Guided by Voices
Suitcase: Failed Experiments and Trashed Aircraft
2000, The Fading Captain Series
Guided by Voices had stacks of great songs when they became popular in the early 90s, but they had something else that was also unique.
They had a past.
They had a long past. A convoluted past. Most new indie sensations are young people. They don’t have pasts, yet. Robert Pollard’s real peers in 1994 weren’t Pavement and Superchunk, if you ask me. Rather, they were outsider oddballs like R. Stevie Moore and Billy Childish, seasoned DIY soldiers who’ve been at it forever and who produce so much music that they look half-crazy (or all-crazy) to the square world.
GBV’s subterranean self-released albums from the 1980s and early 90s (yanked from obscurity in 1995 on BOX) told some of that story, but there was more. There was a shitload more.
By the time that Guided by Voices made a blip on the cultural radar, Pollard had been writing and recording songs for about twenty years, maybe even longer. In interviews, he claimed to have thousands of unreleased songs at home. Years and years of songs. Songs that not many outside of Dayton, Ohio city limits had ever heard.
And he kept those tapes in a suitcase.
THE Suitcase.
Continue reading “Robert Pollard-Mania! #52: SUITCASE: FAILED EXPERIMENTS AND TRASHED AIRCRAFT”