Author: Jason

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Robert Pollard-Mania! #40: WAVED OUT

Robert Pollard
Waved Out
1998, Matador Records

In 1998, Robert Pollard was 40 years old and his plan for Guided by Voices was that he was gonna at least take a stab at selling out Budokan while he was still spry. It was cool with me. I was rooting for him. A slick, Ric Ocasek-produced GBV album was something that I was curious to hear.

One might have wondered though if maybe we were losing the fucked-up psychedelic pop genius that we’d been following. Part of GBV’s character was a curious freedom on record. Noise. Accidents that sounded cool. Albums in which weird, misfit songs found a comfortable home next to killer hooks. A very uncommercial sort of beauty. It wasn’t mere indie/lo-fi snobbery. Robert Pollard found his voice (and his audience) embracing rough edges and home recording. It was how his songs sounded good. It was why he didn’t sign with Warner Brothers in 1994 and remake Alien Lanes for radio like the suits wanted.

How was any of Ocasek’s studio magic gonna compete with that?

If you were paying attention though, you didn’t worry about that much. Robert Pollard is a song machine. His does his job each day and new songs are not a problem. He was still writing little oddballs and making low-budget recordings. Pollard had stacks of fresh goodness that didn’t fit on Guided by Voices albums anymore. Great songs, haunting songs, shadowy moods, alien vibes and psychedelic nutcase stuff that the deep-diggers want to hear.

Sounds like a great idea for a solo album, to me.

Sounds like Waved Out. 

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Things I Will Keep #17: THE MUFFS, Happy Birthday to Me

The Muffs
Happy Birthday to Me
1997, Reprise Records (original vinyl on Telster Records)

The news of Kim Shattuck’s sad and unfair death at age 56, due to ALS complications, knocked all of the wind out of me last week.

I first saw it on Twitter and I couldn’t believe it (“Huh, Kim Shattuck is trending? I wonder wh–OH, FUCK!”). Total punch in the gut. Her illness was kept private. It was a complete surprise to us in the peanut gallery. At the moment, other people were around me and I had to walk away from them and find a quiet place to sit and think.

The deaths of musicians rarely get to me like that. Even if I liked them. For the most part, I tend to figure that they made their mark and will live on through their work. I might get a little wistful and misty, but I don’t feel hurt.

But Kim Shattuck’s passing hurt. 

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THE PRISONER #5: Schizoid Man

(October 27, 1967; writer: Terence Feely; director: Pat Jackson)

In 2019, the line between television and le cinema is blurred to the max. Major directors do important work for television now. Auteur shit. Shit that’s a part of the same conversations that people have about theatrical movies. There are people who will argue that there’s still a division between the two forms of media, but, from where I sit, it looks like the walls are a’ tumblin’ down, Charlie.

The rise of high-definition television and cable networks (and streaming services) who can be more ambitious than their more dorky broadcast TV counterparts, still tethered to those FCC regulations and Doritos commercials, are the obvious steps forward.

But there were earlier advances toward this. The original run of Twin Peaks is a stepping stone, for sure. In my opinion, Miami Vice was one, too. (I intend to write about that show here in time, if you care.)

And way back in the 1960s, The Prisoner was similarly ambitious. Over fifty years later, these episodes look and behave like “a movie” to me. Its shots are beautifully composed and packed with information. Its background characters are sometimes a Fellini-like collection of memorable faces and bodies. Nothing about it seems cheap. When they went for a special effect, they put in the work to pull it off.

“Schizoid Man”, in which star Patrick McGoohan plays two roles, is a perfect example of what I’m babbling about.

(I’m also going to spoil the fuck out of it in this piece, so beware.)

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Robert Pollard-Mania! #39: I AM A TREE

Guided by Voices
I Am a Tree
1997, Matador Records

Robert Pollard writes tons of anthems on his own so it was a major endorsement of GBV’s new lead guitarist Doug Gillard when Pollard not only recorded Gillard’s “I Am a Tree” for Guided by Voices, but also consented to it as the second and final single from Mag Earwhig!. Until Tobin Sprout scored a few A-sides about fifteen years later when the old line-up reunited, “I Am a Tree” was the only GBV single not written by King Shit himself.

Pollard still sings it like it’s his own, though. He thinks it’s a great song. You can tell. Meanwhile, Cobra Verde summon thunder and the song itself is powerful and yet unpretentious. It’s total pop with Godzilla guitars. In 1975, it might have been a hit. In 1997, it was the sound of a band known for lo-fi brevity taking its boldest step yet in shedding its old skin.

“I Am a Tree” is almost five minutes long and recorded to fill a stadium.

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Things I Will Keep #16: GEM, Hexed

My cracked CD case says “hi”.

Gem
Hexed
1995, Restless Records

Happy September, folks.

August will probably always be a slow month on this site. I write everyday, but in the drag days of late summer in Texas, my brain takes a vacation. I won’t repeat my rant from the beginning of my Jill Cunniff piece from last year, but I always spend the 100-plus degree days of August annoyed at everything. I make notes and write fragments for new articles for this site, but in my cranky, sweatball state they rarely feel like anything worth pursuing. If this was my job, I could work my way through this misery, sure, but this is not my job, so I can say “fuck it” with impunity and just not update for a few weeks.

Now, it’s mid-September and it’s still fucking hot (Texas), but the nights are getting more pleasant. The supermarkets have Halloween displays up. Changes are happening, however slowly. The leaves here haven’t yet changed color, but as the world around me slides back into routine, I feel myself receiving good energy again.

What I’m trying to say is that I’m in the mood for some for some killer back-to-school rock and Gem’s shotgun blast of a debut album nails it. Maybe none of these guys had been in school for awhile when they made it. Maybe main songwriter Doug Gillard had been in bands for about fifteen years at this point. Nevertheless, they still kicked up the kind of blare and had the kind of songs that, in a better world, would have shouted out of high school parking lots in 1995.

From the cynical, misfit kids, at least. The kind of kids who could hear a song like “Your Heroes Hate You” and it just confirmed what they suspected about the world already.

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The Constant Bleeder is the World’s Worst Anime Reviewer #4: BUBBLEGUM CRISIS episode 4, “Revenge Road”

Well looky here, an episode of Bubblegum Crisis that ISN’T about the nefarious Genom corporation and their endless parade of killer robots. Am I still watching the same series? Did I click on the wrong thing on Night Flight?

No, I didn’t. (Seriously, I checked.) They just did something a little different this time. We all need to do something a little different sometimes. I’ve been doing the same shit for the past eighteen years, at least, and it hasn’t worked out that well, to be honest.

I digress.

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Robert Pollard-Mania! #38: MAG EARWHIG!

Guided by Voices
Mag Earwhig!
1997, Matador Records

For indie rocker kids, there was an uncomfortable truth about Guided by Voices and in 1997 they finally had to face it.

Robert Pollard likes and is very much influenced by prog-rock.

And not in a “math rock” way, which was cool back then. Bands who were into crazy time signatures and got compared to King Crimson and their LP was out on Touch & Go. That was okay.

Pollard probably digs that stuff, too, but he’s more into Peter Gabriel’s Genesis. He likes concept albums and all of that mystical, pastoral British junk. Fantasy imagery and songs that might kick in with the good part after about four minutes of build-up because kids in 1973 (a year when Pollard turned 16) had the attention span for that. Or at least they were stoned enough to go with it.

Yep, the guy known for recording songs that barely last a minute in his basement was influenced by the most long-winded and indulgent rock genre around.

Artists. They’re complicated.

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L. Ron Hubbard’s SPY KILLER

L. Ron Hubbard
Spy Killer
1936 (2008 reprint, Galaxy Press)

In the middle of reading, I accidentally spilled beer all over my copy of this book and it’s just as well. These Galaxy Press reprints of L. Ron Hubbard’s early pulp fiction work ARE a little too spiffy. They could use some rough treatment to match the contents.

Also, while I have klutzed up some rare collectibles in my day, reducing $100 vintage, outta-print records or books or movies to $3 damaged goods with one spilled drink or false step, I’m not concerned about this one. My local Half Price Books has stacks of these Hubbard reissues for $2 each, which is also perfect. Pulp should be cheap.

Cheap and stained.

If you’re reading junk like Spy Killer, you should be fine with that.

The story of this 1936 novella is Goofball City.

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THE PRISONER #4: Free For All

(October 20, 1967; writer: “Paddy Fitz”; director: Patrick McGoohan)

Star Patrick McGoohan both wrote and directed this episode (he assumes the name Paddy Fitz for his script credit) that takes the series to a striking new level of absurdity.

This is the one in which McGoohan’s “Number Six” learns that the position of the most powerful person that he’s met in The Village–that would be “Number Two”, who’s under the command of the still-mysterious “Number One”–goes up for election every year and that he’s very welcome to run for the job himself. In fact, the current “Number Two” (seasoned British film actor Eric Portman, a favorite of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger) encourages it. Not that it takes much effort to convince him, as McGoohan sees this as a possible chance to escape. Or to least learn more about The Village’s secrets.

Now, none of this makes a lick of sense because there’s a different “Number Two” in every episode. The Village is clearly does NOT run elections for that position. They are hiring and firing like Donald Trump. Crazy turnover in that position.

So, I don’t know what the hell kind of of logic is happening in this episode, but that’s okay. The Prisoner is already weird all over. Every episode begins with Patrick McGoohan waking up and hobbling toward the window of his room, as if he’s unsure if he’s dreaming or not. And maybe he is.

And this very episode is VERY dreamy.

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