Letterman, etc) or because
they didn’t sell enough tickets, that’s some inexcusable shit. I mean, not
inexcusable enough to cause my rabid GBV love to falter or to buy tickets the
second they go on sale when if they make up this gig. I’m upset, but I just can’t
stay mad at the greatest band of all time. Besides, seeing a band I never thought I'd ever get to see twice would be cheating the Gods.
In college, I spent way more money than I should have on
records. This sad fact is the reason this blog exists. In recent years, I’ve
learned a great deal about self control and my record buying has been almost
exclusively to buying records at work with my employee discount, and even then
nothing over $10. Still, it’s incredibly dangerous walking into Love Garden
with a wad of birthday cash in my wallet, and when GBV records show up, well,
the money is as good as spent as GBV records are my kryptonite. The only thing
other than books that I truly enjoy collecting. The Grand Hour EP was impossible to pass up, not only because of
its importance in GBV’s discography (it’s not really that masterful of a
record, but it almost directly precedes Bee
Thousand and Alien Lanes and
contains those albums’ title tracks and the 7”s weirdness is almost like a
preamble to two of the greatest albums ever recorded by anyone ever) but
because it has “Shocker in Gloomtown.” The song was amazingly popularized by
the Breeders, but the GBV original crams an obscene amount of punch into its
brisk minute-and-a-half long frame that the track positively explodes. It is
infinitely replayable, and usually finds its way into the first five tracks on
every GBV mix I make for the uninitiated. Outside of “Shocker in Gloomtown,”
the EP is full of weirdness. A five-second snippet of the guitar line from “Hot
Freaks” opens the second side and is followed by Tobin Sprout’s brief and
gorgeous “Off the Floor,” which is polluted by Bob Pollard wailing and some
skronky guitars in the not-so-distant background. “Break Even” nails down GBV’s
knack for mid-song stylistic change by morphing a heavy stomper into a lovely
acoustic interlude before turning up the heat again. The whole affair is a
slice of wonderful weird.
The Grand Hour entire:
And here's the Breeders' cover of "Shocker in Gloomtown" for kicks. Notice the familiar faces hounding that Dayton, Ohio garage!
I don’t know why I didn’t buy the other GBV singles they had
at Jackpot when I was there. Sure, they were for tracks from Do the Collapse and Universal Truths and Cycles but I think if I was going to attempt
to collect the complete discography to one band, it would be Guided by Voices.
I had to grab “Chasing Heather Crazy” though. Pop songs don’t get much more
pure. It’s the track that made me realize Isolation
Drills is probably the best late-period GBV record. B-side “On With the
Show” is a slowish track with big guitars that sound like grunting. It’s a
pretty standard, decent GBV b-side. I should have bought Isolation Drills when I had the chance. I was pretty dismissive of
the post classic line-up GBV records when I set out on my fandom and while I
was always fond of “Chasing Heather Crazy” I didn’t wanna pay $14 for it when
Love Garden had a used copy of it five years ago. I remember so well! And now
the lowest price on Discogs is $40. Such is life. It gives me one more thing to
look for when I attend the record stores of these United States. The Gs is
always the first place I go. Now and forever.
Mag Earwhig! tends
to be an album that gets overlooked in GBV’s discography. It’s the first album
to feature Cobra Verde as the backing band. Classic Line-Up bros Tobin Sprout
and Greg Demos were there too, but in a reduced role (Sprout’s “Jane of the Waking Universe” is one of the album’s highlights). Yet while it clearly
depicts a sea change in GBV’s direction, it sounds more like its precursor Under the Bushes Under the Stars than
its follow-up: the overblown black sheep of the discography Do the Collapse. While Pollard’s
songwriting is as sharp as ever, the songs are glossier, moving closer to the
rock star ideal Pollard always wanted. “Bulldog Skin” is a classic GBV
earwormer that is about a hundred times better than the atrocious “I Am a Tree”
which served as the album’s big single. The b-side hosts a deserving castoff,
“The Singing Razorblade,” and a terrific electric version of the album’s “Now
to War,” which is right up there in terms of quality with “Sad if I Lost it,”
“Learning to Hunt,” “Little Lines,” and “Choking Tara.” It’s a simple, catchy
little tune, and the sort of thing GBV does best: No frills indie rock with maximum
rewards.
The Tigerbomb EP
feels like a convenient way for Bob Pollard to play revisionist with the two
best tracks from Alien Lanes. The
studio versions of “Game of Pricks” and “My Valuable Hunting Knife” are the
first real step towards the clean, professionally recorded sound GBV adopted
for the rest of its career (until last year’s classic line-up reunion). I don’t
think it’s fair to be the sort of purist who wish GBV had just stayed in the
garage recording pop gem after pop gem into a shitty four track, so I sort of
love these re-recorded versions. Both versions of “Game of Pricks” offer
something different. On Alien Lanes it
crashes into the room and you just stand there like an idiot with your jaw
dropped and hit repeat until your ears fall off. Still, Pollard knows it’s the
best song he’s ever written, and the studio version amps everything up so that
the song just fucking sparkles. You
could play “Game of Pricks” on a child’s toy piano and it would still be a
great song, because that’s how great songs work: no matter how you dress them
down or doll them up, they always have that core of greatness that makes them
shine.
I particularly enjoy the rerecorded version of “My Valuable
Hunting Knife,” even though I think it works better in its stripped down
version. The studio version brings some extra swagger to the table though.
There’s a kind of reeling, drunken stumble to the track despite the crisp
studio production. It’s borderline danceable! The middle chunk of this album is
a strange tour through the weirder parts of Bob Pollard’s 1,000+ BMI registered
songs. The title of “Mice Feel Nice (in my Room)” is better than the song
itself which features future GBV guitarist Doug Gillard on guitar and is one of
those Pollard tracks that sounds like he’s singing from the bottom of an empty
can of Spaghetti-Os. “Not Good For the Mechanism” is a throwaway little
shouter, but “Kiss Only the Important Ones” is a dusty gem. It sounds like a
poorly recorded demo traced during some downtime at the studio, but it’s one of
those quiet little heartstring-tuggers that Pollard hides in his discography
like buried treasure.
Tigerbomb's highlight is Tobin Sprout’s lone contribution: “Dodging Invisible Rays.” When I first
started listening to GBV, Tobin Sprout’s songs were always my favorites. They
were the ones that made me stick around. Sprout sort of acts like the buddy who
vouches for the drunken Pollard. “No, just give him a chance, I swear the guy’s
a genius!” Sprout says with his psychedelic-pop tinged songs and their supreme,
brain-melting melodies. I’ve always liked the idea that Pollard was the erratic
genius, recording every single song that popped into his head and Sprout was
the bespectacled nerd behind the desk weeding out all the crap and mining for
gold. I barely even need to say that their dynamic is my favorite in the
history of rock n’ roll. Fuck Lennon/McCartney. Pollard/Sprout forever. Anyway,
“Dodging Invisible Rays” is the best song Tobin Sprout ever contributed to GBV.
It’s just so loose and brilliant. I remember the first time I heard it, which
was the day I bought this EP. I sat there on my floor in front of my record
player at the Pink House and let it wash over me. And played the song five more
times. When I joined a band, I made my band mates learn this so we could play
it. Playing this track live to practically no one at the Replay Lounge was one
of the most satisfying moments of my life.
I love Guided by Voices
because there is so much wrapped up in these unassuming, often poorly recorded
songs. In the band’s sprawling discography you can find everything you could
ever possibly want to feel. There is quite literally a song for every occasion.
Graduation? “Echoes Myron.” Summer Barbecue? “Dayton Ohio
Nineteen-Something-And-Five.” Ok, I’m biased. But that’s ok. I tend to not
trust people who won’t tell me their favorite band straight-up. The common
tendency when asked this question is to say “I like a lot of music” and while
that’s totally true, come on. Deep down, what is the song of your soul? If you
put a stethoscope up to my heart it would probably thump out the beat to
“Smothered in Hugs.” While it’s important to listen to a lot of music and love
a lot of bands, I think it’s equally important to be obsessive about one. That
was what was so great about working at a college radio station. I met people
with these great obsessions who weren’t ashamed to say they worshipped Pavement
or the Pixies or Wu-Tang Clan. Never be ashamed! God, I sound like an
evangelist. I feel like an evangelist
when I talk about Guided by Voices to the uninitiated. Just the other day at
work some GBV CDs came in and one of my coworkers said they’d never listened to
them but heard good things and I went off. It’s hard to contain, it’s weird and
I get this crazy gleam in my eye whenever I get a chance to wax rhapsodic about
GBV, and I don’t think that will ever change. And I don’t want it to change. For
our anniversary my wife got me a signed, screen printed Bob Pollard poster
purchased online directly from Pollard’s wife. It was basically the best gift
anyone could ever give me. Like ever. For some people, reading the Bible and
developing a personal relationship with Jesus gives their life meaning. For me,
listening to Bee Thousand and
developing a personal (I FEEL LIKE I REALLY KNOW HIM OK!) relationship with Bob
Pollard gives my life meaning. And that’s alright with me.
I purchased this 7” specifically because the sleeve featured
still photographs from Francois Truffaut’s The
400 Blows, which is my absolute favorite film of all time. The music is
pretty standard mid-90s indie rock. A-Side “Sheep” adopts a fast-paced
power-pop angle and goes on a bit too long. B-Side “Smiling All the While” has
a jangly, down-tempo vibe and is the real winner on this 7”. Assuming it’s a
battle, as each song was written by a different guy. This would be a fairly
commonplace 7” if it weren’t for the fact that Gem was comprised of Tim Tobias
and Doug Gillard. Both Tobias and Gillard were instrumental in the last phase
of Guided by Voices, and I won’t lie, when I saw “Written by D. Gillard” and
“Written by T. Tobias” I kind of flipped. Just a little bit. While the latter
GBV records aren’t my favorite and got a little too slick for my liking (note:
I always give these records a pass because I feel like it was always Bob
Pollard’s dream to be in a big, slick rock n’ roll band and these guys helped
him achieve that). Still, both of these guys are players in my absolute
favorite band of all time so this Gem warrant a bit of special attention.
Doug Gillard played lead
guitar in GBV from Mag Earwhig! to Half Smiles of the Decomposed and is
best known for writing Mag Earwhig!’s
“I am a Tree.” It’s one of the few non-Pollard tracks not written by Tobin
Spout to pop up on a GBV release, and you can tell because it’s totally
uncharacteristic. For starters, the damn thing is about twice as long as it
needs to be. It’s repetitive and it’s boring. Strangely, I hear this song on
KJHK all the time. I’m pretty sure if a DJ is unfamiliar with the sacred
discography of Dayton, Ohio’s Finest, they just grab this one and I’m sure the
review says “PLAY ‘I AM A TREE.’” Gem actually recorded their own version of
the track in 1997. Come to think of it, the Doug Gillard song on this 7” is
about twice as long as it needs to be and repetitive and boring! GO FIGURE! For
all of my knocks against Gillard, he is a talented guitarist and I’ve always
been partial to the guitar work on Isolation
Drills, easily the best GBV record from the latter period. Gillard is a bit
of a journeyman indie rocker. In addition to Gem and GBV, he played with Cobra
Verde (natch, considering Cobra Verde basically became Bob Pollard’s backing
band from Mag Earwhig! up til the (first) bitter end (until GBV rose like the mighty phoenix once more)), Lifeguards
(one of Bob Pollard’s myriad side projects) and played drums and guitar with My
Dad is Dead they moved to Chapel Hill in addition to putting out a slew of
albums under his own name. He ended up being exactly the kind of lead guitarist
that could help Bob Pollard fulfill his rockstar fantasies.
Tim Tobias played bass with GBV from Isolation
Drills through Earthquake Glue.
His brother Todd served as Gem’s bassist and is another frequent Pollard
collaborator. Both Tobias brothers play in Circus Devils, which is another one
of the Pollard’s myriad on-going side projects he has to strike up just to deal
with the sheer volume of his songwriting. Todd is also Bobby P’s primary knob
turner and in addition to producing most of his solo albums (if not all)
produced the last three GBV records (before the classic line-up reunion). Though
Tim is the least prolific of all Gem’s members, that bass line on GBV’s “TheBest of Jill Hives” is unforgettable. I am endlessly fascinated with the “Six
Degrees of Kevin Bacon” qualities of 90s bands. The way certain guys move
around like car parts. GBV wasn’t always the most well oiled machine, but
goddamn if it didn’t keep running without breaking down too much.
Guided by Voices – Alien Lanes Matador, 1995 Acquired: Love Garden, New, 2012 Price: $14 I feel like I’ve already written about this album on this blog. I mean, do I really need to express how I feel about Alien Lanes? It’s like one of my built in personality traits. Ian is tallish, shy, and Guided by Voices. No even loves Guided by Voices. It’s just there. In my blood and stuff. I’m one of those people. If you ask me to make you a mix CD I’ll make you three, and then outline why the way I’ve ordered the songs is optimal for your listening experience. “The later stuff is full of great pop hooks, but it gets very hit or miss in the absence of Tobin Sprout who really kept Bob Pollard in check on those great albums. The holy trinity, Bee Thousand, Alien Lanes, and Under the Bushes Under the Stars.” The thing about GBV is that they so warrant obsession. It’s like perfect tornado conditions or something. A massive discography (Pollard apparently has over 1,000 songs registered in his name with BMI) that you can only do your best to listen to all of, great songs buried on albums laced with tape hiss and cast offs barely worth the magnetic strip they’re occupying but they’re there anyway. It’s so pure and unfiltered, and seeing the bad songs helps you appreciate the great ones that much more. It’s like the whole process of the band is documented from day one. Like there wasn’t a single idea they didn’t record. Sure, it makes for some hit or miss, but good lord the hits are some of the most potent pop songs of all time. Maybe that’s overexaggerating, or is it? I mean, I think Guided By Voices are better than the Beatles, but that’s just me. The Stones? Please. Pollard and Sprout over Jagger and Richards any fucking day. Especially with the classic line-up.
Alien Lanes is just as good as Bee Thousand, if not better. I don’t subscribe to one being superior, but the parallel theory. That some sort of metaphysical anomaly occurred in Dayton, OH in 1994-1995 that changed the game. The thing about Bee Thousand and Alien Lanes is how far superior they are to every other record in GBV’s discography. They are perfect. There are fillery songs, but they’re there to accent the real cream. Just look at how “(I Wanna Be a) Dumbcharger” brings you into a brown haze and then that beautiful bring A power chord hits and you’re suddenly in the most perfect minute and thirty-three seconds of your life. “Game of Pricks.” I didn’t even have to look up the running time, that’s the kind of GBV obsessive I am. And the thing is, ALL GBV obsessives are like this. It’s cultish, really, but I think that’s the point.
I know I said that Bee Thousand and Alien Lanes are parallel, but I should clarify one thing: Bee Thousand is the better album (sequencing, clarity of vision, etc) whereas Alien Lanes has better songs. Surefire hits like “A Good Flying Bird,” “Game of Pricks” (easily the crown jewel of GBV’s expansive (understatement) discography), “As We Go Up We Go Down,” “Blimps Go 90,” “My Valuable Hunting Knife,” “Motor Away” and under the radar stunners like “King and Caroline,” “Ex-Supermodel,” “Alright,” and that magnificent drinking anthem opener “A Salty Salute.” The hits are just so much hotter on Alien Lanes. And the thing is, all the best songs are under two minutes long. That’s a beautiful tactical manouever if there ever was one. Crafting these glorious hooks, playing them out JUST long enough and never banking in repeating the chorus for five minutes like modern pop music. It leaves you wanting more. Makes the songs practically infinitely repeatable. I’m not much of an American. Not really. But Guided by Voices is one of those things that reminds me that America has the potential to be absolutely great. I mean, we produced the greatest band of all time, didn’t we? Look at those American Flag chucks Pollard is wearing on the back of the sleeve! That’s America right there! These five schulbby dudes hanging out in a cluttered basement, either before or after or during the process of making an unfuckwithable masterpiece. It’s not even something that can be argued. I’m a pretty even-handed dude, always willing to see things from someone else’s point of view and to quick to admit I’m wrong when I’m wrong. However, if you dismiss Guided by Voices, I will probably think less of you. I don’t want to be this way, but I can’t help it. Maybe that’s hyperbole, I won’t think less of you, I just won’t understand you. I know it tanked at least one potential relationship in college when I found out this girl “just didn’t really get why this band was supposed to be so great.” I tried to show her the way, I made like two mix CDs and wrote out a listening guide but after that, I knew it was toast. Maybe that just helped me realize that the compatibility issues were deeper than I could see because I just wanted a girlfriend. Jenny loved Guided by Voices though, and when we got married, she knew she was marrying my obsession and was OK with that and downright supportive. She came with me to see them in Minneapolis on the Classic Line-Up tour and thought it was awesome. I think that’s when I realized I was going to propose to her as soon as I had enough cash to buy a ring. It seems downright baseless to judge someone because they don’t like some silly band, but to me GBV ISN’T just a silly band. It’s my favorite band, something I’ve spent the last eight years internalizing and to hear a dismissal of the band to my face is like a personal insult. There’s something about a bunch of dudes in their 30s getting together and deciding to be rock stars. Not with lofty ambitions (ok, Pollard maybe), but just for their own personal wellbeing. For fun. Dudes with families and day jobs and mortgages. That’s the human spirit right there, and I want to live my life like that. To just say fuck it, let’s get drunk and record music in the garage.
This wasn't supposed to happen. The way the story was SUPPOSED to go was boy discovers favorite band six months after they break up. Boy spends rest of his life wishing he could have seen one of their booze fueled rock and roll shows. Boy accepts fact and loves band regardless, but still contemplates the what if. Then Guided by Voices announced they were playing Matador's birthday show in Las Vegas and I freaked out and then I almost cried a little because I knew there was no way I would even remotely be able to afford that. Then they announced the reunion tour, with the classic Propeller-Bee Thousand-Alien Lanes-Under the Bushes Under the Stars line-up and I almost died. Almost, litereally, died, because they weren't coming to Omaha or St. Louis or one of the closer big cities that bands usually stop at because I guess Lawrence and Kansas City suck or something. The closest show was eight hours away in Minneapolis at the legendary First Avenue rock club. I booked two tickets immediately.
To be fair, at $25 a pop, it wasn't a huge investment and one that would exclusively provide amazing returns if I carried out my not yet hatched plan of kidnapping my girlfriend and forcing her to go see Guided by Voices with me in Minneapolis. Somehow, everything managed to fall into place and I'm sitting in a hotel room in the Twin Cities writing about how I saw Guided by Voices. I, the boy who was never meant to see Guided by Voices, woke up with a sore throat and a raspy voice because I was shouting along with “A Salty Salute,” “Game of Pricks,” “The Goldheart Mountaintop Queen Directory,” “Smothered in Hugs,” and the like. Sure, the guys had all gone gray or bald, but someone forgot to tell the silver-haired Bob Pollard that old farts like him were supposed to get their kicks playing golf. Instead, Pollard not only gets his kicks by reuniting one of the greatest bands in the world, ever, and does LITERAL kicks on the stage because he's still limber like a gymnast. Though way old now, he still emits an ultra cool that you just can't make up. You can't even try to achieve that cool. He just has it. It pours out of him and demands the utmost respect.
"Motor Away"
The band seemed to have worn off the rust I'd been reading about in the reviews of the reunion shows prior to this one, or maybe it was just First Avenue's pretty fucking great soundsystem smoothing out the rough edges. It's kind of a perfect place to see music, even if I had a number of misgivings about the venue. The club is kind of what I imagine the void to look like, or the scene in the movie where some pseudo-saavy director depicts hell as a crowded night club where the drinks are all way to expensive for a college dwelling rock chump to get drunk. Not like that stopped me from getting obliterated, because when you're in “Fuck it, it's vacation!” mode your wallet tends to act like it has a nicked artery. I did the math, and I dare say I spent $50 on 7 drinks, and it almost made me sick. $5 for a PBR tallboy made no sense because a six pack costs $4.50 but I did it anyway because I was gonna be damned if I didn't have a proper drunk going and a beer can to raise when GBV laid into opening number “A Salty Salute.” And by the time that happened, I'd already downed a double whisky and, well, more whisky, and realized that I'd neglected to eat dinner and that paired with my six month abstinence from hard liquor made for a sloppy, wobbly, one-more-drink-and-things-are-gonna-get-real-embarassing drunk. That is to say, it was the perfect drunk for facing Guided by Voices, and the chanting twenty and thirtysomething males packed in like sardines up front by the stage thought so too.
I know they say that nothing brings people together like mutual hatred, but I'm going to revise that and say nothing brings people together like a Guided by Voices reunion show. It's maybe the one show that single dudes will go to and try to not get laid, because that would get in the way of all the singing along, the fist pumping, the high fiving, and the general bro-tastic happenings that were all around me in the sardine can. Jenny stayed by my side, (thankfully she shares a fondness for Dayton's pride and joy) but I knew she kind of wanted to go to the back with the rest of the girlfriends. GBV is a boy's game. I don't think it's a sexist notion, they just appeal to a very specific type of person, and that person is capable of growing a beard and will put off showering for as long as humanly possible. Bob Pollard is every dude's dream cool uncle.
I really can't think of what to say about the actual music and the actual show, because I'm biased and I know all that I'm going to say is going to be somewhere along the lines of “it was a life changing experience that almost brought me to tears a handful of times and drove me to buy two 12oz cans of Miller Lite for $12 when a guy brought beer into the crowed because my cup had runneth dry.” It was the kind of experience that would lead to me making poor fiscal decisions because well, what would Guided by Voices say if they saw me passing up getting booze? Well, actually, they pry would have said “Why didn't you just get drunk in your car in the parking lot?” I've heard stories of their legendary drunk performances where they slowly worked their way into incoherence, but Pollard and the boys seemed remarkably sober. Well, in their case, remarkably sober is like being pretty drunk to any normal person, but they were on it none the less. Mitch Mitchell smoked the whole time and seemed exactly like the fucking crazy dude he was in those GBV videos from the 90s I watched. Well, minus the long stringy hair. He still seemed a little crazy (he was wearing a t-shirt with a big Anarchy sign on it! Crazy!) and produced some of the weirdest, most out of character (bandwise) stage banter of the evening, in which he tried to solicit some “Minneapolis pussy.” It got a little weird until Pollard diffused the situation by cooly muttering that someone should “take that man home tonight” and quickly slurring “thisisasongfromalienlanescalled'watchmejumpstart'” and all awkwardness had been relieved. My intrepid girlfriend managed to capture this on video, and in it I can see myself. I didn't know she was filming anything and there's something about the raw and drunken joy on my face that makes me know that this was one of the most insanely brilliant evenings of my life. Also, in one of the videos someone hands Bob a baseball, which he signs and gives back to the fan mid-song. How fucking amazing is that?
The Infinite Weirdness
The Infinite Cool: "Watch Me Jumpstart"
Guided by Voices are my favorite band and I imagine they will be even when I'm a young man regaling the grandkids about the time me and grandma went to Minneapolis and saw the greatest band of all time. They'll say “Grandpa, that music sucks. It sounds like it was recorded in a garage” and I will say “That's because it WAS, and fun fact: Bee Thousand was recorded for roughly $10 minus the cost of booze!” I will always stick up for GBV when the uninitiated complain about the sound quality or Pollard's voice or the overall weirdness of their best records. They're the greatest band of all time because they set out to be the greatest band of all time even though the odds were absolutely, 99.9999999% against them. They were middleaged when they recorded Bee Thousand and Alien Lanes, which are arguably two of indie rock's most important records. They got together in garages and banged out Pollard's brilliant pop songs and recorded them the best they could. It's easy to forgive the polished later GBV albums because well, Pollard would have done that with Bee Thousand if he could have, but he couldn't have made those big, clean, guitar rock records if it weren't for the tape hiss and the taped together and collage-like classics. Their coming back for a classic line-up reunion tour seems like a schill, but no one will call it that because no one should really care because honestly, all that matters is that one of the greatest live bands ever is playing more shows. And now I've seen it, and I can say that they're one of the greatest live bands I've ever seen. The rest of this will be random highlights, of which there were many far too numerous to elegantly work into paragraphs.
*Seeing Tobin Sprout sing “Doding Invisible Rays,” my favorite b-side of all time by any band ever. It was so unexpected I almost fell down, and that's when I bought the beer because I was so excited I needed to drink some more (even though I'd realized I was plenty drunk and had somehow magically achieved the thought to be non-existent First Avenue drunk). This song has a special place in my heart, and it's one of those simple but incredibly perfect songs I wish I had written. I actually forced my band mates to learn this for a Kite Tails show a couple years ago because I wanted to know what it was like to sing one of the most brilliant songs that no one has ever heard.
*They also played “Gleemer”! WHAT THE FUCK! WHY ARE THEY PLAYING THESE OBSCURE LITTLE NUGGETS THAT I THINK NO ONE EVER PAID ENOUGH ATTENTION TO!
*Bob's microphone twirling, quite expert.
*Greg Demos looked amazing all night. He dressed like a rock star from the 70s if all the clothes had come from the Salvation Army. Purple pants. Heeled shoes. Ruffled white shirt with vest. Silver, like real silver, hair. And it would have been kind of sad if he wasn't being such a fucking rock star. It was so awesome to watch him.
*All the hits. Well, mostly all the hits. Bob knew what he was doing. He seems like the kind of guy who is really into seeing what people say about his band, knowing which songs everyone loves the most and you know what, he probably loves all those songs the most too. He's the kind of guy who thinks he's a total genius and makes no bones about it and the thing is, no one can really argue with that. Sure, he's kind of terrible at editing himself and his albums (that's what Tobin Sprout seemed to be really good at and why those middle albums are so great), but I swear when the man strikes gold it's solid fucking gold.
*Halfway through the show, one of the dudes in front of me left and his friend tried to save his spot until he realized he wasn't coming back and I proceeded to bro down with this random dude for the rest of the show. Jenny apparently pushed me forward because she thought I needed to brodown, which is why I love her. She knows me so well!
*Three encores! Two of which I kind of forgot due to being right plastered, but I know they closed with “Weedking” and I never really liked that song too much but man it was fucking AMAZING. FREEDOM CAKE! QUICK TO BAKE!
*Mitch Mitchell sang one of the songs, but I forgot which one. “Lethargy,” maybe?
*I didn't realize this until just now, but they didn't play “Don't Stop Now.” OH WAIT YES THEY DID! And I was wasted by this point (it was in one of the encores) but I am pretty sure I remember pollard doing the “Many more where we come from...NOT” line. Wait, did they play it? Shit, I can't remember. I KNOW They played “Exit Flagger” though and that was fucking awesome. Wait, did they play that? I shoulda paid more attention. Guess I was too busy having the greatest time EVER.
*Times New Viking opened and their reverence to GBV was almost kind of off putting since they're such a good band. The singer drummer dude started counting down the songs they had left til GBV, which was sweet, and though I was kind of not in the mood, a few songs in I started getting really into their set and noticed things I hadn't when I'd seen them before (their guitarist is great) when they opened for other indie rock legends Yo La Tengo and the Breeders (two separate shows, years apart). It's nice to see them being courted by the greats. I saw the guitarist and the drummer rocking out to the Clean at Garage Fest a couple weeks ago, and that endeared me to them even more.
*Despite not remembering what songs they played, I don't think it was because I was plastered. I think it was because when the show was happening (From the time that silly little recorded intro started when I was on my way to the bathroom, pissed, and then rushed back and forced my way through a bunch of people back to Jenny TO the point when the house music came on and I had to try to remember where the car was in the garage) I was in an altered state of reality. Since this actually wasn't supposed to be happening, I will maintain that it didn't really happen, and if I do remember it happening than that's nothing but a far fetched fantasy because Guided By Voices reuniting with the Classic Line-up is something that is way too cool to ever actually happen. Or did it? There is video evidence, so maybe it did! I can't, for the life of me, swear that they played “Gold Star For Robot Boy” but I remember losing my shit when it happened?
