Guided by Voices
For All Good Kids
1995, no label
Guided by Voices have a bunch of live albums, folks. And we’re going to talk about ALL OF THEM.
Because I’m very serious about my Robert Pollard survey. Also, I don’t have anything better to do.
Here’s one of the first things that you need to know: Despite what a lot of sources say, including virtually every music database website, NONE of them are bootlegs in the normal sense. None of them were put out by some scofflaw with a tape recorder up his ass. These are all official records that just LOOK like bootlegs–and sometimes sound like bootlegs. There’s usually no record company mentioned anywhere. The covers are crudely assembled. Photocopied sheets glued to plain white sleeves are common. I’m talkin’ very stark, simple presentations, often with no track list even. Vinyl only, sneaked into mid-90s era record stores under cover of night and shadow. If you stumbled upon one of these in the bins back then, you might have thought “What the fuck is this?”
As I talked about in my ramble about Alien Lanes, part of Robert Pollard’s aesthetic is that he’s going for the “What the fuck is this?” reaction all of the time.
That probably comes from Pollard being an old school rocker and a longtime record fiend. He’s spent a lot of time in the bins. He’s found those old weird Who bootlegs like The Who Vs. Bizarre Mr. Pig and the Queen live concert boot Sheetkeeckers and so many others.
Being bootlegged might be annoying to a band from a financial perspective, but it also means that you’re cool. It means that people care. People are interested in your outtakes and your unreleased songs and your live concert in Orlando in 1979.
However, in the mid-90s, bootlegs that you found in stores were almost universally shitty when it came to presentation. It had all moved to CD and they usually had terrible covers generated on home computers. Those weird old vinyl boots in handmade sleeves were a relic of the 60s and 70s. Nobody was doing that sort of thing in 1995.
So, Guided by Voices had to do it themselves. They bootlegged themselves. And they did it right. They did it on vinyl. They did it mysteriously. They did it without caring if the tape they had wasn’t 100% pristine. They did it like some long-hair in 1973 would have done it.
They did it like they did it on For All Good Kids, a killer document of an important time for the band.
The date was March 30, 1995. The place was Maxwell’s in Hoboken, New Jersey. Guided by Voices were one of the top hype magnets in indie rock at the time and Alien Lanes was coming out in less than a week. A crowd came out to see them and they were braying animals for the band, hooting, hollering, and totally into it. They were calling out requests for old songs, some of which of the band played and some of which they didn’t.
Most of the band’s live albums are double-record sets, but this one is a lean and mean single LP, edited down from a much longer show. According to then-new bassist Jim Greer, the band played every song that they knew that night. They even played a few songs twice. Just before “Gold Star for Robot Boy” here, Pollard tells the room that the band were working without a written set list.
But you don’t get that here. We already got a double-album slop show on their previous live record, Crying Your Knife Away (another show that happened on the eve of a big album release). This one is all about the rat-a-tat-tat, as well as the bam-bam-bam. This is machine gun rock. It’s the Ramones if they were drunk and from the mythological land of Dayton, Ohio and had a frontman who talked to the crowd.
Oh, it’s still plenty sloppy. There are spots where the volume goes up and down like the hills of West Texas, but it’s not too bad. You can listen to it. For all of its flaws, this record puts you in the room, which is the mark of a good bootleg.
The very first song (“Don’t Stop Now” which at the time was only out as an acoustic outtake on King Shit and the Golden Boys) has a guitar part that suddenly cuts out like somebody accidentally stepped on the cord–and you know what? IT’S FINE.
It’s a little screwy, a little noisy, but that’s rock ‘n’ roll.
There’s nothing less rock ‘n’ roll than an audiophile.
The live music experience is pretty much never pristine anyway. It’s always imperfect. Maybe you can’t hear the singer. Meanwhile, there’s some drunk near you making an ass out of themselves. You like the band, but your girlfriend doesn’t and she’s totally bored and you’re doing your best to not let that ruin your night. Your car is parked in a sketchy area and you hope that you don’t come back to broken windows and your stereo gone. Maybe all of this drives you to have a drink or five from the bar–shouting your order over jet engine levels of noise–and then when you go to relieve yourself, skipping over the urinal that somebody threw up in, that’s when the band plays your favorite song. You wanted to be up front for that one. Instead, you’re in a rock club restroom with your zipper down while your song echoes against the tile.
THAT’S the live music experience.
A little volume spike on a record is nothing compared to what you could have gone through.
In summary: This is a terrific album. It’s also got some songs that haven’t been played live in forever. “Johnny Appleseed”, so cherry here! “Deathtrot and Warlock Riding a Rooster” in a breathless rocked-up arrangement! “Redmen and Their Wives” is a here a year before it ended up on the next GBV album.
I believe that there are only 1,000 copies of this record out there on our ruined planet. From what I understand, the first pressing of 500 has black-and-white cover art while the second pressing of an additional 500 has a blue tint on the cover photo and red text on the front.
YES, I am talking about collector horseshit. If we ever meet, I won’t hold it against you if you immediately punch me in the face.