Josh Alan
The Worst!
1994, Black Cracker Music
Here’s what I consider to be a genuinely happy thought: the sad, strange life story of the world’s worst movie director has inspired three different masterworks in three different forms of media. There aren’t many, if any, other people whom you can say that about.
Continue reading “Things I Will Keep #7: JOSH ALAN, The Worst!”
Terry Southern
The Magic Christian
1959, Grove Press
I know that we’re all supposed to hate Louis CK now–and I certainly agree with anyone who says that his admitted exhibitionist masturbation fetish stuff isn’t much fun to think about–but none of that changes how funny he’s been before. One of my favorite old bits of his is the one in which he wonders why more billionaires don’t use their resources to prank everyone.
“Buy every baseball team and make them all wear dresses.” Open up the world’s worst pet store, where every can of food costs $1 million and where the groomers tell you point-blank that they will have sex with your pets, and keep it open for decades just to confuse people.
The first time I heard it, I hurt myself laughing and, because I’m perpetually behind on my reading, I didn’t realize until this week that Terry Southern had the exact same idea way back in the 1950s when he wrote this still-hilarious novel. It’s about Guy Grand, a perfectly nice and fabulously wealthy fella who has money to burn and so he burns it by relentlessly fucking with the world.
Guided by Voices/The Grifters
1994, The Now Sound
The last time we discussed Robert Pollard here at The Constant Bleeder (or Da’ Bleeder, as the kids at the mall like to call it), it was for a fake split single; now on the table this time is a real split single.
The Grifters were one of the few relatively fresh indie rock bands at the time–and by “relatively fresh”, I mean they’d been making records for five years or so–who were about the same age as Guided by Voices. 30s, pushing 40, somewhere in that neighborhood. I don’t know their exact ages, but The Grifters were older than the average pipsqueak and were in the middle of putting out their two best albums of noisy jaded wooze, One Sock Missing and Crappin’ You Negative.
So, here you’ve got two sides of late-bloomer rock from a pair of bands who were in high cotton at the time. Sign me up.
Continue reading “Robert Pollard-Mania! #14: GUIDED BY VOICES / THE GRIFTERS Split 7″”
Miller
Baby I Got News for You b/w The Girl With the Castle
1965, Columbia
Herman Melville once wrote “To produce a mighty book, you must choose a mighty theme. No great and enduring volume can ever be written on the flea, though many there be that have tried it.”
Melville died in 1891, well before rock ‘n’ roll and well before we figured out that, yeah, you can write something great on the flea as long as it rocks.
Enter Miller’s “Baby, I Got News for You”, a song so dumb that I must lose a hundred brain cells every time I hear it. Each spin of this 45 is a fresh concussion and I love it. It might be my favorite rock single of all time, or at least it has an easy spot in my top 10.
Continue reading “Things I Will Keep #6: MILLER, “Baby, I Got News for You””
Because of Netflix true-crime documentaries, I’ve gotten rid of everything I ever owned that could be used as a lethal weapon. I’ve gone though the whole Clue game arsenal and tossed ’em all out. No lead pipes, candlesticks or rope in my home.
If I need to pound a nail, I go out and buy a hammer and then immediately throw it away.
All of my sharp kitchen supplies are now in the garbage. To be safe, I even got rid of my cast iron skillets. All I have now are butter knives, spoons, plastic forks, a few baking sheets and a small saucepan.
I also threw out all scissors and replaced them with those blunt Kindergarten scissors for five-year-olds.
Continue reading “Scratching Your Head with THE STAIRCASE on Netlflix”
NIghtwalker/Freedom Cruise
“Lucifer’s Aching Revolver” b/w “Cruise”
1994, Simple Solution Records
Newcomers to Robert Pollard’s work–or fans who lead a more eventful life than I do and haven’t religiously kept up with it all–are inevitably confused by the side projects. It’s understandable. As of this writing, Pollard has recorded and released music under almost two dozen different names and with a variety of collaborators.
As I make my way through his body of work and write way too many words about each record, I intend to explain every side project and tell you why each one is a little different. I will use my nerdiness to illuminate. I will use my geekiness to elucidate. Summoning the power of my autism, I will demystify and hopefully clarify.
Because I know everything. I am an armchair expert in all things Pollard. There’s not much that you can get by me.
Except for what the deal is with THIS record.
None of the books or interviews, as far as I know, tell the story of this fake split-single for two bands (Nightwalker and Freedom Cruise) who both are clearly Guided by Voices in disguise.
Continue reading “Robert Pollard-Mania! #13: LUCIFER’S ACHING REVOLVER b/w CRUISE”
Matthew Cutter
Closer You Are: The Story of Robert Pollard and Guided by Voices
2018, Da Capo Press
The rock star fantasy rests on the myth that none of it is hard work. Maybe a musician’s early starving-artist days provide some strife to talk about, but even that’s often told as a romantic story of young, untethered bohemians who can afford to scrape by on disposable dayjobs and stay up all night in pursuit of their art and/or fortune.
If you can make it to the next level, life becomes a permanent vacation. Go on tour to applause every night. Tell your life story to journalists. Be on magazine covers. The kids all think you’re cool. When you’re feeling exhausted, take a year off. Play golf with The Red Hot Chili Peppers. Take up a drug habit, even. Some of these big rock bands nowadays go three, four, five years or more between their next album of twelve measly songs. Hell, anybody could do that… some regular schmoe like me might think while we punch the time clock, straighten our tie for the office or put on our hardhat.
The refreshing thing about the story of Robert Pollard is that it’s the opposite of all of that. It steps square on the myth’s head.
Life is full of unanswered questions, unsolved mysteries, curious encounters and stories that end abruptly. If you step outside at all, people appear and disappear in your life all of the time. We overhear the conversations of strangers. We see scenes of other peoples’ dramas. We hear gossip about people we’ve never met and never will meet. It happens so often that we don’t even think about it.
By contrast, movies and television are full of mysteries that are solved. Pieces that fall perfectly into place. Smooth trails that lead to neat resolutions. All ambiguity extinguished and explained.
Movies and television have got it all wrong, so says David Lynch.
Continue reading “Twin Peaks Season 3 is God, Pretty Much (Or Thoughts After My Fifth Re-Watch)”
Guided by Voices
Clown Prince of the Menthol Trailer
1994, Domino
The most fucked-up of the early ’90s 7″ EPs. I bet this one is STILL controversial, but I love it. I’m all about it. I’d get it tattooed on me, but the title is a little too long and I’ve never gotten a tattoo before and I’m a little jittery about the idea and I’d rather stay home and make tacos.
Nevertheless, this record’s rickety madness speaks to my soul.
Now, I don’t know where exactly this fits chronologically into Robert Pollard’s EP freak-out of 1993-94, but my sixth sense (which is wrong six out of seven times) places it toward the end because it sounds like a band who are tired of selling themselves.
They’re tired of proving that a lo-fi band can still rock and deliver songs that should be singles. They’re also, for the moment, tired of building weird fuzzed-out worlds. All they want to do now is rant directly into the tape recorder, everything laid bare and raw. You can hear fingers hit the guitar and bass strings. You can see the sticks hit the drums. You can hear Robert Pollard pop his “p”‘s on a cheap microphone.
On this EP, it’s way past midnight and everyone’s too drunk to give a fuck. And that’s a place where Guided by Voices thrive.
Continue reading “Robert Pollard-Mania! #12: CLOWN PRINCE OF THE MENTHOL TRAILER”
