Guided by Voices
The Who Went Home and Cried
2000, MVD Music Video
“So Jason, are you going to write about the GBV DVDs?”
“Dear Sir or Madam, will the DVDs count in your Robert Pollard-Mania! series?”
“What’s up, Sexy Pants? Hey, I’m just curious, will items such as The Who Went Home and Cried and The Electrifying Conclusion rate a mention in your survey of Robert Pollard’s ouevre?”
Absolutely no one has asked me any of those questions, but the answer is YES.
Yes, we will talk about the Guided by Voices video releases. It’s not a giant pile. It’s a modest amount, but it’s more than most indie bands have put out. Also, there’s good stuff in there. Some of ’em are on the oddball side, not typical concert discs or documentaries, but pieces of madness that complement Pollard’s vision.
Pollard’s body of work is Route 66 and in this series we intend to drive as much of it as we can. We’re gonna spend a night in every old motel. We’re gonna peruse every bottlecap museum in the middle of Nowhere, New Mexico. We’re gonna sample the fudge at every truck stop. It’s not going to be perfect, but we are going to TRY.
What I’m saying is that we’re a little odd and so is The Who Went Home and Cried.
Now, I’ve skipped a few GBV-related videos.
There’s the Live at the Whiskey A Go Go VHS that came out in 1996, shot on glorious mid-90s standard definition video tape (and that hasn’t been reissued since in any form, as of this writing). I didn’t cover it here, but I have a very good reason for that.
I forgot about it.
Also, I’ve never owned a copy of it. I should have reviewed it. It’s a lot of fun. Bob can’t get any sound from the monitors! Somebody stole the setlist so the band now has to wing it! You can see it all on Youtube.
I also consciously skipped over the great Watch Me Jumpstart documentary shot around 1994 and ’95 and that Matador put out on VHS in 1998. I love what director Banks Tarver did with it and it’s essential viewing if you love GBV, but I don’t consider it a part of Pollard’s body of work, which is mainly what we’re talking about here. I almost gave it an entry in this series, but decided against it after lengthy discussions with my Congressman about it.
In any case, Watch Me Jumpstart came out on DVD in 2003 and was also included at that time in a Guided by Voices box set on Matador, Hardcore UFOs. We’ll get to it then.
SO, what the flying fuck is The Who Went Home and Cried?
Well, it’s a thirty-six minute video that comes off like it was shot with no intention to release it. The camera is a 90s-era consumer grade camcorder. It’s not a concert film exactly. It’s closer to a documentary, but it’s pure fly-on-the-wall. No narrator. No formal interviews. It’s a home movie.
The presentation is loose and free and the occasion is the bittersweet final show for bassist Greg Demos, he of the frilly shirts and striped pants. While the rest of GBV usually looked like dads on their day off from work, Demos dressed on stage like he was in The Strawberry Alarm Clock. In a previous life, he was the singer and guitarist in The New Creatures, a mean and hissing Ohio group who did their part in keeping future record bins stocked with underground messages stuffed into vinyl bottles and tossed out to sea. They were part punk and part classic rock and their 1987 LP Rafter Tag thanks Guided by Voices right away in their back cover acknowledgements. Demos and Pollard go way back.
By 1999, Demos was a lawyer by day and a rocker by night. Something had to give.
At this time, shit got more real than ever for Guided by Voices. Do the Collapse was coming out soon. They were on a major label and were going to spend months on tour. It was going to be long. It was going to be grueling. It was going to be the kind of thing that you can’t do part-time.
Demos couldn’t hang on anymore. He had lawyerin’ to do (today, he’s a judge!) No hard feelings. He’d still show up on Pollard’s records now and then. He was also a part of the “classic lineup” GBV reunion tour that started in 2010.
But in ’99, this was it. Goodbye, Greg.
Here’s a short movie about it. Our eyes and ears here are Matt Davis. He’s the guy who did the legwork in getting the Fading Captain Series records off the ground and continues to work with Pollard to this day. Davis mans the camera here and captures some great moments, most notably the band’s porch rehearsal early in the day before their show at Ohio State University, May 1999. The whole band is there except for Doug Gillard so Pollard himself fills in on guitar. As of this writing, this is the closest thing we have to Guided by Voices Unplugged.
I
n the warm spring sun, surrounded by friends and playing at a low volume that won’t bother the neighbors–drummer Jim MacPherson keeps the beat on his knees–we see the band kick out nine songs. Four are from Kid Marine. They also do “Big School” and “Strumpet Eye” and “Psychic Pilot Clocks Out”, as well as “Cut-Out Witch” and “Tractor Rape Chain”.
It’s also extremely charming. Try to not smile when you watch it, I fucking dare you. How many rock bands have put out video of their perfomance being interrupted by a chimney sweeper? Yes, our cool new 4K nuclear-powered flatscreen TVs don’t do any favors for the ragged video quality, but what the hell kinda GBV fan has a problem with the low-tech?
In the DVD bonus features are another nine songs, at an earlier show in Los Angeles. Demos is there. He rocks the striped pants and makes the bass look cool. Multi-camera shoot. It’s still shot on old school videotape, but it’s more professional-like than the main feature. It’s cleaner. Pollard is dressed all in black and looks as long-legged as a spider as he attacks each song. He also goofs around (“With a wet spot bigger than Greg Lake’s face”, he spits out during “Hot Freaks”). The selection is all crowd-pleasers, heavy on Bee Thousand.
Still, the porch set is the jewel of this disc.
Before and after it in the main feature are slice-of-life moments, non-sequiturs (“I’d like to see Gene Simmons play Kid Marine“, says Jim MacPherson, possibly drunk, no context provided), goofs and gags. It’s a look into Pollard’s world, the people around him, the motormouths and the mullets. Most everyone gets a crazy nickname (SUPER low-tech onscreen notations; this was edited in a public access TV facility). The co-star of this disc (after Greg Demos) is a guy they call Geo and who talks like Martians are beaming shit straight to his brain all of the time. He’s the one who comes up with the sentence that inspired the disc’s title. “The Who Went Home and Cried”. Pollard laughs and so did I.
Robert Pollard’s crazy body of work wouldn’t be possible without his friends. Pollard is not Jandek. He’s not some rich weirdo loner who makes music and then presses it up and distributes it all by himself. No, Pollard has a crew. Pollard has people who are close to him and who love him and believe in his music and they contribute to getting it pressed up and out there. Pollard’s music is a family business, in a way. Some people come and go, but there are also those who have pretty much always been there and will likely continue to be there in the future. They are the stalwarts and they are a major part of why this discography is so huge and why I will probably be writing about it for the rest of my life.