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Steven Hyden’s TWILIGHT OF THE GODS: A JOURNEY TO THE END OF CLASSIC ROCK

Steven Hyden
Twilight of the Gods: A Journey to the End of Classic Rock
2018, Dey St.

In this addictively readable book, Steven Hyden opens with a story that most music nerds our age (Hyden, born in 1977, and me, born in 1976) know well.

It’s the story of having your head cracked open like an egg by classic rock radio back in the day. Where did I hear “Baba O’Riley” and “Stairway to Heaven” for the first time? I couldn’t tell you for sure, but I’m fine with giving the credit to KZPS, the classic rock station in Dallas when I was a teenager. My sources at Google tell me that it’s a country station now, but once upon a time it was the spot in my city for Jethro Tull and Lynyrd Skynyrd and Peter Frampton all splattered together on the same canvas each day. Everything that Hyden writes here about his hometown station WAPL applies to KZPS. He was in Wisconsin and I was in Texas, but we were both listening to same damn thing.

Hyden captures youthful discovery and how something as simple as a standard radio playlist of classic hits (that are new to a kid) can inspire lifelong curiosity. When music becomes more than mere audio wallpaper for you and becomes a place to go, a location as real to you as anything on a map, you eventually get interested in other places to go. When you like Pink Floyd’s radio standards, you might graduate to their albums. From there, the real freaks will dig into Floyd’s roots and contemporaries and maybe even explore later bands who picked up the baton. This can get messy, but when you’re a music nerd, you enjoy that.

Still, this book’s meat is its examination of the present day. When Hyden expends several pages on appreciation for the likes of Led Zeppelin, The Grateful Dead, AC/DC, and Black Sabbath (and a lot more), his impressions simultaneously reflect the young man’s awe and the seasoned culture critic’s head for analysis. When he writes about the past, the present always burns at the edges.

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Things I Will Keep #25: HANK WILLIAMS, Rare Demos: First to Last

Hank Williams
Rare Demos: First to Last
1990, The Country Music Foundation

Hank Williams died of heart failure when he was only 29 and deaths like that freak you out when you get old. That’s a painfully young age to go, but too many pills and too much booze can snuff out the brightest candle.

It happened in the early hours of New Year’s Day, 1953. Williams rode in the backseat of a Cadillac, on his way from Knoxville, Tennessee to play a show in Canton, Ohio. Sometime around 5 AM, his driver stopped for gas in Oak Hill, West Virginia and then discovered that the great songwriter, who’d been silent for many miles, wasn’t merely sleeping off his latest bender.

No, he was even more pale than usual. Not breathing. Gone.

The story goes that Hank Williams died with these four things in his pockets: a loaded gun, a pint of vodka, tablets of chloral hydrate (a sedative), and a rough draft of lyrics for a new song written on a piece of paper.

All are symbols of what killed him and when I write about his death it’s not to romanticize it. No, it was pathetic and it shouldn’t have happened.

However, I can’t listen to Hank Williams songs without thinking about his death and that’s because they both reveal the same thing, which is the fragile soap bubble of human life. Our very hearts (in both the literal and figurative sense) sometimes try to kill us and often succeed.

Sometimes death is so close that it’s in your pocket.

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Robert Pollard-Mania! #102: I’M A STRONG LION

Robert Pollard
I’m a Strong Lion
2005, Must Destroy!!

“The label in the UK wanted to put out a single for From a Compound Eye and THAT was the song they picked. They wanted to put out a single that was one minute and five seconds long, And that’s why they were a GOOD LABEL! I agree with that!”

–Robert Pollard in Dallas, Texas, June 2018, as remembered by me, after Guided by Voices played “I’m a Strong Lion”

“I’m a Strong Lion”, the shortest track on an epic double album, is definitive Pollard.

The melody? Bubblegum-worthy. The tempo? In a rush! The lyrics? Straightforward for him, as well as personal and cutting. It’s like an Archies song except from an artist with something to get off his chest.

Here, he addresses his reputation, among some critics, as a tyrant who can’t keep a band together. His words offer no apologies. “Sure as I’m dyin’ here/ The problem is solved/ And it hurts to know/ You won’t be involved/ But I can beat you to the strong side/ Right away/ I’ll meet you today”. 

Pollard refuses to keep a band going that isn’t working out (or that he feels has run its course). Life is too short for that. He’s too old for that. Interpersonal drama within a band rarely makes the music better anyway. If you don’t like that, he doesn’t care. His lyrics might be directed toward an ex-bandmate or even to a fan who can’t hang with the latest change. Either interpretation fits.

The brief run-time is part of the statement. A little over one minute. That’s all the time that he’s going to spend talking about this. Pollard moves on and so does this song.

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Robert Pollard-Mania! #101: AS FOREVER: A MANIFESTO OF FRACTURED IMAGINATION AND RECKLESS LIVING

Image swiped from the indispensable gbvdb.com

Acid Ranch
As Forever: A Manifesto of Fractured Imagination and Reckless Living
2005, no label

The secret ingredient of this Robert Pollard-Mania! series is that it’s only half about Robert Pollard.

The other half is that it’s about being a fan of Robert Pollard, which means that it’s also about me and maybe you. Us nutcases.

I’m not a professional critic and these pieces aren’t “reviews”. I don’t have that kind of objectivity when it comes to Pollard. I would even say that my opinions about him are boring (because I like everything). What I offer instead are reflections, interpretations, and information in order to build a story that I wish more people told, which is the story of a body of work, but from the point of view of a regular person walking up to record store counters again and again.

I’d love to read about Bob Dylan or Miles Davis (or any artist with a convoluted history) from a passionate amateur who’s followed the music for decades and has maybe gone back and forth on some albums and can speak from first-hand knowledge about the time when they came out and how the music fit into it (or didn’t fit into it). Done well, from a human being who dives into their own memory and heart more than they look up facts on Wikipedia, that could be fascinating.

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Robert Pollard-Mania! #100: THE ELECTRIFYING CONCLUSION

Guided by Voices
The Electrifying Conclusion
2005, Plexifilm

No one cares today that December 31, 2004 at The Metro in Chicago was not the end of Guided by Voices.

When the 90s lineup reunited for a tour in 2010, it was good news. Nobody called foul in any way that mattered. People loved it. I loved it.

Guided by Voices has had several endings after all and each one has its own story.

The story of this one is that Robert Pollard wanted to retire the band on a high note, go out while everyone still got along and middle-aged bones and vocal chords could still deliver the three-hour beer blast that crowds expected when GUIDED BY VOICES was on the marquee. A big part of it was also that Pollard had an unreleased new solo double album that felt to him like the next frontier. Closing out GBV at the time was a personal decision and an artistic decision and the big fans understood.

The Electrifying Conclusion tour was light compared to the band’s last five years of punishing road work. It began in August and ended in December with only a few dozen stops in between, all in the US, with multi-night stands in New York City, Portland, and Chicago.

Bottom line: This was a tour from a leader who was done with this, but needed to at least say goodbye to the crazy crowds, to the lovefest that erupted whenever this band got together and plugged in. Past GBV lineups went down in drama and this was a rare chance to have a happy break-up, one that closes with a blowout celebration with guests galore (everyone from Tobin Sprout to Jim Greer to Jon Wurster turning up for a song or two).

For a band who always made every show a party, this was the only way to go out.

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THE SECRET SCREENING MYSTERY MOVIE MARATHON at the Alamo Drafthouse in Richardson, Texas 2/24/24

Nothing cool is for everyone. Case in point: The Alamo Drafthouse Secret Screening.

I’m at a stage in my life where I ENJOY it when people are confused about why I schlep over to a Richardson movie theater almost every month for a show in which the movie is always a secret until our host, the almost supernaturally likable James Wallace, reveals it to the crowd.

It somehow makes me feel alive to be a nutcase. As I spiral toward age 50, I can think of no better way to get old.

So I jumped at the chance to explain my plans for this past Saturday to anyone who asked.

I was going to the movies. 

“What are you gonna see?”

I don’t know. It’s FOUR movies at the Alamo Drafthouse, all based around a theme, but I have no idea what the movies are or what the theme is. It could be anything. Should be fun!

That’s where the other person makes a face like I just said that I plan to go look for beehives on the moon and I’m fine with that.

I’ve had to miss the last few Alamo ass-numbing marathons, but this one worked out. I entered the Richardson Alamo’s Theater 6 (their big room) on a Saturday morning, ready to poison my brain on whatever it offered.   

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Robert Pollard-Mania! #99: BRIEFCASE 2: THE RETURN OF MILKO WAIF

Guided by Voices
Briefcase 2: The Return of Milko Waif
2005, The Fading Captain Series

It’s nearly always a bad idea to emulate the perceived lifestyles of your rock ‘n’ roll heroes. You might could fill a cemetery with those who died too young trying to be Keith Richards.

But if you’re looking to cut and paste an artist’s personality onto some void within yourself, I guess that Robert Pollard isn’t so bad of a role model.

Let’s see, you’ll have to…

1. Drink light beer.

2. Wear regular dad clothes. A Who T-shirt and some khakis are as wild as it gets.

3. Be able to do a high kick in your 50s and 60s (this might be the most dangerous thing on the list).

4. Write a few thousand songs.

5. Collect vinyl records.

That last one influenced me for years. I bought my first turntable (late 1996) partly because of Robert Pollard. GBV had many vinyl-only releases that I needed. I also loved interviews where Pollard talked rock. Pollard’s knowledge and his enthusiasm for music, some of it unfashionable (namely prog-rock, deeply unhip in the 90s), made my record stacks a little bit larger. And it had to be vinyl. It was cooler. It was what Bob collected. It was also much cheaper than CDs back in the day, which helped a lot.

Meanwhile, Pollard’s own crazy body of work was, and is, a product of how collectors think. We’re into tunnels and secret passages. We don’t want to merely listen to our favorite bands. No, we want to put together puzzles and figure them out. We want to defend the difficult. We want to follow the secret histories of our favorite artists as told through B-sides and bootlegs.

We want madness on our shelves.

That’s where the Briefcase LPs come in. Does an abridged Suitcase on a single vinyl record serve any practical purpose in the world? Other than the obvious (the money made when the limited pressing sells quickly), probably not.

But who’s into rock because it’s practical? Briefcase 2 does exactly what it needs to do.

It brings madness.
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Robert Pollard-Mania! #98: SUITCASE 2: AMERICAN SUPERDREAM WOW

Guided by Voices
Suitcase 2: American Superdream Wow
2005, The Fading Captain Series

Bad reviews of things I enjoy don’t bother me and I rarely argue with them because the story of a piece of art is never over. It goes on forever. It can outlive all of us. What people think about music the week it comes out is such a small part of what it might become. This is one of my favorite things that I’ve observed as I spiral into old age.

Tastes and trends change. Freaks for culture seek out the obscure and offbeat and then spread the word. People age and get nostalgic for the oddest things. A record that you bought from a cut-out bin becomes a rare classic years later. Next thing you know, something that was neglected or disliked or considered frivolous in its time becomes important in a generation or two. I’ve seen it before, I’m gonna see it again. It’s the normal flow of things.

You can see this play out with Robert Pollard today. Parts of his work once seen as off-putting have arrived at a new respect over time.

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Robert Pollard-Mania! #97: MUSIC FOR “BUBBLE”

Robert Pollard
Music for “Bubble”
2005, The Fading Captain Series

My idea of a great movie double-feature is two films that have little in common on the surface, but that talk to each other in an interesting way when seen together. The more far apart the movies are, the better. Different genres, different eras, different countries.

For an obvious example, when I lived in a college dorm circa 1997 or ’98, some of us got together and watched Taxi Driver and Manhattan back to back (and in that order) one night. They’re two very different movies with opposite visions of the same city set at around the same time. The main characters of each live on the same island, but not in the same world, and would hardly be able to function in the other’s world. Both films have a troubled male lead who has a very different relationship with a much younger girl. You can go deeper.

Robert Pollard’s two solo EPs of 2005 are a little like that. It’s all Robert Pollard music that reflects his psych-pop influences so they’re not night and day. They’re not Martin Scorsese and Woody Allen. But they are companions in my mind that twist and tease the same form, which (speaking of movies) is soundtrack records.

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Robert Pollard-Mania! #96: EAT II

Robert Pollard
EAT II
2005, Rockathon Records

In 2023, anytime someone tells me that Artificial Intelligence will take over the arts and replace human creations with digital patchworks, I stop listening to that person.

There are a few drops of truth in it, probably. I’ll give them that.

A popular song birthed entirely from an algorithm isn’t far-fetched these days. The awkward clickbait articles that I get suckered into reading online never seem to come from human beings. Life is in a weird place now, for sure. This is not the same world that my Generation X ass grew up in.

But if someone sincerely believes that HAL 9000 will be the new Mozart, I think that they just hate people. That’s the only explanation I have for why it makes sense to anyone that human connections through music and writing will simply fade from fashion. We will no longer care about what others are feeling, thinking, and seeing. We won’t be hooked when someone who shares our experiences makes something great out of it.

Instead we’ll be satisfied with artistic blow-up dolls.

I don’t buy it. I don’t buy it at least for oddballs like you and me. Us deep-diggers. Us crazies who get into EAT.

That’s what I think about in 2023 as I go over this second issue of Robert Pollard’s long-running art magazine. Its X-Acto knife cuts and its occasional visible Scotch tape, and even its poems, have human fingerprints all over them. Today, it feels like a resistance outpost against the cyber-dystopia.

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