Category: music

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Things I Will Keep #4: THE NEGRO PROBLEM, Post-Minstrel Syndrome

Cat toy and CD

The Negro Problem
Post-Minstrel Syndrome
1997, Aerial Flipout

One of the reasons why I stopped collecting records is because music, for the most part, stopped contributing anything to my life that I needed.

That’s not a criticism of music. That doesn’t mean that I dislike music now. Music didn’t fail me. I just stopped needing it.

I still hear things, new and old, that I like all of the time. I’m still married to a few longtime favorites (see my Robert Pollard series, for example). I’m also not an old crank who jerks off to the bands he loved twenty years ago and shuns anything new. (A lot of the new indie rock I hear is just as good, maybe even better, than what I came up with in the 90s; I like that they often embrace the synthesizer sounds of the 80s, which 90s indie bands naturally tended to avoid.)

We all follow our own paths and on mine these days I rarely put on music as a voice that I need to hear. Looking back, music was often a balm for my daily depressions. It got me through problems with relationships and jobs and self-loathing. It calmed my nerves and provided comfort, as well as a very real endorphin rush when I’d spend a little too much money on it at a record store counter.

These days, I still get the daily depressions, but now I consider it my responsibility alone to get myself out of it. I need to move and think and write and crack jokes. Other people’s music can’t help anymore. Other people usually can’t even help anymore. It’s all on me.

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Robert Pollard-Mania! #10: FAST JAPANESE SPIN CYCLE

Guided by Voices
Fast Japanese Spin Cycle
1994, Engine Records

Okay, I know that I said before that I’m undecided about my favorite Guided by Voices 1993-94 EP and I meant that, BUT…

If someone ever holds a gun to my head and demands an answer (by the way, I hope that nobody ever does that), I would stake my reputation in City Hall on this one.

You can’t go wrong with Fast Japanese Spin Cycle. If you like Guided by Voices, you’d have to be certifiably insane to not like this. You’d have to have mashed potatoes for brains to not like “My Impression Now”. You’d have to have bees in your ass to not like “Indian Fables”. This is another overachiever EP in which Robert Pollard sticks as many songs as he can onto a little 33 rpm 7″ (he managed eight this time). If this was the first Guided by Voices record you ever heard, it would tell you everything that you need to know.

There are two things that stand out here:

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Robert Pollard-Mania! #9: STATIC AIRPLANE JIVE

Guided by Voices
Static Airplane Jive
1993, City Slang

When it comes to the merry deluge of 7″ EPs by Guided by Voices in the early 90s, no one remembers exactly when they came out. So, when a serious archivist like myself (takes another swig of Maker’s Mark, belches) tries to sort this shit out, we have to wing it. We don’t have Paypal records. We don’t have website archives. We don’t have any of the nerd details.

All we have are some of the best records released under the Guided by Voices name, usually with a handwritten copyright year found somewhere in some corner of the sleeve art–and that’s more than enough, Charlie.

WHY are there so many EPs during this time? Because after Guided by Voices made waves in the underground and weren’t yet under contract with anyone, several small labels came to Robert Pollard with an interest in putting out something new and he said yes to every last one of them sons o’ bitches.

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GUIDED BY VOICES at Trees, Dallas, TX, 6/19/18

Shitty IPhone pic, courtesy of yours truly.

I swore off live music years ago. I don’t like crowds. I don’t like the concrete litter box vibe of most rock clubs. I don’t like having to shout over jet engine-levels of noise when I want to order another Tanqueray and tonic from the bar. I don’t like waiting in line to piss. And I don’t like paying $50-100 for it, when all is said and done, between admission, drinks and parking fees or a Lyft ride.

Also, as a world class eavesdropper (seriously, I love to eavesdrop; I’m all up in everybody’s business), rock clubs are the worst places to do it. Almost every conversation you hear is just people talking about the bands they’ve seen. Or it’s some guy trying to get into some girl’s pants… by talking about the bands that he’s seen. BOR-ING.

In another life, rock clubs were the coolest places in the world to me. Today, in my delicate years, I’ve completely turned around. Now, the coolest place in the world is my couch with a book in my hands or a movie on TV.

I’m not agoraphobic, by the way. I’m just an asshole.

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Robert Pollard-Mania! #8: VAMPIRE ON TITUS

Guided by Voices
Vampire on Titus
1993, Scat Records

There’s a great Pollard quote in issue 82 of Magnet from 2011 on the occasion of GBV’s upcoming Let’s Go Eat the Factory album. Talking about his longevity in music, Pollard says:

One loses one’s innocence because of public acceptance. You become cognizant that the whole world is listening, and you’re not just writing for yourself. You have to maintain the attitude of a child… You have to make records for yourself… It means you’re not trying to make records for the whole world, and the record will be better because of that. I see people to this day complaining about how they keep sending stuff out and banging their heads against the wall and not getting anywhere, and it’s because they’re trying too hard. We don’t try too hard… We try not to try. That should be our motto.

That seems to sum up the journey of early Guided by Voices. They were a band learning in obscurity to not try. And they got a little better at it with every album. A little weirder. A little looser. To get more rough and ragged was their idea of progress. They were stripping everything down and they were serious about it.

Serious enough to make Vampire on Titus, the most fucked-up, wrecked and trashed Guided by Voices album ever, their most lo-fi cry in the night.

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Things I Will Keep #3: BOBBY MARCHAN, “There’s Something on Your Mind”

Bobby Marchan
“There’s Something on Your Mind”
1960, Fire Records

Among the records that I intend to keep until my fateful final day on the dragstrip of life, many are 45s. I’ve even had half a mind in recent years to collect music on 45s ONLY, but have yet to commit. That’s further down the Path of Enlightenment than I am willing to go right now. It’s too much sacrifice (and it’s not necessarily cheaper, either). I’m just not gangsta enough.

There’s nothing wrong with digital formats (I use ’em, I abuse ’em), but I do think that physical records and CDs encourage more active engagement with music. And IF this is true, the 45 is the ultimate in active engagement. Because you can’t just put it on and then let it go for an hour to play in the background while you entertain house guests or masturbate on your kitchen floor (or both). Nope, a 45 is gonna be all over in a few minutes after which time you either play that sucker again, take a chance on the B-side or put on something else. You have to move and make a decision. You’ve given the act of playing that song your full attention.

You are devoted to the song.

And I can’t think of many songs that deserve devotion more than Bobby Marchan’s desperate, devastated and dangerous cover of Big Jay McNeely’s “There’s Something on Your Mind”. It’s one of the best things I’ve ever heard.

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Robert Pollard-Mania! #7: THE GRAND HOUR

No, the gold-print-on-red-sleeve cover art isn’t much more clear in person than it is in this photo.

Guided by Voices
The Grand Hour
1993, Scat Records

In the Season One finale of The Guided by Voices Story, the band had just recorded Propeller, their masterpiece. And then they broke up because they were getting old and Robert Pollard’s family was giving him the stink-eye over this stupid rock band that he had going.

It was all just a hobby anyway. A goof-off. Something to pass the time. Pollard is now over this music stuff and he won’t even miss it. Right? Cut to credits.

Season Two begins with a phone call to Pollard’s house.

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Things I Will Keep #2: GOD BLESS TINY TIM

Tiny Tim
God Bless Tiny Tim
1968, Reprise

As the years go by, as my metabolism slows, as thoughts about mortality hit me like a bird shitting on my head everyday, as I figure out what I really care about in life, and as I enthusiastically prune my 4-5,000-piece record collection down to a modest stash of essentials, more and more do I realize that I love happy music most of all.

I guess that there’s great angry music and depressing music out there. Cool. Somebody else can listen to it.

Your humble reporter though, as he falls apart like an old Chevy Nova and spends his evenings at home tending to his two cats and his sciatic nerves, is all about the good times and sunny vibes. The occasional arty outsider thing can catch his weathered ear from time to time (watch this space for some of that in future installments, if you dare), but for the most part, he loves pretty tones that make luscious melodies that build up to timeless songs. This sordid specimen of whom we speak is your regular pop nerd and your basic freak for a hook. A real headcase. His younger music snob self would be ashamed. He’s a disgrace, this old short bald guy who never exercises. He wants to put on music and sway and sing along. He wants to play the same songs over and over. He wants to rock out and be flown around on angel wings. He wants to get out of this paragraph in which he’s stuck referring to himself in the third person.

That doesn’t mean that I only love songs about rainbows and candy (though I do love plenty of songs about rainbows and candy). Rather, I’d define “happy” music as music that exhibits a sincere love for life (sad songs can be awfully sweet on the ears when they’re beautifully written). There are many different ways do that.

And this genius first album from Tiny Tim hits a whole bunch of them. It’s a masterpiece of dreamy aural world-building and soul-soothing. I could never get rid of it. My mood lifts the moment that I put it on. I always want to be around it.

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Robert Pollard-Mania! #6: PROPELLER

Guided by Voices
Propeller
1992, Rockathon Records
Reissue (via the vinyl version of the Box set): 1995, Scat Records

The final Guided by Voices album. The closing chapter. The grand exit. One last blast before Robert Pollard retires his mic, packs up his guitar, throws his songwriting notebooks in a drawer, never makes Bee Thousand,  never makes From a Compound Eye, never makes Space Gun, and kisses his dreams goodbye.

That was true for about five minutes in 1992, at least, when Pollard caved to pressure from his family who didn’t think that a 34-year-old man with a wife and kids should be wasting his time and money making records that nobody except Byron Coley hears.

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Robert Pollard-Mania! #5: SAME PLACE THE FLY GOT SMASHED

Guided by Voices
Same Place the Fly Got Smashed
1990, Rocket #9
Reissue (via the Box set): 1995, Scat Records

Robert Pollard’s music is optimistic. He’s not going to tell you that life is all merry-go-rounds and back rubs, but if you put in some work that’s worth doing and aren’t an idiot, you might enjoy being a living, breathing person on our ruined planet of shit and misery.

There are sad songs and melancholy moments and horror stories in his music, but little that I would call depressing. Or angry. Pollard is so great at anthems because he likes to write about human triumph over things big and small. His way with melody belies an artist who wants to make the world a prettier place. The volume of his work reveals an artist who’s not tired of life and gonna fight the grave for as long as he can.

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