Category: music

Posted on

Robert Pollard-Mania! #16: I AM A SCIENTIST

Guided by Voices
I Am a Scientist EP
1994, Scat Records

“I Am a Scientist” is Robert Pollard’s mission statement. If you’re confused by his voluminous output, his five albums a year, and his thousands of songs, just put on “I Am a Scientist” because it explains it all in plain language and with a perfect pop melody that soothes savage beasts. Gun to my head, it’s the definitive Guided by Voices song.

This EP offers a different, hi-fi take on in it. It’s a different version than one on Bee Thousand, but it’s still on the rough side. The band recorded it live in the studio with old school punk rocker Andy Shernoff working the knobs, and it naturally reflects the way the band played the song on stage. It’s louder and more driving, shined-up just enough for mainstream radio, but not obnoxious in the slightest. It still serves the melody. It does what it should do.

Continue reading “Robert Pollard-Mania! #16: I AM A SCIENTIST”

Posted on

Things I Will Keep #8: THE CRAMPS, Psychedelic Jungle

The Cramps
Psychedelic Jungle
1981, IRS Records

I fucked up Halloween this year. Past Octobers for me have been blizzards of horror movie watching and reviewing. A little Bela Lugosi on Tuesday, a little Peter Cushing on Wednesday, something from the Netflix junk heap on Thursday and so on. I also always get in at least one silent movie, one Hammer film, one slasher, something from the 60s drive-in, and a little 70s Eurotrash vampire lesbian action.  Here in Dallas, we also have great theaters with horror repertory screenings every week and I’m known to hit several of those and write about each and every goddamn one.

This year though, not so much–and I’m not even sure why. I’ve hardly watched any movies at all. Has writing posts here and playing with my recently adopted cats really taken up THAT much of my time? Maybe.

I’ll do better next year.

As for what I have done this month in the spirit of the season, I’ve been picking at H.P. Lovecraft stories, via the Whisperer in Darkness collection, by the bedside lamp at night and enjoying the oozy, creepy atmosphere. Dismember the Alamo was fun.

And I’ve been listening to The Cramps and making my quiet little old lady living room sound like a much cooler, more dangerous place.

Continue reading “Things I Will Keep #8: THE CRAMPS, Psychedelic Jungle”

Posted on

Robert Pollard-Mania! #15: BEE THOUSAND

Guided by Voices
Bee Thousand
1994, Scat Records

My favorite story about discovering Bee Thousand came from a guy who claimed that he hated it the first few times he listened to it. The lo-fi didn’t bother him. The songwriting simply didn’t hit the mark for his ears. Fair enough. This music isn’t for everybody. He wrote off the album and moseyed on his way. However, over the next week, he kept getting these catchy hooks stuck in his head and he couldn’t remember where they were from. He was your regular music geek, always picking up new stuff and wasn’t sure exacty where he heard lines like…

Continue reading “Robert Pollard-Mania! #15: BEE THOUSAND”

Posted on

Robert Pollard-Mania! #14: GUIDED BY VOICES / THE GRIFTERS Split 7″

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″”

Posted on

Things I Will Keep #6: MILLER, “Baby, I Got News for You”

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””

Posted on

Robert Pollard-Mania! #13: LUCIFER’S ACHING REVOLVER b/w CRUISE

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”

Posted on

Getting CLOSER to Robert Pollard

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.

Continue reading “Getting CLOSER to Robert Pollard”

Posted on

Robert Pollard-Mania! #12: CLOWN PRINCE OF THE MENTHOL TRAILER

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”

Posted on

Things I Will Keep #5: JILL CUNNIFF, City Beach

Jill Cunniff
City Beach
2007, The Militia Group/Vinyl Films

Here in the steamy state of Texas, August is fucking brutal. It’s my least favorite month. When you’re a kid, late summer is the melancholy time when school is about to start.  When you’re an adult, late summer is the time when you and everyone you know has already gone away and come back from their big summer vacation plans. Nobody’s looking forward to anything. Everyone is just kind of existing and that’s it. There’s no such thing as a “beautiful day” this time of year. The grass and trees are all bleached by the sun. We’re mostly all about the end of the heat wave, that first taste of autumn. It should be here in about a month or so IF we’re lucky.

(Important note: In Texas, summer often keeps kicking the shit out of us into October. I once road-tripped through rural Missouri in mid-September and was awestruck by how the whole landscape was already covered in beautiful autumn yellows and oranges. Where I come from–only about six hundred miles south–a sight like that is still a month off).

The only nice thing about late summer is that I think Jill Cunniff captured it perfectly and made it lovely on her first (and hopefully not her last) solo album.

Continue reading “Things I Will Keep #5: JILL CUNNIFF, City Beach”