Guided by Voices
Suitcase: Failed Experiments and Trashed Aircraft
2000, The Fading Captain Series
Guided by Voices had stacks of great songs when they became popular in the early 90s, but they had something else that was also unique.
They had a past.
They had a long past. A convoluted past. Most new indie sensations are young people. They don’t have pasts, yet. Robert Pollard’s real peers in 1994 weren’t Pavement and Superchunk, if you ask me. Rather, they were outsider oddballs like R. Stevie Moore and Billy Childish, seasoned DIY soldiers who’ve been at it forever and who produce so much music that they look half-crazy (or all-crazy) to the square world.
GBV’s subterranean self-released albums from the 1980s and early 90s (yanked from obscurity in 1995 on BOX) told some of that story, but there was more. There was a shitload more.
By the time that Guided by Voices made a blip on the cultural radar, Pollard had been writing and recording songs for about twenty years, maybe even longer. In interviews, he claimed to have thousands of unreleased songs at home. Years and years of songs. Songs that not many outside of Dayton, Ohio city limits had ever heard.
And he kept those tapes in a suitcase.
THE Suitcase.
The Suitcase was an actual suitcase. It was his archive and in it were cassettes that went back to the 1970s. Songs that Pollard forgot about. Songs that he was still working on. Songs that he’d strip for parts and later join to other ideas to make new songs. Your favorite Guided by Voices song might have been partially written in 1975 and 1988 and 1992. In 2020, he’s STILL repurposes these songs sometimes, or uses bits and pieces of them.
There was a story in that suitcase. There were maybe even dozens or hundreds of stories in that suitcase.
Pollard got asked about it a lot. Guided by Voices fans are crazy. I oughta know; I’m one of them. While many criticized Pollard for putting out too much music, people like me still wanted more–and we knew that there WAS more.
Give ’em up, Pollard! Free the suitcase songs! We didn’t care if they were lo-fi and all fucked up because somebody spilled beer on ’em fifteen years ago. We were used to that. We liked that.
In 2000, Pollard gave in to our freakish desires and put out this box set on his own Fading Captain Series label.
To make it extra colorful, Pollard also did two things.
A) He attributed all of the tracks to a variety of different names (Groovy Lucifer, Eric Pretty, Global Witch Awakening, and on and on), as if this was a compilation of some unknown underground rock scene. It was also a joke about how Pollard isn’t too proud of some of these songs.
B) He treated the set like an epic piece of collage art, a quadriptych of Midwestern noise. All four discs of Suitcase fly like a pinball between the 80s and 90s and sometimes even the 70s (there are a couple of 2000 solo acoustic songs here, too). It’s a constantly shifting time warp. For example, the first two songs on disc 1 are from 1993, then the third song jumps to 1998, then back to 1993, and then the fifth song is from 1988. Later on the same disc is a recording from 1974. There’s ZERO chronological formality.
I’ve been asked more than once by people who are new to Pollard’s music if each volume of Suitcase (there are four, as of this writing) is meant to represent a distinct era.
NO, they’re not. They’re all over the place.
Pollard isn’t merely tagging and bagging corpses here. Again, it’s collage art. On Suitcase, Pollard brings fresh life to his old tapes by making them part of this new living work. The crazier the contrasts, the better. Suitcase is powered by friction. Pollard likes these jumps across time and between different ranges of audio fidelity. Pop songs, weird songs. Studio songs, 4-track fuzz. Band songs, solo acoustic songs. Songs from twenty years ago, songs from two days ago. They sit here side by side. Every Suitcase is a patchwork crazy quilt. Anything can happen at any time. The most beautiful song that you’ve heard all week could be in the middle of the third disc. The trashiest racket that you’ve heard all week might be right next to it.
There’s only one rule: Each disc must have twenty-five songs.
Another distinguishing mark of Suitcase is that they’re all BIG. 4 CDs. A solid 100 songs each time. They need to be big. That’s very important. Their sheer size tells you that this shit is not for the casual fan. It’s for the freaks. If you’re one of those “Robert Pollard needs an editor” people, maybe go listen to something else. You were warned at the door.
For those who want in on the Suitcase secret though, this is one sweet and psychedelic slice o’ heaven. It’s rocking and ridiculous and everything in between. Every Suitcase feels like a party that Pollard threw. When you listen to these, you’re just hangin’ out. Take your shoes off and sink into the couch. I can’t find the exact quote (the internet is not forever, kids; old sites and articles disappear all of the time), but my favorite statement from Pollard about Suitcase back in 2000 was when he recommended that you get some pot and some wine and just spend the day with it. That sounds about right to me.
The first Suitcase is the shiniest of the batch. They all have their gems and if you’re digging deep, you need to hear them all, but Pollard puts together this first one like he’s never going to make another. At the time, he said that he wouldn’t. This was IT. He even claimed that a basement flood had destroyed all of the old tapes.
And then more Suitcase sets came out, roughly every five years, give or take, and they were full of more old songs, so, uh, yeah… (Not that I’m complaining.)
The first one has the best opening track and the best closing track. They say that show business is all about strong entrances and exits and Suitcase kills it on both of those fronts. Both are credited to the band name Styles We Paid For.
The first song is “The Terrible Two”. It used to be called “Foolish Burger” on the old bootlegs. I don’t know why. Neither the new title nor the old title are a part of the song’s lyrics. No matter. It’s about being unable to keep a secret (“I’ve got tickets to the circus of delirium/ I’m not supposed to tell you“) and I can’t think of a better song to score the opening of a treasure chest.
The final song is”Oh, Blinky”, which was called “The Day is Done” on some of those same bootlegs. It’s a fist-pumper anthem that waves goodbye (“The day is done/ And it is good and it is fun”), but it also knows that tomorrow is another day. It shuts off the lights with a shout and a stomp.
In between are ninety-eight tracks of pop songs and fuck-ups and freak-outs, including some real gold that had never leaked out before. If you like Guided by Voices, one of your favorite songs is among them.
Maybe it’s “Bunco Men”. Everybody loves “Bunco Men”. It’s a gorgeous trip back to 1995 that sounds exactly like something that should have been on Under the Bushes Under the Stars. The lyrics also reference that album’s title. Code name: Elf God.
Or maybe it’s “I’m Cold”, a taste of 1987 from Robert Pollard, schoolteacher, alone with a guitar, questioning his and every other working person’s future in a stark naked melody that’ll break your heart real fast. Code name: King of Cincinnati.
And how about the lovely “My Feet’s Trustworty Existance (sic)”? It’s waaaaaay in the back of the bus on disc 4, but it’s probably the key to all of this. “And drink from a bottle/ And think of another song/ And make it sound nice/ Because I don’t want to/ Live a wasted life.” It’s 1992 and Guided by Voices are still just a time-off-from-work project and his family wants him to give it up. But he can’t stop. It would hurt to stop. In this song, he mixes us a cocktail of those feelings and it’s got a kick that you’re gonna remember. Code name: Maxwell Greenfield.
I could go on. I could tell you that “Messenger” is a fine fable of the reconstruction and is alive with the spirit of 1985. Code name: Ricked Wicky (not the last time that we’ll see that name).
Maybe I could also say that 1992’s “Flesh Ears From June” is my favorite song from Robert Pollard the dad. It’s a playful little thing about taking care of babies and how it changes a man for the better. The title sounds like a literal interpretation of some mangled thing that a toddler would say. Code name: Monkey Business.
If I had the time, I might also speak up for the 3 AM smoke ring of “In Walked the Moon”, a gem from 1988 that gives me these eerie Twin Peaks vibes. It’s the story of a likable girl gone off the rails. “She was the happiest girl I’d ever seen/ And then in walked the moon”. Code name: Ben Zing.
(“Moon” is one of Robert Pollard’s favorite words and disc 2 opens and closes with a pair of beautiful “moon” ballads. Intentional, I’m sure. The first track is “Supermarket the Moon”, a star-lit slow-dancer and Bee Thousand outtake from 1993. Code name: Clinton Killingsworth.)
In another life, there’s a chance that I may have talked about “Carnival at the Morning Star School” and why it could be my favorite song from the pile. It’s a solo acoustic thing from 1992 and it barely occupies one minute of this set’s nearly four hours, but in that time it perfectly embodies that yearning effect of early Guided by Voices. This is Robert Pollard the schoolteacher singing, reflecting on all of those little faces that look up at him everyday in a modest song crafted by a master. Code name: Kink Zego.
I could talk about those songs, but I won’t. This article is long enough. Please ignore the last five paragraphs.
As for the artwork, it’s like a mini-scrapbook. Old photos, recent photos. Quotes from critics. A full discography listing.
Part of the promotion strategy for GBV’s albums on TVT was to avoid the band’s age. Pollard dyed the silver out of his hair for awhile for the tour and the promo pics. The only video that the band made for TVT (the next year, for “Glad Girls“) went out of its way to hide the band’s appearance.
Suitcase, by contrast, not only allows the band to be their real age, but flaunts it.
SO, what’s the real deal here? Do you need Suitcase in your life?
I say yes. Absolutely. Yes, yes, YES.
No 100-song collection can be perfect all of the way through. I know this. You know this. Your mom knows this. Robert Pollard knows this. Perfection though is a hundred miles away from the point of Suitcase. I’d even say that this set celebrates the imperfect.
The message here is that art isn’t transmitted from ivory towers. Art is rough and messy. It’s about flinging out ideas and then playing with them until they turn into something.
People always make a big thing about how prolific Robert Pollard is and on Suitcase, he lets you in on the secret, which is that… he’s never stopped.
The world is full of people who started writing novels or screenplays, but got stuck after nine words. People who tried to write songs and then gave up when nobody cared. Comedians who ate shit at their first open mic and then never tried again.
Pollard though inherently understands that you have to keep going. Success or failure is unimportant. What matters is that you try. Again and again and again. It’s good for you, in the end.
“Take a little time to stumble, show a little faith in something larger in your life”, as he says in the first song.
Before you can write “I Am a Scientist“, maybe you’ve got to write “Ding Dong Daddy is Back from the Bank”.