Guided by Voices
Benefit for the WInos
1996, no label
With most bands, by the time you get to their twenty-fifth record, you might be done. Or at least almost done, even if you’re a maniac like me who counts EVERYTHING (singles, EPs, live records). Spring would turn into winter. They’d be well into their later years. Their State Fair years. Their Christmas album years. Their tell-all autobiography years. Their Celebrity Big Brother years. Their “arrested for drunk driving/ shoplifting/ domestic violence” years. Their “suing their old band mates” years. Their “getting into political arguments everyday on Twitter instead of working on new projects” years.
But this is Robert Pollard and Guided by Voices that we’re talking about and by THEIR twenty-fifth record, they were smack in the middle of their most celebrated period. I feel like I’m still only just beginning to talk about this man and this band and these records. We’re still in elementary school here. We’re still playing on the jungle gym. We’re still chewing on pencil erasers. We’re still awkward and farting in class while the other kids pick on us. We haven’t kissed a girl (or a boy, however you swing), yet. There’s still so much ahead and we don’t know shit.
So, it was June 2, 1995 and Guided by Voices were riding high. Every rock critic knew about them. Every insufferable indie rock dork had an opinion about them. Reviews might have been mixed here and there (as they always are for anything that’s interesting), but, overall, Guided by Voices were critical darlings.
EXCEPT in the band’s home town of Dayton, Ohio.
Back then at least, Guided by Voices were known around the world, but didn’t get much respect in Dayton and this burned at Robert Pollard’s gut.
If Crying Your Knife Away and For All Good Kids existed to show off the band’s powerful stage act that contrasted with their lo-fi records, Benefit for the Winos exists for its own reason:
Good, old-fashioned SPITE.
This was a home town show. The band was out there and doing the rock thing full-time. 1994 was a banner year. In June of 1995, they’d just finished a spring headliner tour west of the Rockies (with opening acts Mary Lou Lord and Elliot Smith) and were about to hit the road again for the summer into the eastern half of the USA and then on to Europe (with the likes of Chavez and Railroad Jerk opening).
This Dayton show at Gilly’s was supposed to be wild and celebratory. The beer and whiskey would flow, the set list would sprawl and if the audience decides to raid the stage at some point, well, that’s fine. That’s how it goes sometimes in the Midwest. Those people are crazy.
Unlike us southerners, who are perfectly sane.
Anyway, the band had fun. The room had fun, I guess. But you know who didn’t have fun? Dave Larsen, the “pop music critic” for the Dayton Daily News. His negative review made it sound like a shambles and made the band sound desperate. Pollard’s family and old co-workers were going to read this. It wasn’t the end of the world, but it was annoying.
Pollard’s response: Put the goddamn show on vinyl. Double vinyl! Get it all on there.
Also, plaster Dave Larsen’s entire review about how much it sucks right there on the cover. Throw in a few letters to the editor that take issue with Larsen’s opinion on the printed insert.
We didn’t have Twitter in 1995, thank god, so artists instead had to get creative when they responded to critics and this is how Robert Pollard did it.
So, how’s the show?
Sounds good, to me. If I was there, I would be bragging about it today. I would be so annoying.
This band kicks elves. It gives a gold star to the robot boy. They send in the striped white jets. They’ve got a few things to say about Hot Freaks. They know all about the Shocker in Gloomtown. Motoring away makes perfect sense to them. They also know that the Matter Eater Lad is mad, how to give A Salty Salute and that the Large-Hearted Boy needs to be unleashed.
In short, they’re doing their thing and bringing the house down.
Furthermore, they know that REM’s “Sitting Still” is a pretty good song and they perform it here in a way that makes it fit in perfectly with all the rest, even to a jerk like me who doesn’t like REM much at all. (Also, rare GBV cover song ALERT.)
Other live rarities here (as in songs that don’t appear on any other official concert record as of this writing): “The Hard Way” from Same Place the Fly Got Smashed (rocks), “He’s the Uncle” (a non-album beauty that was totally unreleased at the time), “Sheetkickers” (another then-unreleased song), and “Color of My Blade” (B-side of Motor Away).
From my armchair fifty years later (I was never very good at math), I hear nothing amiss.
Meanwhile, the sound quality is good bootleg-level stuff. It’s not the best sounding live GBV out there. It’s on the murky side, sure. It’s unpolished. The highs could be a hell of a lot higher. The lows could be way fucking lower. It sounds like a Type I Maxell put on vinyl.
But its “FUCK YOU” message to Dave Larsen and the Dayton Daily News comes in loud and clear as intended.
As far as I know, only 2,000 copies of this record exist. That’s all the help that the winos needed.