Robert Pollard-Mania #1: Introduction and FOREVER SINCE BREAKFAST

Let’s face it, Robert Pollard is a sick man.

He puts out more records in one year than a lot of bands release in ten years. He has one of the most insane legacies in rock and it continues to expand all of the time. At his age (born on October 31, 1957), he’s learned just about everything that there is to know about rock music, but he somehow missed the lesson that said that your body of work should be neat and clean and not confuse people.

Robert Pollard also never learned that lo-fi isn’t all right.

Nobody ever told him that a songwriter who can write a brilliant pop melody shouldn’t write far-out psychedelic stuff, too.

And he never listened to anyone who’s ever made the point that rock music is a business and not the place for a restless creative mind that comes up with more than twelve songs a year.

Yep, we’re talkin’ a real sick-o-rama.

I’m a sick man, too, I guess, because I collect and enjoy all of those records. Every single goddamn one of them. I am Waved Out, Boxing About, Fairly Blacking Out and a Circus Day Holdout. I’m a Mascot of Absurdity on the cutting edge of humility.

I am not a fanboy. I’m a fanman.

Ask me who my favorite band is and I don’t even have to think about it. The answer has been the same for twenty-three years now: Guided by Voices and all other projects from head visionary Robert Pollard. If he’s writing the songs and singing them, it’s all the same to me. (Did you know that there are poor souls among us who only listen to Guided by Voices and ignore his other bands such as Circus Devils and Boston Spaceships? It’s true. They’re out there. I’ve seen ’em. If you believe in God, Allah, or The Great Pumpkin, say a prayer for these unfortunates tonight.)

I have whole weeks when the only music I listen to is stuff by Robert Pollard. Because of his busy release schedule (4-5 albums a year is typical), he’s always around. Since 1995, every time I moved or started a new job, every time I felt good and every time I felt bad, a new Robert Pollard record has always been there. On my turntable, in my CD player, in my tape deck, on my iPhone, in my car, in my head.

It’s the first music that I turn to when I feel like taking a nap on some railroad tracks. This is because Pollard’s music is a life force. I think it could talk you into slipping the noose off your neck. That’s not to say that his work is all sunshine and smiles or that it’s boring confessional stuff that gives you some kind of cry-yourself-to-sleep catharsis. Rather, it’s because there’s an earnest love for life in everything that he does. As of this writing, Pollard just released his 103rd album (Space Gun by Guided by Voices) and it’s as spirited, lively, excited and intense as anything he’s ever done. He never sounds tired. He never sounds like he’s out of things to say. How could he? Life is busy. Life is changing. Life is happy, sad and deeply funny. Every day is another world. How can you give up on life when there are so many things to think about?

Even aging doesn’t slow him down. It seems to have even made him more prolific. Every ache in his joints and every flash of mortality inspires a new song. It’s how he makes peace with it. Again and again, in song after song. (Aging is a frequent theme in Pollard’s work, along with death, sports, sex. drinking, rock ‘n’ roll, and Ohio. All worthy topics, I say.)

He’s one of those rare rock musicians who works like a real writer. According to him in interviews, his normal routine is to wake up before dawn like a Bulgarian dirt farmer, start a pot of coffee and get to work, either on songs or his collage art. It’s not a torturous process. It’s just something that he does, like breathing. And he’s got no plans to stop. What kind of rock album does an 80-year-old psychedelic kingpin make? Robert Pollard will probably show us someday.

I’ve picked up and discarded a lot of favorite bands since 1995, but Robert Pollard has always been with me. His music gets more relevant as you age. When I was 20, I just liked the weird, short, infectious songs. When I was 30, I began to get an inkling of how wise they are. By age 40, it all began to sound like a strange and lovely map of middle age and beyond.

There are people who say that good rock music should never deal with things like that. We’re a culture who don’t allow rock musicians to age without shame. We use them up fast and then hold their youthful accomplishments against them. We treat them like vampires who could use a stake in the heart. With a few exceptions, nobody in rock music gets more shit than an old guy still doing it.

Robert Pollard never listened to them, either. And hooray for that.

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I have a fuckload of Robert Pollard records. Somewhere in the neighborhood of two hundred is my guess. LPs, EPs, singles–and I intend to write about ALL of them. If you think this post is full of fan-douche gushing, just wait. More is coming.

Chronological order sounds good to me. So, let’s start at the beginning.

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Guided by Voices
Forever Since Breakfast
1986, I Wanna
reissue: 2005, The Fading Captain Series

For a lot of good bands, their first record is their best. It’s the one where their ideas were the most fresh. It’s the one where they hadn’t yet sold out. It’s the one that they made before they lost that vital member of the group who died way too young. It’s the one where they were doing something that nobody else in music was doing.

None of that is true of the first Guided by Voices record.

In 1986, a whole lot of bands were following the lead of R.E.M., jangling, murmuring and reckoning their way onto vinyl. Guided by Voices was one of those, sustaining a debut 12″ EP with seven songs that are perfect imitations of Peter Buck and co.’s yearning and melodic craft.

This isn’t a bad record. I can listen to it anytime. The songs are good. None of it drags. There’s no filler or failed experiments. The band aren’t tripping over their shoelaces.

But it doesn’t have a personality. Or rather, it has another band’s personality.

Guided by Voices here might be beer-swilling former jocks from Ohio. Or maybe they’re former chess club champs from Oregon who never dunked a basketball in their lives. You can’t tell. You don’t care, either.

Robert Pollard was embarrassed by it for years. When all of the early Guided by Voices records were reissued in a box set in 1995, this was the only one that he left out. Over time, he softened on the matter and this finally saw reissue in 2003 on CD as part of the Hardcore UFOs box set on Matador Records and then again in 2005 on limited red vinyl on Pollard’s own Fading Captain Series label.

I love the title. Pollard swiped it from an offhand remark from Charles Manson in an interview with Tom Snyder back in the early 80s. It’s not a tribute to Manson. Pollard isn’t like that. It’s more a case of Pollard the collage artist (his many record sleeves are a gallery of his work) clipping and saving a memorable thing that sounded interesting to him.

In 2018, this record does sound like it happened forever ago… or at least since breakfast.