Tag: 2000

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Frank Black-O-Rama! #15: ODDBALLS

Frank Black
Oddballs
2000, no label

Oddballs has some of my favorite inner sleeve notes of any album. They’re simple, but strangely touching.

It begins with a brief explanation written by Frank Black himself that the disc in your hands is a collection of B-sides and other off-road trips from his early solo years (1994 to 1997). Below that is the tracklist and for every entry Black adds a quick note about who he was “trying to be” on that particular song.

Opening track “Pray a Little Faster”? “Trying to be Dylan”, Black says.

Second track “Oddball”? “Trying to be Stones”.

He goes on to namecheck Springsteen, Bowie, Daltrey, Strummer, (Doug) Sahm, Lou (Reed) and even himself.

It may not seem like much, but for a rocker like Black, who prefers a veil of mystery about him, these tidbits felt like a rare moment of opening up. It was Black saying that behind his aloof stage persona is just a dude who likes rock music. The Stones, The Who, The Clash. He’s not that weird. He’s perfectly normal even. He’s so normal that he sometimes even has to “try to be” Frank Black.

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Robert Pollard-Mania! #56: SPEEDTRAPS FOR THE BEE KINGDOM

Howling Wolf Orchestra
Speedtraps for the Bee Kingdom
2000, The Fading Captain Series

2000 was a strange year for new music from Robert Pollard. The optimistic energy that defined 1999 was gone. Pollard would gain it back in time, but for now it was all used up.

And it happened so suddenly. Back then, I thought that maybe the tour had wiped him out. Or maybe Pollard’s moody dirges of 2000 were an escape from the music business bullshit, a retreat into non-commercial sounds after months of playing the major label game.

Those of us in the spectator seats didn’t know what was happening in Pollard’s personal life at the time, you see.

We didn’t know yet about the divorce.

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Robert Pollard-Mania! #55: BIG TROUBLE

Hazzard Hotrods
Big Trouble
2000, The Fading Captain Series

I like bad music.

And by bad music I don’t mean the soulless junk that we all hear everyday piped into drug stores or issuing from other peoples’ cars. Those forgettable aural space-fillers. Those frat party soundtracks. That slickster stuff that they tell me is country music, but that sounds like the regular ol’ Top 40 except that the singer has something that resembles a twang underneath the electronic pitch correction.

No, I’m talking music that’s too lo-fi to live. I’m talking about noise. Total racket. Audio chaos that you can’t recommend to just anybody–or anybody at all most of the time. I’m talking about shit that’s fucked.

I don’t love every little thing that’s moaned or droned into a microphone, but if you like rock music and you’ve dug even slightly underground in an attempt to find other worlds, you probably like bad music, too. Maybe you’re a big trash-brain. Feedback is fine with you. So is tape hiss. Room noise. Accidents. Maybe you like the results of a cheap microphone and a simple 90s-era consumer-grade cassette recorder that strains to capture a room full of sound, only to come off like a hazy transmission from Pluto.

Some might call it garbage; you call it otherworldly. Or maybe it’s actually perfectly of this Earth. Gritty. Human. Raw. Blemished.

This weird space is where Hazzard Hotrods live. The original vinyl-only release was limited to 500 copies, which sounds right to me. That’s about how many people might like this.

So what the hell is it?

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Robert Pollard-Mania! #54: HAPPY MOTHERFUCKERS AND SAD CLOWNS

King’s Ransom
Happy Motherfuckers and Sad Clowns
2000, no label

I have no idea why this top-notch Guided by Voices double live LP is credited to the name King’s Ransom. If you know Bob, ask him for me, please. Thanks.

The name “Guided by Voices” is nowhere to be found on the surface. Even in Pollard’s opening words to the crowd, he jokingly introduces the band as Sebadoh. Also, there’s no tracklist. No credits. Just some simple pasted-on sleeve art and two records of one fearsome show (plus a 7″ of three live rarities from two years earlier because GBV are allowed to be scattered and crazy like that).

This is the return to the mock bootleg style of For All Good Kids and Jellyfish Reflector. It wasn’t announced. It wasn’t promoted. Nobody talked about it. It just fell out of the sky and into the bins at your better, vinyl-friendly record stores one day in autumn of 2000.

It had been about four years since one of these came out and things were different. In fact, the whole band was now different.

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Robert Pollard-Mania! #53: BRIEFCASE: DRINKS AND DELIVERIES

Guided by Voices
Briefcase: Drinks and Deliveries
2000, The Fading Captain Series

If you’ve heard every Guided by Voices album, you’re a fan.

If you’ve heard every EP and B-side, you’re obsessive.

If you’ve heard all of the solo albums and side projects, you’re far gone.

If you’ve listened to all of the Suitcase box sets, you’re dangerous.

If you have all of the Briefcase LPs, you’re in the scariest category of all: You’re a collector.

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Robert Pollard-Mania! #52: SUITCASE: FAILED EXPERIMENTS AND TRASHED AIRCRAFT

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.

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Robert Pollard-Mania! #51: THE WHO WENT HOME AND CRIED

Guided by Voices
The Who Went Home and Cried
2000, MVD Music Video

“So Jason, are you going to write about the GBV DVDs?”

“Dear Sir or Madam, will the DVDs count in your Robert Pollard-Mania! series?”

“What’s up, Sexy Pants? Hey, I’m just curious, will items such as The Who Went Home and Cried  and The Electrifying Conclusion rate a mention in your survey of Robert Pollard’s ouevre?”

Absolutely no one has asked me any of those questions, but the answer is YES.

Yes, we will talk about the Guided by Voices video releases. It’s not a giant pile. It’s a modest amount, but it’s more than most indie bands have put out. Also, there’s good stuff in there. Some of ’em are on the oddball side, not typical concert discs or documentaries, but pieces of madness that complement Pollard’s vision.

Pollard’s body of work is Route 66 and in this series we intend to drive as much of it as we can. We’re gonna spend a night in every old motel. We’re gonna peruse every bottlecap museum in the middle of Nowhere, New Mexico. We’re gonna sample the fudge at every truck stop. It’s not going to be perfect, but we are going to TRY.

What I’m saying is that we’re a little odd and so is The Who Went Home and Cried.

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Robert Pollard-Mania! #50: DAYTON, OHIO-19 SOMETHING AND 5

Guided by Voices
Dayton, Ohio-19 Something and 5
2000, The Fading Captain Series

On paper, this modest 7″ is one weird little insect of a record.

Then you listen to it and it’s still weird. And murky. And sad. The previous Fading Captain Series release, Speak Kindly of Your Volunteer Fire Department, was warm and celebratory (for the most part) while this one is cold and defeated. The flowers are dead. The trees are bare. There’s no sun in the gray sky. Even good memories hurt.

This is a uniquely personal item in Pollard’s body of work. He’s written many personal songs, but this is a rare record devoted entirely to handing you a bucket full of fresh blood.

The quick description: The A-side is a recent live recording of a sleeper GBV gem; on the B-side are three songs that Pollard recorded all by his lonesome with only a guitar and a 4-track.

There’s something going on here, though. This record makes a statement. There’s meat on the bone.

Let’s break it down.

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Robert Pollard-Mania! #49: HOLD ON HOPE EP

Guided by Voices
Hold on Hope EP
2000, TVT Records

Back in the video store days, if you wanted to rent sleazy B-movies you had to pull the tape or DVD off a shelf and take it to a cashier, who then got a good look at exactly the kind of creep who rents Erotic Gladiator or Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers—and that kind of creep was ME.

Today, I’m old and wouldn’t give a damn, but back then I was young and fragile and hideously self-conscious (especially if a girl was working the counter). I also wasn’t very bright and I somehow felt less embarassed if I mixed a “respectable” movie or two in with the garbage that I really wanted to see.

So, on an average night at the video store, I might go up to the counter with Bikini Slave Girls II and a movie like Gandhi. 

Looking back, I’m not sure what statement I was making with this. Maybe the cashier would think that I was really there to rent Gandhi, but Bikini Slave Girls II just happened to tumble off the shelf and land in my hands?

“What’s this? Bikini Slave Girls II? How did this get here? What a strange turn of events! You know what, though? I’ll be a madcap and rent it anyway! Please, seriously, go to no trouble to restock. I don’t want to be a problem here. It’s not your fault that this movie accidentally fell down on me. This building clearly needs foundation work. Bikini Slave Girls II. Fine. I’ll watch it. Maybe it will have some interesting mise-en-scene. Here’s my $6 and please don’t think that I’m a weird pervert.”

I was hoping to make up for the embarassing thing with something that’s not embarassing.

And that’s EXACTLY how GBV give us “Hold on Hope” on this record.

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