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Robert Pollard-Mania! #98: SUITCASE 2: AMERICAN SUPERDREAM WOW

Guided by Voices
Suitcase 2: American Superdream Wow
2005, The Fading Captain Series

Bad reviews of things I enjoy don’t bother me and I rarely argue with them because the story of a piece of art is never over. It goes on forever. It can outlive all of us. What people think about music the week it comes out is such a small part of what it might become. This is one of my favorite things that I’ve observed as I spiral into old age.

Tastes and trends change. Freaks for culture seek out the obscure and offbeat and then spread the word. People age and get nostalgic for the oddest things. A record that you bought from a cut-out bin becomes a rare classic years later. Next thing you know, something that was neglected or disliked or considered frivolous in its time becomes important in a generation or two. I’ve seen it before, I’m gonna see it again. It’s the normal flow of things.

You can see this play out with Robert Pollard today. Parts of his work once seen as off-putting have arrived at a new respect over time.

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Robert Pollard-Mania! #97: MUSIC FOR “BUBBLE”

Robert Pollard
Music for “Bubble”
2005, The Fading Captain Series

My idea of a great movie double-feature is two films that have little in common on the surface, but that talk to each other in an interesting way when seen together. The more far apart the movies are, the better. Different genres, different eras, different countries.

For an obvious example, when I lived in a college dorm circa 1997 or ’98, some of us got together and watched Taxi Driver and Manhattan back to back (and in that order) one night. They’re two very different movies with opposite visions of the same city set at around the same time. The main characters of each live on the same island, but not in the same world, and would hardly be able to function in the other’s world. Both films have a troubled male lead who has a very different relationship with a much younger girl. You can go deeper.

Robert Pollard’s two solo EPs of 2005 are a little like that. It’s all Robert Pollard music that reflects his psych-pop influences so they’re not night and day. They’re not Martin Scorsese and Woody Allen. But they are companions in my mind that twist and tease the same form, which (speaking of movies) is soundtrack records.

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Robert Pollard-Mania! #96: EAT II

Robert Pollard
EAT II
2005, Rockathon Records

In 2023, anytime someone tells me that Artificial Intelligence will take over the arts and replace human creations with digital patchworks, I stop listening to that person.

There are a few drops of truth in it, probably. I’ll give them that.

A popular song birthed entirely from an algorithm isn’t far-fetched these days. The awkward clickbait articles that I get suckered into reading online never seem to come from human beings. Life is in a weird place now, for sure. This is not the same world that my Generation X ass grew up in.

But if someone sincerely believes that HAL 9000 will be the new Mozart, I think that they just hate people. That’s the only explanation I have for why it makes sense to anyone that human connections through music and writing will simply fade from fashion. We will no longer care about what others are feeling, thinking, and seeing. We won’t be hooked when someone who shares our experiences makes something great out of it.

Instead we’ll be satisfied with artistic blow-up dolls.

I don’t buy it. I don’t buy it at least for oddballs like you and me. Us deep-diggers. Us crazies who get into EAT.

That’s what I think about in 2023 as I go over this second issue of Robert Pollard’s long-running art magazine. Its X-Acto knife cuts and its occasional visible Scotch tape, and even its poems, have human fingerprints all over them. Today, it feels like a resistance outpost against the cyber-dystopia.

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Things I Will Keep #24: FLORALINE

Floraline
Floraline
1999. Minty Fresh

1999 may have been the peak of human life in the western world. At the very least, it was the last year that all of the tools and technology to achieve Utopia were laid out before us and we still felt good about it.

We had the internet, but it hadn’t eaten up most of our brains yet. We didn’t have it in our pocket yet. We weren’t distracted by it in traffic yet. There was no social media to scroll and raise your blood pressure at any time of day yet.

The soul of the internet was still weirdness. Regular people made the rules and corporations were still figuring out what to do with it.

Technology was in the WOW! stage, as opposed to the This is going to take away my job and leave me starving on the streets stage.

Also, the World Trade Center attacks hadn’t happened yet. We had a tragic school shooting in the US (Columbine), but that sort of thing was still an unheard-of crazy anomaly. You could be an adult who lived your whole life without hearing the word pandemic.

Crass sex comedies could still be box office hits. Every neighborhood had a bookstore and a music store and a video store (or two) nearby. New movies from Stanley Kubrick and David Lynch were coming out.

Growing up in the USA in the eighties, our vision for the turn of the century was Armageddon. We had the Cold War mentality. Me, I was also raised on Biblical prophecy (in the eighties, my mother really wanted me to know that the world was going to end soon and I probably wouldn’t live to be 25; thanks, mom). In 1999, the sky was gonna be all purple and people were gonna be running everywhere.

The switch-over to 2000 would not be smooth and half of your loved ones were sure to be trampled by one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.

Then 1999 actually happened and everything was… FINE. No apocalypse. Overall, 1999 was a chilled-out, frozen margarita of a year. Me, I was a young wreck, but my memories of that time are still pleasant. I’d go back for a day and cruise around.

My pick for the music would be the sole release by a group from Atlanta, Georgia called Floraline. It’s a little-known pop gem that’s endured as my own personal, private definitive album for that final, frivolous year of the last century.

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Robert Pollard-Mania! #95: FIVE

Circus Devils
Five
2005, The Fading Captain Series

I listen to the fourth Circus Devils album, Five, only at night and never during the day.

Listening to Five with the sun in your face feels as wrong as watching Eraserhead at noon in your living room with the blinds open and the sound of kids playing outside.

Some things need darkness and nothing else going on around it. It’s about your attention and how it’s focused. Some things will never come alive for you if it’s not allowed to pummel your senses.

Speaking of Eraserhead, I saw it in a theater last May. I’d seen David Lynch’s 1978 landmark many times before, but this was my first big screen viewing. 35mm print. Beautiful analog image and sound. Respectful audience. Perfect mood. (Love ya, Texas Theatre.) What struck me most in that setting was how LOUD the movie is. The sound of Eraserhead–hums, hisses, squeaks, wind, industrial noises–hangs heavy in the room and envelops you. At moments, I found myself thinking more about the sounds I heard than what I saw on the screen.

There are many extraordinary things about Eraserhead and one is how much it builds its world on sound. Lynch is intense about that and it’s something that’s easy to lose outside of a darkened theater.

What I’m getting at is that when you listen to Five, I recommend shutting off the lights, Pick your favorite immersion method. Maybe it’s kicking back with headphones and your eyes closed or driving at night or going for a walk in the moonlight with a set of earbuds in your skull (all great ways to listen to music). Do whatever works for you to get into the cinema of this record. It’s my favorite Pollard release of 2005 and it deserves that.

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Frank Black-O-Rama! #21: SHOW ME YOUR TEARS

Frank Black and the Catholics
Show Me Your Tears
2003, SpinART Records

There’s not much writing about the end of Frank Black and the Catholics. They weren’t the kind of group that anyone gossiped about.

When the Pixies got back together in 2004 some thought that the Catholics might merely go on hiatus. I remember seeing speculation that once this reunion played itself out, the Catholics would return.

Oh, how innocent we were!

That made some kind of sense at the time, though. Also, speculation was all that we had. Black talked to a million writers in 2004 who wanted to know how well he and Kim Deal were getting along and what he thought about Kurt Cobain. No one asked Catholics questions, so it took years for Black to confirm in the press that the Catholics fell apart all by themselves. It was over.

A 2021 interview with Independent.co.uk quotes him:

“[They] were totally burned out on me and burned out on my methodology,” following, he’s previously asserted, “10 years of hard touring and loading our own gear and not making a lotta money out of it”.

I don’t think I need more explanation than that.

From their strict live-in-the-studio recording method to their endless tours, the Catholics did everything the hard way. That was the point of the band. It’s a wonder that they lasted as long as they did.

To their vast credit, they never flinched. Rich Gilbert, Dave Phillips, David McCaffrey, and Scott Boutier were pros. If they were burning out, they never gave it away on record. Each album is a new show of confidence and Show Me Your Tears stands for me as their most beautiful Valentine’s candy box of sad songs.

Let’s cover them one by one. I love this album and I’ve got my coins ready for the jukebox.

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Robert Pollard-Mania! #94: LIGHTNINGHEAD TO COFFEE POT

The Moping Swans
Lightninghead to Coffee Pot
2005, The Fading Captain Series

Every now and then, Robert Pollard gets together with some guys he knows and they form a band who last long enough to record an EP, usually in one day.

That was Lexo and the Leapers in 1999. That was The Howling Wolf Orchestra in 2000. That will be a project called The Sunflower Logic coming up in 2013.

In 2005, that was The Moping Swans and they made my favorite record in this little subgenre of Pollard music. All of them are different. Lightninghead to Coffee Pot is the post-punk blast of the batch, but with a classic rock kick.

It sounds like something that you’d find in a cool record store in 1979. I wish that I could visit a cool record store in 1979. but there are probably better things to do with a time machine. So I guess I’ll just listen to this.

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The 100 Best Robert Pollard Songs, Ranked

As of this writing, Robert Pollard has somewhere in the neighborhood of 120 albums out, plus another tall stack of EPs, singles, and box sets. The first Guided by Voices record came out in 1986 and he’s refused to shut up ever since. This scares off some people while others have the time of their lives geeking out over it all.

I’m one of the geeks. I love it. I mean, aren’t most great rock icons crazy? Or at least appear to be? Little Richard was crazy. David Bowie was crazy. Glitter and punk and rockabilly were whole genres of bands aggressively looking crazy. Looking crazy, like you don’t follow the normal rules, is what makes a band cool. Looking crazy is a test for the listener. Not everyone gets it, but those who do will cling to it.

Ex-college jock, ex-schoolteacher, current rock ‘n’ roll cult hero Robert Pollard (born on October 31, 1957) doesn’t seem too crazy if you look at him, but take the long, strange journey into his records and that’s when you see it.

Yeah, he’s crazy. He’s as crazy as any of ’em.

The sensible way to make a list of 100 songs from this Sargasso Sea of music would be to apply a filter to it. Stick to his flagship project Guided by Voices maybe. That would be smart. Or make separate lists for different eras of Pollard’s work. That would be smart, too.

I’m not smart, though. I had to do things the hard way.

I had to be the guy who tries to jump his Kawasaki motorcycle over a few too many cars and then needs to be rushed to the hospital.

This list has one rule: Robert Pollard must have a songwriting credit. That’s it. Songs from Guided by Voices, his solo albums, Boston Spaceships, Circus Devils, and assorted other projects are all welcome. There’s even one song here that Pollard wrote yet doesn’t sing or perform on the record.

This also means that the work of other songwriters aren’t here. If I made a dedicated Guided by Voices list, some choice Tobin Sprout moments would sit in the ranks for sure (“Dodging Invisible Rays”, “To Remake the Young Flyer”, “Waves”), as would Doug Gillard’s “I Am a Tree”.

I made this decision because the Guided by Voices of 1986 and of 2023 have only one thing in common: Robert Pollard. The story of Guided by Voices is fractured because there is no definitive lineup. Pollard’s songs are the one thing that connect the various eras, so that’s where I direct my surgical focus and his songs are found in many different places.

The BIG problem with a list like this though is that there are many more than 100 great Pollard songs. In ten minutes I will change my mind about nearly everything here.

In the spirit of Pollard’s music though, there are times when it’s best to blurt out whatever you’ve got and then move on. Sometimes good things are about the moment and perfection isn’t so important. Moments can mean a lot and lists are one of those things that will never be perfect.

So, this is my list, as of this moment at 10:58 AM on May 24, 2023.

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Robert Pollard-Mania! #93: ZOOM

Robert Pollard
Zoom
2005, The Fading Captain Series

2005 is one of the weirdest years for Robert Pollard’s music. We spent most of it not knowing when his new solo double album, From A Compound Eye, completed around mid-2004, was coming out.

Meanwhile, Pollard kept a low profile (no tour, few interviews), but he continued to make things. He had something new out every few months, all of it strange. It was like a year full of B-sides and I mean that as a compliment. All real rock fans love B-sides.

Then there were the reports about how Bob’s music was about to potentially blow up in the movies.

Big shot director Steven Soderbergh was a fan. In 2002, he used the song “Do Something Real” (from Speak Kindly of Your Volunteer Fire Department) in his film Full Frontal. He would go on to write the introduction to Jim Greer’s book Guided by Voices: A Brief History, out later in ’05. He had a film coming in the fall called Bubble that would feature new Pollard music (we’ll get to that in #97 of this series). Soderbergh was also developing a movie about Cleopatra, an audacious musical to star Catherine Zeta-Jones and built around Guided by Voices songs, screenplay by Jim Greer.

The Cleopatra thing never panned out, as of this writing eighteen years later, but we didn’t know that yet in ’05. It was exciting to think about.

And I wonder… I just wonder… if maybe the Zoom EP was inspired by all of this movie stuff happening.

Just look at that cover collage.

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Robert Pollard-Mania! #92: RELAXATION OF THE ASSHOLE

Robert Pollard
Relaxation of the Asshole
2005, Yuk Yuk Motherfucker

Technically, this is Robert Pollard’s first solo album after the end of Guided by Voices and I’m down with that.

In the cold January of 2005, when some fans were just getting over their hangovers from GBV’s New Year’s Eve grand finale, Pollard dropped a new record that, depending on your point of view, was either:

A)  a weird and funny artifact of his unique personality

or

B) a new low from an artist whose lax standards for quality control had been bothering you for awhile.

Considering how quickly this sold out, we could also tack on a third group: The collectors. They can smell limited vinyl from five hundred yards away.

Relaxation of the Asshole is a comedy album made up of clipped-out excerpts of Pollard’s stage banter at Guided by Voices live shows. It’s got twenty-five tracks, but only one joke.

That joke is that this record exists at all and I think that’s funny.

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