Author: Jason

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Robert Pollard-Mania! #27: UNDER THE BUSHES UNDER THE STARS

Guided by Voices
Under the Bushes Under the Stars
1996, Matador Records

In music, even a well-liked band runs the risk of nobody talking about them anymore in a few years. Whatever charms they may have had at their peak fade away for audiences and critics. Maybe the music business itself kicks them around so hard that they lose their drive. Maybe they coasted on an exciting new movement and then slipped everyone’s mind when everyone got over it. And that’s just off the top of my head. There are as many ways for today’s music sensations to become tomorrow’s nobodies as there are ways to die.

That wasn’t going to happen to Guided by Voices. This was their ninth album (tenth if you count King Shit and the Golden Boys). By this point, Robert Pollard was playing the long game and in the long game you can’t be lo-fi forever.

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Things I Will Keep #12: TANGERINE DREAM, Thief (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)

Tangerine Dream
THIEF
1981, Elektra/Asylum

When director Michael Mann decided that his first feature would be the story of a burned-out career criminal on the mean streets of Chicago, he somehow figured that German progressive instrumental group Tangerine Dream were the perfect ones to score it.

Thief is a story that we’ve seen before. Chicago is a setting that we’ve seen before. But this time, it was going to be a bleak, but day-glo, dream in a luminous night world and a new take on noir for the 1980s.  It would be gritty and grimy, but also oddly beautiful. Its style wouldn’t be outlandish; rather, it would be a kind of hyper-reality. Every last light bulb and every shadow would be as vital as the pages of the script.

And it would all move to the zero-gravity swirl of Edgar Froese and company’s synthesizers.

It’s been a controversial decision ever since.

The Golden Raspberry Awards (the informal, smarmy anti-Oscars) nominated it as the Worst Music Score of 1981.

Even Michael Mann himself has said in recent years that he’s still not sure if he made the right choice when it came to the music (see the supplements on the Criterion Collection disc of the film).

Meanwhile, here I am still taking this album’s ride in 2019 to places far out where none of that matters.

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Robert Pollard-Mania! #26: THE OFFICIAL IRONMEN RALLY SONG

Guided by Voices
“The Official Ironmen Rally Song”
1996, Matador Records

I don’t have ONE favorite Guided by Voices song. I’m also not one to make lists of favorites. If you ask nicely, I could cough up a list for you, but when left to my own devices, I’m not a big list-maker. I think that the guy from High Fidelity is deranged.

Your humble servant here just wants to throw a bunch of records on the floor, open a bottle of wine and chill out. I don’t carve pronouncements onto stone tablets. I just drink too much and talk too much and if I like to spout off about history or analysis from time to time, I try to never stray far from the state of simply blissing out by the stereo, records tossed about like unswept confetti after a party.

What I’m trying to say is that we here at The Constant Bleeder are real INFORMAL. We’re loose and disheveled. We forget to put on pants before we answer the door. We don’t always get the wine and cheese pairing right. We’re stranded in the combat zone. We walk through Bedford-Stuy alone. We ride our motorcycle in the rain. We quote Billy Joel hits at odd times. We have a bad habit of referring to ourselves in the “editorial we” even though there’s zero reason for us to do that on our personal website in which we are the only writer.

I’m not organized enough to have a favorite GBV song, I guess. And my list of top ten GBV songs has about 127 songs on it that change daily depending on my mood and the direction of the wind and whether or not Venus is in Gemini.

However, if the Devil comes up to me one day and demands that I name one favorite GBV song or else I’ll be forced to watch every Logan Paul video on Youtube in an endless loop for all eternity (or some other cruel fate like that), I’d go with “The Official Ironmen Rally Song”.

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A Laurel and Hardy Party #8: BLOTTO and LA VIDA NOCTURNA

(1930; director: James Parrott)

My favorite Laurel & Hardy situation is when they’re henpecked husbands. He’s a klutz. She’s an unpleasant harpy. Together they have a perfect marriage straight out of a nightmare. His idea of fun is going out with his buddy. Her idea of fun is squashing his fun.

Call it misogyny, I call it comedy. There are no good jokes to make about a happy marriage. Comedy is a crop that grows best in cold climates and these films are short enough that they end before it gets depressing.

Also, let’s just say that for some of us out here, this shit is highly relatable.

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Robert Pollard-Mania! #25: BENEFIT FOR THE WINOS

Guided by Voices
Benefit for the WInos
1996, no label

With most bands, by the time you get to their twenty-fifth record, you might be done. Or at least almost done, even if you’re a maniac like me who counts EVERYTHING (singles, EPs, live records). Spring would turn into winter. They’d be well into their later years. Their State Fair years. Their Christmas album years. Their tell-all autobiography years. Their Celebrity Big Brother years. Their “arrested for drunk driving/ shoplifting/ domestic violence” years. Their “suing their old band mates” years. Their “getting into political arguments everyday on Twitter instead of working on new projects” years.

But this is Robert Pollard and Guided by Voices that we’re talking about and by THEIR twenty-fifth record, they were smack in the middle of their most celebrated period. I feel like I’m still only just beginning to talk about this man and this band and these records. We’re still in elementary school here. We’re still playing on the jungle gym. We’re still chewing on pencil erasers. We’re still awkward and farting in class while the other kids pick on us. We haven’t kissed a girl (or a boy, however you swing), yet. There’s still so much ahead and we don’t know shit.

So, it was June 2, 1995 and Guided by Voices were riding high. Every rock critic knew about them. Every insufferable indie rock dork had an opinion about them. Reviews might have been mixed here and there (as they always are for anything that’s interesting), but, overall, Guided by Voices were critical darlings.

EXCEPT in the band’s home town of Dayton, Ohio.

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Robert Pollard-Mania! #24: FOR ALL GOOD KIDS

Guided by Voices
For All Good Kids
1995, no label

Guided by Voices have a bunch of live albums, folks. And we’re going to talk about ALL OF THEM.

Because I’m very serious about my Robert Pollard survey. Also, I don’t have anything better to do.

Here’s one of the first things that you need to know: Despite what a lot of sources say, including virtually every music database website, NONE of them are bootlegs in the normal sense. None of them were put out by some scofflaw with a tape recorder up his ass. These are all official records that just LOOK like bootlegs–and sometimes sound like bootlegs. There’s usually no record company mentioned anywhere. The covers are crudely assembled. Photocopied sheets glued to plain white sleeves are common. I’m talkin’ very stark, simple presentations, often with no track list even. Vinyl only, sneaked into mid-90s era record stores under cover of night and shadow. If you stumbled upon one of these in the bins back then, you might have thought “What the fuck is this?”

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Things I Will Keep #11: MEN WITHOUT HATS, Pop Goes the World

Men Without Hats
Pop Goes the World
1987, Mercury Records

This Things I Will Keep series is missing something and I think I know what it is. Other than a better writer, I mean.

So far, we’ve hung out in the thrift store bins and we’ve knocked the dust off some cool old stuff. We’ve gone glam. We’ve gone R&B. We’ve gone psychobilly. We’ve praised the goddess Bobbie Gentry. We’ve reached out to the misfit soul of Tiny Tim. We’ve reached out to the misfit psychedelic soul of The Negro Problem. We’ve loved both seasoned veterans who just want to chill out and we’ve loved hungry and dangerous young bands.

But I’ve yet to talk about anything that is truly and completely, unequivocably and absolutely 250% UNCOOL. I’ve been a little shy with you, I think. (Some might say that Tiny Tim is certifiably uncool, but I disagree.)

That ends here. It’s time to stop pulling punches. It’s time to finally reveal what a wimp I really am. It’s time to admit to the world that I am a walking bowl of egg noodles.

It’s time to say that I think that Pop Goes the World by Men Without Hats is a masterpiece and it’s one of my all-time favorite albums and I’ve been obsessed with it for almost twenty years.

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Robert Pollard-Mania! #23: TIGERBOMB

Guided by Voices
Tigerbomb
1995, Matador Records

So, we’ve talked about how Guided by Voices went into a studio and recorded shined-up versions of a few Alien Lanes songs, presumably as offerings to the gods of radio, MTV, and licensing.

But then they (or maybe it was Matador’s decision) did something that I still think is weird and released those recordings only on vinyl, a format that was next to dead in 1995. Some cooler indie stores in cities or near universities still stocked it, sure. You could also get an envelope and buy a fuckin’ stamp and send a check or money order to Matador Records in New York City and get this in your mailbox six weeks later, okay (no Paypal yet, kids). The big chain stores though, where Joe Schmoe bought his music, had been done with it for about five years.

So, color me confused on what they were thinking here. Not that I take great issue with it. GBV’s vinyl-only releases motivated a shy young man named Jason to buy his first turntable in 1996. It was a year for me when every dollar was vital and a plastic $100 Sony from Sears was a major purchase at the time, but I did it. I was done with being locked out of the 7″s that I was reading about in magazines like Puncture and CMJ. When I learned that Guided by Voices had new vinyl-only releases, it became essential that I become equipped to play them.

So, I took the plunge. I bought a turntable and very quickly became a real freak for the needle.

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