Guided by Voices
Jellyfish Reflector
1996, no label
I don’t know exactly when this double live LP came out, so I’ll slide it in at the end of the year like I’ve done for most of the others. As with the band’s previous pseudo bootlegs, this didn’t have a formal release date. It wasn’t announced. It just appeared in the racks one day at some of your better vinyl-friendly record stores.
All I know for sure is that I bought it at Bill’s Records and Tapes in Richardson, TX in the summer of 1997 and that it blew my mind about a thousand feet skyward.
This was the first time that I ever heard how Guided by Voices sounded live.
We didn’t have Youtube back then, folks. The internet was a big thing for sure in ’97, but for most peasants like me it was a dial-up connection. You accessed the internet through telephone wiring originally built in 1847. It was slow and unreliable. Even a very short video or audio file could take about twelve days to download. You couldn’t hear anything anytime that you wanted. We didn’t have sprawling file-sharing networks. We didn’t have cellphone cameras.
And I didn’t have a reliable car that could get my 20-year-old ass to Austin or Oklahoma City, which were the closest places to me where Guided by Voices played in 1996 and ’97. My 1986 Ford Escort made whale mating call noises under the hood and had a charming habit of over-heating at awkward times. I didn’t trust that thing to get me down the street, let alone survive a 400-mile round trip. So, I stayed home and pulled my pud.
It’s a laughable notion now, but at the time I somehow figured that Guided by Voices on stage were probably awkward indie nerds. Or total nutcase weirdos like The Residents. I imagined that Robert Pollard was on the introverted side as a performer, a tortured genius type. I surmised that their show would be every bit as noisy and screwed-up as most of their records. I expected eccentricity, an experiment not yet perfected, something ramshackle. I expected the music equivalent to my ’86 Ford Escort, but in a way that doesn’t leave you stranded in an Albertson’s parking lot.
I expected something a lot like the Elephant 6 showcase that I saw back then at Dallas’s long-gone, cavernous little Orbit Room. It was a night when aloof puppet show weirdness (The Music Tapes) lead into workman-like pop performances (The Apples in Stereo) and culminated with a band who sounded like they were making up for The Beatles not touring to promote “Penny Lane”/”Strawberry Fields Forever” in 1967 (Olivia Tremor Control).
I enjoyed it at the time, but even then I knew that no one I saw that night had a drop of stage presence. Most of them were meek scientists dragged out of their labs. They couldn’t wait to get back inside. With the exception of The Music Tapes, their influences were studio bands.
And THAT’s what I thought that Guided by Voices would be like, for some stupid reason.
And, hooo-leeee shit, was i ever wrong. I was wrong about everything. Jellyfish Reflector was an eye-opener. For that alone, it stands as my sentimental favorite of all of the band’s live records.
The night was February 17, 1996. The place was The Patio Club in Indianapolis, Indiana. No matter what though, Guided by Voices were–and still are–always Live at Leeds.
They were loud and rowdy. Crunchy and huge. Robert Pollard was drunk and liked to mouth off into the mic. The band were confident, but were also nicely sloppy in that classic garage rock way. Whatever their limitations were, they pulled off everything that they needed to pull off. They brought the goods. For them, the songs were #1.
Here, GBV fires ’em out like bullets. The pop melodies glisten in their hands. The anthems grow wings. The rockers are fierce. They make it all work, despite everything. These are guys who’ve been around the block. They probably saw The Who and Cheap Trick in the 70s. They also saw punk bands in the 80s. Along the way, they learned how to put on a rock show.
It should be powerful, but unpretentious. There will be no desperate retro moves (think Urge Overkill’s rock star drag act of the time–and I like Urge Overkill, but they did try too hard), though mic twirls and high kicks are allowed when the foul-mouthed frontman sees fit. No one in this band is a heart throb and they, thankfully, don’t pretend otherwise. Guided by Voices on stage should be nothing more than a bunch of regular guys in their late 30s dressed in clothes from Sears and who have a bunch of great songs and who love The Who and who want to kick some ass. The most rock ‘n’ roll-looking member of the group was Mitch Mitchell, he of the tattoos, cigarettes, occasional windmill moves on the guitar and long hair that he washes every couple weeks or so with whatever shampoo is on sale, no conditioner.
Guided by Voices circa 1996 might have looked a little older and rougher than other bands on the indie rock circuit, but they could shake the pillars.
They were a band who had two different sounds.
There was the lo-fi racket on the records and then this show of bravado on stage.
It impressed me in 1997 and it still does today. I will NEVER forget the first time that I heard “Game of Pricks” on this album. On Alien Lanes, it’s a haunting and vulnerable little pop song with a quick pace and a skeletal arrangement. By contrast, the live approach is muscled up with a Godzilla guitar riff. It sounds so different, but still powerful and still a piece of pop to die for. It flies by at a snap, but it also comes off as all but engineered to provide Pollard with breaks to get in at least two of his rock moves (maybe a mic twirl during the opening build-up and then a kick when the riff gets going).
Guided by Voices have never stopped playing “Game of Pricks” live. In 2019, they’re still playing it. It’s a setlist staple–and for good reason. It still rules. Also, maybe, just maybe, there’s always someone in the crowd who’s just like me in 1997. All they know is the album version and they’re ripe to get walloped.
The most interesting tidbit about this show though is that it begins with two-thirds of Under the Bushes Under the Stars played in sequence, even though that album was still a month away from coming out. (Between this, Crying Your Knife Away and For All Good Kids, GBV have a pattern of releasing live records from very early in the tour; all three are warm-up shows from just before a big album release).
Live rarity “Melted Pat” (from Get Out of My Stations) is also here along with a scorching “Weed King” at the end. That song belongs at the end of a long set. It sounds best when the band is a little tired. It needs to lumber and then explode. It needs to sound weary and then prove that it’s still alive. It needs to ascend from ashes.
Coming up at the very end and not listed on the tracklist (because there is no tracklist) are THREE previously unreleased studio recordings. A gift for the stalwarts. Have you had enough Robert Pollard songs in 1996? If not, here’s more.
All three are outtakes from Pollard’s furious series of scrapped albums recorded in 1995 (while he was on the way to forming Under the Bushes Under the Stars) and all three are hot shit.
This album even boasts my favorite of the reject pile, the rampaging rocker “Pantherz”. With that heavy Steve Albini-recorded drum sound and raw guitars in full effect (it sounds live in the studio), this song is the tale of a guy who runs out on his pregnant girlfriend, as told by both sides in a few simple verses that burst with suggestion (“strong words and big black birds on a telephone wire”, such a perfect way to depict two people who don’t want to talk to each other because they know it’s going to be ugly), along with a chorus that aims for the back of the stadium. It’s a huge rocker. I don’t know why he threw it away on this obscure release, but Pollard’s tendency to do shit like that is part of why I’m such an insane fan.
The second studio song is “Bughouse”, an ode to drinking that sounds too tired to be an anthem, but is one anyway because this band can’t help it. “Pull the cork and watch the bottle flow”.
Closing out the whole affair is “I’ll Buy You a Bird”, a voice-and-guitar little candle in the night. It’s a beautiful late night ghost that’s here to sing you to sleep. It later turned up on the first Suitcase box set under the title “Tobacco’s Last Stand” and even got played live by GBV six years later for a spell in 2002.
And now we are DONE with 1996. EIGHT releases, yeesh. What a year.
It was crazy busy and still somewhere in there the band found time to break up.
Tobin Sprout left to take care of his new baby and that was the first domino that fell that resulted in Pollard firing the rest of the band, or pressuring them to quit. Drummer Kevin Fennell’s drug habit was getting out of hand, the bass position has always been a revolving door (I don’t know who plays bass at this show; was it Jim Greer?), and for whatever reason that I won’t speculate about because I’m just a guy in Texas who doesn’t know shit about shit, Pollard even wanted Mitch Mitchell out of the band.
Because Guided by Voices were not a tight-knit group. They were one man’s vision and he was ready to carry it through whatever left turns were down the road.
And big changes were a’ comin.
I believe Matt Sweeney plays bass on this. I BELIEVE