Guided by Voices
Briefcase: Drinks and Deliveries
2000, The Fading Captain Series
If you’ve heard every Guided by Voices album, you’re a fan.
If you’ve heard every EP and B-side, you’re obsessive.
If you’ve heard all of the solo albums and side projects, you’re far gone.
If you’ve listened to all of the Suitcase box sets, you’re dangerous.
If you have all of the Briefcase LPs, you’re in the scariest category of all: You’re a collector.
Every time a Suitcase comes out, there’s also a Briefcase that tags along on the order form. They’re a sampler selection from the 4-CD box sets on one slim vinyl LP. They’re also limited-edition baubles for the collector cult–and don’t take that as a put-down, Charlie Brown. It’s just reality. Robert Pollard’s independent labels run on good music and collector appeal. Pollard is a record freak himself and he gets this shit.
It works, too. Every time he puts out some limited vinyl-only thing, no matter how out-to-lunch it looks, it sells out in a snap. These days, that happens quicker than ever.
If that helps to keep the label’s engine oiled and more music coming, I’m all for it.
Pollard started his Fading Captain Series label mere months before the music industry that we once knew fell apart. All of a sudden, the old rules no longer applied. When you put out music, you had accept that many listeners were going to swipe it via this wacky new internet file-sharing thing that popped up out of the blue.
Some people in the industry made a big stink about it, but Robert Pollard never complained (that I recall, at least).
He knew that he had a faithful core audience who WANTED to buy his music and that many of them were vinyl freaks like him. He understood them. And that was enough to keep the train running.
As for Briefcase as a listening experience, they’re interesting examples of Pollard’s madness. I’ve seen people get ANGRY at his Briefcase choices. They think that they’re going to be all of the most accessible stuff from the box set, all of the pop songs and highlights. A solid “Best of” collection. They see the grooved surfaces of the vinyl LP as precious real estate and surely Pollard won’t get too wild with it, right?
Wrong.
Robert Pollard LOVES the crazy stuff and the racket and the fuck-ups. Pollard can write a perfect pop song, but he’s also a noise-loving freak. Robert Pollard is WEIRD. That oddball fucked-up song or dirge on the album that few people like? That’s usually his favorite.
Suitcase is all about the weird stuff and Briefcase reflects that.
This first one plays it straight for the most part. Easy Suitcase highlights such as “Bunco Men” and “Taco, Buffalo, Birddog and Jesus” are here, as is the beautiful piano take on “Wondering Boy Poet”. All three of the box set’s Do the Collapse cast-offs are here. Those would be “The Kissing Life”, “James Riot” and “Shrine to the Dynamic Years (Athens Time Change Riots)”, all in lo-fi demo form–I don’t think any of them ever made it to the studio–but played by the band.
We also need to mention the bonus track. Yes, every Briefcase has an exclusive bonus track or two and, yes, the idea of a 100-song collection having a bonus track is funny and I think Pollard knows that it’s funny.
Only Briefcase buyers got to hear the outrageously poppy “Sensational Gravity Boy”, a song as bright and buoyant as its title and it sounds like a hit to me. It makes me want to chew bubblegum. It’s a song that previously came out in 1995 on an indie rock-filled AIDS research benefit compilation called Red Hot + Bothered. It was credited to Freedom Cruise and it was Guided by Voices performing with Kim and Kelley Deal. The version here is just Guided by Voices blowing it out in a studio. It’s so good that Pollard later included it on Crickets, a 2007 double-CD Fading Captain Series retrospective, a collection that focused on the solo records and side projects and otherwise avoided Guided by Voices. People needed to hear this song, though.
There’s a lot of crowd-pleaser stuff on Briefcase, but then Pollard has to be a nut and include “Sabotage”, an improvised four-and-a-half-minute 1990 blues-rock jam credited to Hazzard Hotrods (more on them later; they have their own album coming up). He also threw in “Rainbow Billy”, an aggressively terrible attempt at a 70s AM Gold-style ballad, complete with some rare Pollard falsetto. Maybe it’s a joke. The song does have a curious lounge-lizard-losing-his-mind quality. Suitcase says in the liner notes that it’s from 1993, but my heart won’t let me believe that.
Also, if you’re high, “Rainbow Billy” is probably funny as fuck, but I don’t get high. I only get low.
Still, I’m glad it’s here. GBV should be weird as hell always.
And that’s my case for Briefcase.