Month: January 2022

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Robert Pollard-Mania! #80: BEARD OF LIGHTNING

Phantom Tollbooth
Beard of Lightning
2003, Off Records

The Off Records label run by Chris Slusarenko out of Portland, Oregon worked with Robert Pollard on two releases that were on a mission to pair him with unlikely collaborators.

As Pollard fired out multiple LPs a year made mostly with people he knew, Off sought to show us how his singular energy works with other minds and other sounds that you didn’t see coming. They’re left turns. Rock ‘n’ roll non sequiturs. Robert Pollard is perfect for this not only for his work ethic, but also because his tastes include noise and fucked-up shit. He has one of those free and freaky minds that can go left or right at any time.

The first mutant from this experiment is The Tropic of Nipples, in which Pollard and writer Richard Meltzer trade the spotlight in a noise-rock poetry slam. It’s not for everybody.

The second one is a lot closer to a “regular” rock LP, but it manages to be an even stranger idea. In fact, I don’t know if anyone before or since has made an album with anything like the process of Beard of Lightning. 

Its story begins in New York City in the late 1980s.

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Frank Black-O-Rama! #13: PIXIES AT THE BBC

Pixies
At the BBC
1998, 4AD/Elektra

Our walk through the story of Frank Black’s body of work will take side trips into these Pixies archival releases. That’s just how it goes in rock ‘n’ roll sometimes. If you saw a Frank Black live show at this time, you would have likely heard an old Pixies song here and there in the middle of a stretch of his new stuff. This release timeline will have to behave the same way. Old and new will mix. The past haunts the present and future.

The Death to The Pixies compilation moved some units, it seems, so 4AD gave us more flashbacks for our CD collections.

I bought ’em all. In 1998, I remember I even had Pixies at the BBC on the flipside of my dubbed cassette (for the car) of Frank Black and The Catholics. The past and present came together on a homemade Maxell C-90 in one poor boy’s 1987 Chevy Nova.

People argue about CDs vs. vinyl vs. digital when it comes to the best musical experience, but I think my preferred format is the shitty tape that you kept in your car back in the day and played until your stereo eventually ate it for breakfast. Rewind, fast forward, or just let it play straight through. That’s devotion. That’s how you need to hear the Pixies cover The Beatles.

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Robert Pollard-Mania! #79: MIST KING URTH

Lifeguards
Mist King Urth
2003, The Fading Captain Series

Many of us who came of age with 90s American indie rock were told that pretty much the whole genre of progressive rock was complete garbage. If music journalists at the time mentioned the old prog dinosaurs at all, it was to run them down as the reason why punk needed to happen. Sid Vicious and Johnny Thunders died so that you don’t have to listen to incomprehensible concept albums and sidelong suites. Some outsider scenes in Germany and Canterbury in England were okay. King Crimson got respect as an influence on the “math-rock” bands. In general though, 1970s excesses were as cool to most 90s indie kids as a misspelling on a neck tattoo.

I know because I was there and I was one of those pipsqueaks. Young people need guidance when navigating decades of music history. Critics are always around for that, though cool family members or friends are even better. When your favorite songwriters and musicians have interesting tastes, that’s a great resource, too.

What I’m trying to say is that it was about 1998 when I finally stopped automatically flipping past old prog-rock LPs in the bins and I started to give them a chance and I did that PURELY because of Robert Pollard. He was my guru. When he talked in interviews about bands he liked or made the occasional list of favorites (The Beatles, Wire, Genesis, The Who, and Devo were always at the top), I paid close attention.

In the little indie rock island that I lived on at the time, he was the only one who talked about this rejected old shit. He was the only one mentioning The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway. He got me curious.

So I dug in and I dug what I heard. And prog’s influence on Pollard’s music was plain as day. It was like a secret passage opening up.

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