Guided by Voices
Briefcase 2: The Return of Milko Waif
2005, The Fading Captain Series
It’s nearly always a bad idea to emulate the perceived lifestyles of your rock ‘n’ roll heroes. You might could fill a cemetery with those who died too young trying to be Keith Richards.
But if you’re looking to cut and paste an artist’s personality onto some void within yourself, I guess that Robert Pollard isn’t so bad of a role model.
Let’s see, you’ll have to…
1. Drink light beer.
2. Wear regular dad clothes. A Who T-shirt and some khakis are as wild as it gets.
3. Be able to do a high kick in your 50s and 60s (this might be the most dangerous thing on the list).
4. Write a few thousand songs.
5. Collect vinyl records.
That last one influenced me for years. I bought my first turntable (late 1996) partly because of Robert Pollard. GBV had many vinyl-only releases that I needed. I also loved interviews where Pollard talked rock. Pollard’s knowledge and his enthusiasm for music, some of it unfashionable (namely prog-rock, deeply unhip in the 90s), made my record stacks a little bit larger. And it had to be vinyl. It was cooler. It was what Bob collected. It was also much cheaper than CDs back in the day, which helped a lot.
Meanwhile, Pollard’s own crazy body of work was, and is, a product of how collectors think. We’re into tunnels and secret passages. We don’t want to merely listen to our favorite bands. No, we want to put together puzzles and figure them out. We want to defend the difficult. We want to follow the secret histories of our favorite artists as told through B-sides and bootlegs.
We want madness on our shelves.
That’s where the Briefcase LPs come in. Does an abridged Suitcase on a single vinyl record serve any practical purpose in the world? Other than the obvious (the money made when the limited pressing sells quickly), probably not.
But who’s into rock because it’s practical? Briefcase 2 does exactly what it needs to do.
It brings madness.
Continue reading “Robert Pollard-Mania! #99: BRIEFCASE 2: THE RETURN OF MILKO WAIF”