Acid Ranch
As Forever: A Manifesto of Fractured Imagination and Reckless Living
2005, no label
The secret ingredient of this Robert Pollard-Mania! series is that it’s only half about Robert Pollard.
The other half is that it’s about being a fan of Robert Pollard, which means that it’s also about me and maybe you. Us nutcases.
I’m not a professional critic and these pieces aren’t “reviews”. I don’t have that kind of objectivity when it comes to Pollard. I would even say that my opinions about him are boring (because I like everything). What I offer instead are reflections, interpretations, and information in order to build a story that I wish more people told, which is the story of a body of work, but from the point of view of a regular person walking up to record store counters again and again.
I’d love to read about Bob Dylan or Miles Davis (or any artist with a convoluted history) from a passionate amateur who’s followed the music for decades and has maybe gone back and forth on some albums and can speak from first-hand knowledge about the time when they came out and how the music fit into it (or didn’t fit into it). Done well, from a human being who dives into their own memory and heart more than they look up facts on Wikipedia, that could be fascinating.
When an artist has a big, complicated discography, I don’t want a straightforward critical assessment. I’m not going to read (or write) a hundred articles of that, at least. No, I want a STORY. I want to hear from someone who’s made this music a part of their life. They’ve aged with it and thought about it a thousand more times than any normal person would. That’s the most fertile ground for original observations. You almost can’t help but have unique takes when the story of the music is also wrapped up in your own story of growing and changing.
My taste these days is for music writing that makes me see and smell beat-up record sleeves and clubs that closed years ago, Cables plugged into machines. Glowing stereo lights. Tactile things. Human experiences.
I crave anything that treats music as more than mere sounds that come out of a box. Music is also textures and history.
That’s the only way that I know how to write about it, at least.
Robert Pollard’s work is perfect for immersing yourself in these obsessions.
You get to deal with pop masterpieces, strange left turns, crazy box sets, forty years of a changing world, vinyl fetishism, collage art, comedy albums, life after age 40 and 50 and 60 (and beyond, hopefully), and stuff like Acid Ranch.
What the hell is Acid Ranch?
I hear the trilogy of Acid Ranch records as little parties that Pollard throws for a small segment of his audience. Come hang out and dig these old tapes of him, his brother Jim, and Mitch Mitchell being madcaps in the basement, pre-Guided by Voices. It was the early 1980s and these babyfaces were on a weird hippie trip. They were plowing through ideas, both good and bad, and lots of them. Enough for a double LP and two more LPs after that.
I imagine that this stuff might make Pollard laugh and sometimes wince and maybe nostalgic for things that only he (and also Jim and Mitch) can hear.
He put out a few albums of it because that’s funny and he also likes to sequence and package songs. Rock music is forgiving when it comes to noise and rough edges. Presentation and mystique count for a lot. Still, he knows that not many people will like this so he makes it a limited vinyl pressing. That’s the WARNING! sign. An implied disclaimer.
This shit isn’t for everyone and if you don’t like it. at least you got a rare record out of the deal.
As Forever is extra collectible because the sleeves are all junked old LP jackets and each one is unique. According to Rich Turiel, who did a lot of heroic work during this period of getting Pollard’s independent ventures off the ground and on vinyl and in your hands, they found stashes of LP sleeves being sold without records in them. It was all of the usual Goodwill junk. Barbra Streisand, Perry Como, Asia. They bought big stacks of them and then turned that trash into treasure. They hand-screened the Acid Ranch branding on the front (a sloppy logo that appears deliberately designed to show ample hints of the random sleeve art beneath) and pasted the lyric sheet on the back.
I’ve heard that some copies even have grass stuck to them because many of the sleeves were laid out in Turiel’s backyard for him, Pollard, and Chris Slusarenko (who helped out with all of this) to look over and pick out what they wanted to keep for themselves before it went up for sale.
Perfect. If your copy has grass on it, don’t scrape it off. That’s collectible, vintage Midwestern grass.
As for the music, do I like it?
Yeah, I do. It’s murky and mysterious, but with that weird “innocence” of early Guided by Voices. It’s music made for no audience. We are eavesdroppers.
Do I recommend it?
Only to those who are as crazy as I am.
The audacity of kicking off this album with an instrumental guitar take on “The Star-Spangled Banner” makes me smile right away. Jimi Hendrix, it ain’t, but it sets us up for a Woodstock in which everyone took the brown acid.
The rest of the record is more mellow than Some of the Magic Syrup Was Preserved, but no less intense. Songs such as “UFO to Hitler”, “Super Sonic Funky Love Gun”, and “Jerry” give you rough drafts of beautiful melodies. “Farmer Man” and “Spacely Sprockets” are undeveloped punk, raging without a drummer. “Psychopath Thermometer” and “Congratulations, You’re Under Sedation” are great song titles, at least.
Would I care about this record if it was some other band’s prehistoric recordings?
No, Of course not. I’m heavily biased. The notes and chords are only half of the story for me.
To get lofty about it, I see Robert Pollard’s body of work as rock music’s greatest, most absorbing portrait of the creative process. By putting out so many of his old tapes, no matter how rough they are, he ends up teaching lessons in the sometimes strange ways that songs can develop. He also stands as an example of a tireless work ethic, someone to look to when you feel like giving up. I think there’s a great book to be written about the insights into creativity that you can find in Pollard’s manic output. You might not even need to interview him. It’s all there in the music.
Some wisdom that I hear in Acid Ranch:
1) Do the work for yourself. Don’t even think about the audience. It’s better for your head.
2) Use your obscurity wisely. Be free. Be crazy. Write at least five of the top ten worst songs in the world. Get bad ideas out of your system and find out who you are as a result.
3) Forget “perfection”. The imperfect thing that you produce is better than the perfect vision in your mind that you’re so intimidated by that you never finish it.
4) Write your brains out. Keep moving. Be so obsessed with your craft that it doesn’t matter when nobody cares.
5) Remember that art has humble, messy origins. Behind a masterpiece is often a rough draft that doesn’t even come close.
6) When you’re old and seasoned, the best way to share your wisdom is to keep it fun. Any good 4th grade teacher knows that. Do it in wild box sets that follow no chronological order or on strange LPs with oddball, handmade sleeve art. The right people will get it.
Twenty years ago, it was common for critics to put down Pollard for putting out too many records. He “needs an editor” and all that crap. This fascinated me because my feelings were always the exact opposite.
In fact, I wouldn’t be nearly as drawn to Pollard if he put out only a neat set of twelve songs every few years like other bands do.
No, I like the mess. I like the clutter. I like having to clear space and make room for this massive pile of music in my life.
And it is a part of my life. I know that this is true because I’ve talked about it for over a hundred articles now and still feel like I have so much more to say.