The Cum Engines (Featuring The Cannot Changes)
Live at the Athens Time Change Riots
2001, F ‘n’ E
By the time this LP came out around the holidays, I believe that Guided by Voices were were officially indie rock again. After two albums, they broke up with TVT Records. I’ve had bigger surprises in life.
For most of the year, Robert Pollard was already talking in the press about his vision for the next GBV album. It was going to lean prog-rock and it was going to be called Heavy River. The title would change a few more times until it finally become Universal Truths and Cycles, but Heavy River was what he was calling it early in 2001 as the spring birds sang (the earliest reference I could find to it still online is this Denver Post article published on March 25, 2001, over a week before Isolation Drills was out).
The not-so-subtle message: He was done chasing hits and it was time to move on and he was ready to do that right NOW. Isolation Drills was new to us, but it was old to him. Even if “Glad Girls” became the new “Losing My Religion”, Heavy River was still the next move.
Before that march forward though came this flashback, GBV’s sixth vinyl-only, bootleg-style live release. The recording was from awhile ago. It was the night of January 22, 2000 at The 40 Watt Club in Athens, Georgia, in the middle of the southeastern US leg of a long tour, with Australia and Japan coming up, and then another month-and-change of scrambling across the US after that. It was the same show from which the Dayton, OH 19-Something-and-5 7″ A-side came.
In a strange, non-linear, collage artist way though, this nearly two-year-old show comes off like a statement of purpose for the band at the time.
Continue reading “Robert Pollard-Mania! #66: LIVE AT THE ATHENS TIME CHANGE RIOTS”
