Author: Jason

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Robert Pollard-Mania! #3: SANDBOX

Guided by Voices
Sandbox
1987, Halo
Reissue (via the Box set): 1995, Scat Records

A review of Sandbox strikes me as a perfect place to tell you about the absolute, numero uno, most misunderstood thing about Guided by Voices.

I’m real sick of seeing this. I’m ready to rumble over it tonight in the alley behind the closed Burger King. It’s time we start busting heads. Let’s put an end to it here and now.

It’s simple: There are some GBV fans out there, walking among decent people like you and me, who think that they’re a power pop band.

They think that Guided by Voices are The Beatle Boots Band Explosion Revival and that Robert Pollard is a pop melody maker who just keeps forgetting to wear his skinny tie. These are the same people who think that Robert Pollard “needs an editor”. These are the people who might love sweet melodies like “I Am a Scientist” and “My Valuable Hunting Knife” and then not understand why that same guy is involved with Circus Devils or writes stuff like “A Hair in Every Square Inch of the House”.  These are the people who say that life would be so much better if Robert Pollard would stop releasing five albums a year and prune everything down to a neat and tidy twelve songs that might sound good piped into Whole Foods while you browse the organic kumquats.

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Robert Pollard-Mania! #2: DEVIL BETWEEN MY TOES

Guided by Voices
Devil Between My Toes
1987, Schwa Records
Reissue (via the Box set): 1995, Scat Records

Box set reissue copy, ladies and germs. No, I don’t have an original. This is good enough for me.

When no one’s paying attention to me, I sit at home in pajama pants, drink Trader Joe’s wine and watch Youtube videos for nine hours.

When no one was paying attention to Robert Pollard and Guided by Voices, they wrote songs and made terrific, underrated records just for themselves pretty much.

Clearly, I have a lot to learn from Guided by Voices.

The one thing I do have in common with Guided by Voices circa 1987 is that neither of us get out much. At the time of this album’s release, they weren’t playing live. They weren’t seeking out a label or management. They weren’t auditioning for anyone or anything. They were working guys in Dayton, Ohio making music in basements and garages because that was how they got through the day. Pressing it onto vinyl, on their own dime, made it “real” and inducted them into the rock brotherhood, whether anyone heard it or not.  The songs are the message, the album is the bottle, the outside world is the ocean.

Splash.

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A Laurel and Hardy Party #3: “Men O’ War”

(1929; director: Lewis R. Foster)

Beautiful weather in a peaceful park in the Jazz Age. A glittering pond on which happy couples float lazily in rented canoes. Flowers everywhere. Pretty girls strolling in the sun. Lively chatter around a gazebo. Not one hint of a whisper in the air about any coming Great Depression. What a nice day.

Until Laurel and Hardy show up to ruin everything, God bless ’em. This is funny stuff, though the best joke is that Stan and Ollie are sailors on furlough. Can you imagine them being on a boat that they don’t manage to sink? Or going in for their military physical and not somehow setting the office on fire?

So in this one, our heroes meet a couple of man-crazy young women due to a mildly racy misunderstanding that involves ladies undergarments that accidentally fell off a passing pile of laundry.  Next thing you know, they’ve scored a double date in an old-fashioned soda shop (the guy behind the counter is past and future frequent L&H foil James Finlayson in his first sound film ) and then in a rowboat for what should be a romantic paddle across the water, but that goes completely wrong. It’s no spoiler to say that boat’s going underwater, somebody’s getting smacked silly with an oar and everyone’s going to start fighting.

The gags here are expert with the most valuable player award going to Oliver Hardy. He’s still a riot almost ninety years later, whether in awkward flirtation with comely flappers, dealing with man-child Stan or trying to maintain something that resembles dignity but losing it so easily.

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Robert Pollard-Mania #1: Introduction and FOREVER SINCE BREAKFAST

Let’s face it, Robert Pollard is a sick man.

He puts out more records in one year than a lot of bands release in ten years. He has one of the most insane legacies in rock and it continues to expand all of the time. At his age (born on October 31, 1957), he’s learned just about everything that there is to know about rock music, but he somehow missed the lesson that said that your body of work should be neat and clean and not confuse people.

Terrible iPhone photo shot by yours truly, taken from Guided by Voices playing in Austin, TX, September 2012.

Robert Pollard also never learned that lo-fi isn’t all right.

Nobody ever told him that a songwriter who can write a brilliant pop melody shouldn’t write far-out psychedelic stuff, too.

And he never listened to anyone who’s ever made the point that rock music is a business and not the place for a restless creative mind that comes up with more than twelve songs a year.

Yep, we’re talkin’ a real sick-o-rama.

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A Laurel & Hardy Party #2: “Berth Marks”

(1929; director: Lewis R. Foster)

This is one of the lesser lights among Laurel and Hardy’s dozens of two-reeler talkies, but it’s still funny with that all-important mean streak. Our heroes hop a passenger train—just barely making it, of course—and chaos ensues. The centerpiece gag is a bit that runs a little too long in which they slapstick their way in and out of a berth for a much-needed nap after a long day of being complete idiots.

Still, the funniest thing here is that Stan Laurel is a musician, lugging around a cumbersome upright bass, and Oliver Hardy is his manager. Just the idea of that is funny. They’re blundering bohemians on their way to a vaudeville gig in Pottsville. THAT’S the movie I want to see. Stan screwing up his performance, breaking a string or two, accidentally knocking over the rest of the orchestra with his instrument. Then, Ollie struggling to get paid after the show, arguing with the shyster theater manager, finally getting what he and Stan are due, after which he steps outside and trips over the bass. The money flies in the air and is carried away by the wind.

And maybe they made that one. I’m still making my way through the 10-DVD box set. Bear with me.