Author: Jason

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Robert Pollard-Mania! #32: TONICS & TWISTED CHASERS

A rare CD photo in this series

Guided by Voices
Tonics & Twisted Chasers
1996, Rockathon Records

In 1996, we thought that two albums, two EPs and a couple of singles from Robert Pollard in one year was a lot.

We were so innocent back then.

It was a year in which Guided by Voices ran Matador through their paces and released so many records that it became an issue for some people. The “Bob Pollard needs an editor” cliche started up around this time. Critics were running out of things to say about the band and ho-hum’d their way through reviews. I still remember a guy in my dorm in ’96 who said “I liked Guided by Voices for awhile and then Pollard got musical diarrhea”.

And it was in this climate that GBV put out ONE MORE FUCKING ALBUM at the tail end of the year.

The way I remember it, it was a surprise release. No ramp-up. It just showed up one day for sale on their website, announced first through their e-mail list. Mailorder only. Vinyl only. 1,000 copies in a variety of colors. Nothing that would compete for rack space with their other releases (and, thus, not annoy the Matador folks). The artwork was a crude black-and-white photocopy of the Sunfish Holy Breakfast cover photo pasted onto a plain white sleeve. The band put it out themselves just like the old days. The aesthetic was the pseudo-“bootleg” style that they used for live albums such as For All Good Kids, but this time it was an LP of nineteen new songs.

As for the music, Tonics & Twisted Chasers is the sweetly weird work of savages who never sleep. It’s a pile of lo-fi nutcase stuff that stands apart from the year’s other LPs.

It plays like Under the Bushes Under the Stars was a dream that never really happened.

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Things I Will Keep #14: THE MONKEES, Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn & Jones Ltd.

The Monkees
Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn, Capricorn & Jones, Ltd. LP
1967, Colgems

Guilty pleasures are the best. I love everything about guilty pleasures. That’s why I have about 9,000 of them. Meanwhile, some others outright hate the very expression. “Why should I feel guilty about the things I like?” goes the usual argument. They seem to interpret it as a feeling of shame and ostracism, best avoided. In spirit, I agree, but I still think these people are all mixed up.

Guilt is an exciting emotion and I prefer to savor it.

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The Great Dallas, Texas Blackout of June 2019

Blackout selfie

Blackouts can be fun. I learned this back in in 1988 or ’89 when God decided to kick the shit out of the city one summer night with one of the angriest storms I’d ever seen in my life. The rain landed like bullets on the roof of our house and the wind could have carried away your grandma. Somewhere in that assault our electricity conked out and we–my mother, my younger sister and I–had to step away from the TV and gather together by candlelight. The whole night after that was made up of firelight and faces and lots of pitch black space that we filled with conversation.

Nobody had a cellphone that was in desperate need of charging. Nobody had essential information sitting on a now inaccessible computer. All that we lost were the lights and the TV and the refrigerator and we could live without those for a spell. What we had was each other, and that was worth more than what we’d temporarily lost. We were in good shape.

I would have been 11 or 12 at the time and I think that night was formative in my present day love of the baddest of bad weather. An ice storm approaching. An evil black cloud taking over the sky in the middle of a spring day. Thunder. Lightning. Frantic reports from the weatherman.

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The Constant Bleeder Should Not Be Writing About Anime #2: BUBBLEGUM CRISIS episode 2, “Born to Kill”

Bubblegum Crisis came out way back in 1987, a year when the top preoccupations in my life were comic books, movies, reruns of The Monkees TV show and trying to get Ruby, the cute girl in my 4th grade class, to notice me for even a few seconds. I picked up on rumblings about anime while I browsed the racks at Lone Star Comics (R.I.P.) or when I read comics news ‘n’ reviews mags like Amazing Heroes (R.I.P.) that covered animation on the side, but I never touched the stuff myself.

I don’t know even know how I would have watched this in my little corner of Texas back then. I don’t remember it showing on television. Maybe it was at the video store (R.I.P.), most likely lumped in with Strawberry Shortcake and Inspector Gadget in the greasy kid stuff section.

No matter. Decades later, I’m now digging into some anime at what I’m sure we’d all agree is the perfect time in a person’s life for it: when you’re a broken down, washed-up old man.

SO, in this second episode, Mega Tokyo in 2032 is still in danger from killer robots, but there ARE two major differences from the debut:

a) cartoon nudity

and b) cartoon violent death.

In the US, it took us a lot longer to get our heads around the idea that every animated series didn’t have to be “just for kids”.

Meanwhile, this episode offers up boobs and blood casually, like it’s nothing. Go Japan!

Like many good things, “Born to Kill” begins with the sound of a drum machine.

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Robert Pollard-Mania! #31: PLANTATIONS OF PALE PINK

Guided by Voices
Plantations of Pale Pink
1996, Matador Records

As I said way back about a hundred years ago when we talked about the group’s 1987 album Sandbox, Guided by Voices to me are a psychedelic band. They’re drunken Midwestern psychedelia. Robert Pollard can craft a hell of a pop song, but he also likes the kind of noise, distortion and weirdness that can scramble your eggs harder than you might like if you came here expecting The Power Pop Skinny Tie Homecoming Dance Revival. The songs may be short, the budget may be low and the equipment might not be the best, but the vision is expansive.

Even better, there’s nothing pretentious about GBV’s brand of fuckery. They don’t have that art school thing going, despite having two visual artists in the band, master of the collage Pollard and painter Tobin Sprout. They’re not from New York City or San Francisco. They’re from Dayton, Ohio. Their roots are blue collar–and it shows.

When they get weird, it sounds like nothing more or less than regular guys fucking around in the basement, shutting out the rest of the world and accidentally creating their own worlds. Those are some of my favorite GBV records.

I’m talkin’ the lovingly wrecked Vampire on Titus. I’m talkin’ the supremely drunk Clown Prince of the Menthol Trailer. I’m talkin’ the band’s majestically screwy 2012 comeback album Let’s Go Eat the Factory (can’t wait to get to that one in this series; I consider it a major work).

And I’m talkin’ the nightmarish Plantations of Pale Pink. It’s the best of the band’s EPs that happened after their 1993-94 explosion of 7″s. It’s a bad trip in the best way.

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THE PRISONER #2: The Chimes of Big Ben

(October 6, 1967: director: Don Chaffey)

It’s episode numero dos and we’re still laying back and eating acid-laced bon-bons in a plush bed of mystery. We don’t know much of anything. Nobody knows much of anything. The keepers of The Village are still asking former secret agent Patrick McGoohan the same question over and over again: Why did you resign?

Patrick McGoohan is still asking the same questions over and over again: Where Am I? and Who’s in charge here? 

We in the audience have a lot of questions, too. For starters, What’s with all the lava lamps? 

Yep, Kafka has collided with Syd Barrett somewhere in The Garden of Earthly Delights and it’s all pretty, pretty colors everywhere. The results will take time to sort through.

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Robert Pollard-Mania! #30: SUNFISH HOLY BREAKFAST

Guided by Voices
Sunfish Holy Breakfast
1996, Matador Records

In 1996, Matador Records indulged Robert Pollard’s madcap work ethic. Yes, they passed on the weird solo acoustic EP that he offered them (which Pollard then merely stuck to the end of his Not in My Airforce album), but they went along with plenty of other madness, bless ’em.

When Pollard pulled the plug on GBV’s The Flying Party is Here LP at the last minute, just as it was being prepared to go to press, in favor of a new set of songs that he preferred (and which turned out to be Under the Bushes Under the Stars), Matador were cool with it.

Six months after the new GBV album, they put out Pollard’s first solo album.

Two months after that, in November, they also released a pair of Guided by Voices EPs on the same day. They were two oddballs that didn’t do much for the “Pollard needs an editor” crowd, but if you’d been bitten by the bug, they were sweet stuff full of those warm and familiar basement vibes.

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THE PRISONER #1: Arrival

(September 29, 1967; director: Don Chaffey)

Here is everything that I know about The Prisoner, the classic British TV series that originally aired from 1967 to 1968.

1) It’s a classic British TV series that originally aired from 1967 to 1968.

2) The PBS station in Dallas used to rerun it when I was a teenager a hundred years ago, but it was at an odd hour. 1 AM on Saturday nights or something like that.

3) I watched two or three episodes back then and liked them, but never managed to see the whole series of seventeen.

4) It’s got a great aesthetic that combines the late 60s fascination for slick secret agents with offbeat, trippy, “rocking horse people eat marshmallow pies” vibes.

5) It’s all streaming on Amazon Prime. For now, at least.

Also, I want to write about it. So let’s go, weirdos…

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Will Clarke’s THE WORTHY

Will Clarke
The Worthy
2006, Simon & Schuster

Gotta admit, I am very NOT curious about what goes on behind the closed doors of college frat houses. It’s a bunch of rich young douchebags being the best douchebags they can be, right? And everyone’s too incomplete, immature and dedicated to being conformists to be interesting.

I’m prejudiced. I admit it. My knowledge of fraternities comes entirely from Animal House and having worked in two restaurants near colleges where the frat menace was real.

They weren’t more rude than any other group in particular; they were just more demanding and they always came in packs. They’d order cheap drinks and then guzzle them down in ten seconds. Every time you walk past them, they need another. They’re also more likely to do stupid shit, such as the time I worked in a place that had an all-you-can-eat special and a band of brothers of the toga showed up and ate and ate and ate until one of them vomited at the table.

Also, they were always seperate checks and you could barely tell them apart, as they tend to look, talk and behave alike.

So, I gave this novel, which is set entirely within the Louisiana State University frat bro world, very little time to win me over. I aimed to be strict and I aimed to be harsh.

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