Guided by Voices
I Am a Scientist EP
1994, Scat Records
“I Am a Scientist” is Robert Pollard’s mission statement. If you’re confused by his voluminous output, his five albums a year, and his thousands of songs, just put on “I Am a Scientist” because it explains it all in plain language and with a perfect pop melody that soothes savage beasts. Gun to my head, it’s the definitive Guided by Voices song.
This EP offers a different, hi-fi take on in it. It’s a different version than one on Bee Thousand, but it’s still on the rough side. The band recorded it live in the studio with old school punk rocker Andy Shernoff working the knobs, and it naturally reflects the way the band played the song on stage. It’s louder and more driving, shined-up just enough for mainstream radio, but not obnoxious in the slightest. It still serves the melody. It does what it should do.
It was also a big surprise for me in 1996 when I bought this on CD from the now-gone Border’s Books. I just wanted to hear the B-sides and I genuinely didn’t know that there was totally different recording of “I Am a Scientist” sitting here, unassuming and unhyped.
But that was the Guided by Voices way at this time. Robert Pollard wanted everyone who picked up a Guided by Voices record to have something special for their money. Sure, a more cynical mind than mine might say that they recorded this new version as an offering to the mid-90s “Alternative Rock” radio gods, but any widespread airplay that anyone might have had in mind never happened. Meanwhile, we still have this cool thing.
As for the B-sides, it’s a mind-blower that they’re good, considering that this was the fifth or sixth Guided by Voices record of 1994. A lot of bands would be scraping up demos or cover songs at this point in order to fill out this thing, but GBV instead give us three originals worth hearing to anyone who’s digging this deep.
“Curse of the Black Ass Buffalo” and “Planet’s Own Brand” are B-sides that sound like B-sides and there’s nothing wrong with that. B-sides are a part of rock ‘n’ roll. They’re cool. We need ’em. The former song is a solo acoustic candle-burn and the latter is quick, shambling pop melody spit out by a genius. Both go down easy.
The easy highlight though is “Do the Earth”. It’s punk Guided by Voices by way of the 1960s garage, a wired rocker with a psychedelic swirl and some weird lyrics. I sing along with it. I jump along to it. I make weird, stupid moves with my arms and neck to it. It’s a song so good that the band put it in their live setlist ten years later and it rocked the house.
Funny thing about this EP though is that none of it is as lo-fi and fucked-up as Bee Thousand gets. It’s punchy and vivid. It plays less like a supplement to Bee Thousand than it does a piece with the band’s other 1993-94 EPs, albeit shorter and dancing around a clear “emphasis track”.
It’s a record that I heard early in my “gettin’ to know ya” period with Guided by Voices and it helped build the obsession that I have now.
The I Am a Scientist EP is great and if you like the band, you should listen to it, but proceed with caution. You might end up collecting hundreds of records as a result and then sitting at your computer in your underwear writing a 600-word article on an eight-minute-long record.