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Will Clarke’s THE WORTHY

Will Clarke
The Worthy
2006, Simon & Schuster

Gotta admit, I am very NOT curious about what goes on behind the closed doors of college frat houses. It’s a bunch of rich young douchebags being the best douchebags they can be, right? And everyone’s too incomplete, immature and dedicated to being conformists to be interesting.

I’m prejudiced. I admit it. My knowledge of fraternities comes entirely from Animal House and having worked in two restaurants near colleges where the frat menace was real.

They weren’t more rude than any other group in particular; they were just more demanding and they always came in packs. They’d order cheap drinks and then guzzle them down in ten seconds. Every time you walk past them, they need another. They’re also more likely to do stupid shit, such as the time I worked in a place that had an all-you-can-eat special and a band of brothers of the toga showed up and ate and ate and ate until one of them vomited at the table.

Also, they were always seperate checks and you could barely tell them apart, as they tend to look, talk and behave alike.

So, I gave this novel, which is set entirely within the Louisiana State University frat bro world, very little time to win me over. I aimed to be strict and I aimed to be harsh.

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Robert Pollard-Mania! #29: NOT IN MY AIRFORCE

Robert Pollard
Not in My Airforce
1996, Matador Records

I can tell you exactly when I went from being a casual toe-dipper fan of Robert Pollard’s music to being the mental case presently on display before you.

It was in the fall of 1996 when I got hooked big time on Pollard’s whale of a first solo album, Not in My Airforce. 

This record kept me up nights, was a constant companion and it still feels like a part of me nearly twenty-five years later. I sank deep into my headphones for this one. For years, I considered it my favorite Pollard record of all, GBV or otherwise.

So, what’s the difference between Guided by Voices and a Pollard solo album?

In 1996, not a whole hell of a lot.

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Things I Will Keep #13: TOBIN SPROUT, Carnival Boy

Tobin Sprout
Carnival Boy
1996, Matador Records

I’m one of those goofballs whose favorite Beatle is George. Also, my favorite Beatle solo album of the early years after the big break-up is Harrison’s All Things Must Pass. Sure, it’s not perfect. It’s a triple-album set and, like most people of good stock, I ignore the “Apple Jam” instrumental garbage on the third LP. And “I Dig Love” might be the worst song ever written. And I don’t know why the hell Harrison figured that we need two versions of “Isn’t It a Pity?”.

The headline though is that it’s the work of the underdog guy in the band now doing his own thing and killing it. The highs of All Things Must Pass reach such peaks that they can lead a guy to forget the low points.

One also imagines that All Things Must Pass is a stockpile of songs that got left off of Beatles records. Great stuff that might have fit right in, but never got the chance.

That’s part of the appeal of Tobin Sprout’s first solo LP outside of Guided by Voices, but with a difference.

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The Constant Bleeder Tries to Figure Out Anime #1: BUBBLEGUM CRISIS episode 1, “Tinsel City Rhapsody”

I don’t know shit about anime.

Never watched it much. Didn’t grow up on it. Never cared about it. I watched Voltron every now and then when I was in third grade, but that doesn’t count. Everybody watched Voltron back then. And besides there are no fetish-y schoolgirls in it.

Back in the video store days, I rented the early chapters of a few series here and there (can’t remember any of the titles) and the occasional feature, but nothing ever stuck with me. I remember I even found them confusing to watch. I never followed any series to the end. I never stayed the anime path. I was never a weeb, just your regular ol’ dweeb.

It has come to my attention though, as I sail the internet high seas and even talk to the occasional stinky real life person once every few months, that there are people out there who are OBSESSED with this junk. It’s all they watch. I run across these anime freaks all of the time. I trip over them every Saturday night on my way to the barn dance. I see this so often that I’m beginning to wonder if I’m missing out. Maybe this stuff is cool. Maybe I’d be into it if I put a little more time into it. Maybe I’ve been living my life all WRONG.

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Robert Pollard-Mania! #28: CUT-OUT WITCH

Guided by Voices
Cut-Out Witch
1996, Matador Records

The only Guided by Voices picture disc, as of this writing, and like most picture discs, it’s inessential. Audio dorks say that they inherently have worse sound quality than regular records, but a slob like me wouldn’t know anything about that. This one sounds fine, I guess.

But it is pretty much a trinket, a bauble. Something for the nerds. If you have this, you’re a nerd.

Not that there’s anything wrong with the music on it (in my nerd opinion, at least). On the A-side are two fine album tracks from Under the Bushes Under the Stars and the B-side offers two fine performances live in the studio for WHFS in Washington DC for rock critic Dave Marsh’s “Inside Dave’s Garage” radio show, recorded in August 1995.

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Robert Pollard-Mania! #27: UNDER THE BUSHES UNDER THE STARS

Guided by Voices
Under the Bushes Under the Stars
1996, Matador Records

In music, even a well-liked band runs the risk of nobody talking about them anymore in a few years. Whatever charms they may have had at their peak fade away for audiences and critics. Maybe the music business itself kicks them around so hard that they lose their drive. Maybe they coasted on an exciting new movement and then slipped everyone’s mind when everyone got over it. And that’s just off the top of my head. There are as many ways for today’s music sensations to become tomorrow’s nobodies as there are ways to die.

That wasn’t going to happen to Guided by Voices. This was their ninth album (tenth if you count King Shit and the Golden Boys). By this point, Robert Pollard was playing the long game and in the long game you can’t be lo-fi forever.

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Things I Will Keep #12: TANGERINE DREAM, Thief (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)

Tangerine Dream
THIEF
1981, Elektra/Asylum

When director Michael Mann decided that his first feature would be the story of a burned-out career criminal on the mean streets of Chicago, he somehow figured that German progressive instrumental group Tangerine Dream were the perfect ones to score it.

Thief is a story that we’ve seen before. Chicago is a setting that we’ve seen before. But this time, it was going to be a bleak, but day-glo, dream in a luminous night world and a new take on noir for the 1980s.  It would be gritty and grimy, but also oddly beautiful. Its style wouldn’t be outlandish; rather, it would be a kind of hyper-reality. Every last light bulb and every shadow would be as vital as the pages of the script.

And it would all move to the zero-gravity swirl of Edgar Froese and company’s synthesizers.

It’s been a controversial decision ever since.

The Golden Raspberry Awards (the informal, smarmy anti-Oscars) nominated it as the Worst Music Score of 1981.

Even Michael Mann himself has said in recent years that he’s still not sure if he made the right choice when it came to the music (see the supplements on the Criterion Collection disc of the film).

Meanwhile, here I am still taking this album’s ride in 2019 to places far out where none of that matters.

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Robert Pollard-Mania! #26: THE OFFICIAL IRONMEN RALLY SONG

Guided by Voices
“The Official Ironmen Rally Song”
1996, Matador Records

I don’t have ONE favorite Guided by Voices song. I’m also not one to make lists of favorites. If you ask nicely, I could cough up a list for you, but when left to my own devices, I’m not a big list-maker. I think that the guy from High Fidelity is deranged.

Your humble servant here just wants to throw a bunch of records on the floor, open a bottle of wine and chill out. I don’t carve pronouncements onto stone tablets. I just drink too much and talk too much and if I like to spout off about history or analysis from time to time, I try to never stray far from the state of simply blissing out by the stereo, records tossed about like unswept confetti after a party.

What I’m trying to say is that we here at The Constant Bleeder are real INFORMAL. We’re loose and disheveled. We forget to put on pants before we answer the door. We don’t always get the wine and cheese pairing right. We’re stranded in the combat zone. We walk through Bedford-Stuy alone. We ride our motorcycle in the rain. We quote Billy Joel hits at odd times. We have a bad habit of referring to ourselves in the “editorial we” even though there’s zero reason for us to do that on our personal website in which we are the only writer.

I’m not organized enough to have a favorite GBV song, I guess. And my list of top ten GBV songs has about 127 songs on it that change daily depending on my mood and the direction of the wind and whether or not Venus is in Gemini.

However, if the Devil comes up to me one day and demands that I name one favorite GBV song or else I’ll be forced to watch every Logan Paul video on Youtube in an endless loop for all eternity (or some other cruel fate like that), I’d go with “The Official Ironmen Rally Song”.

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