Tag: 2002

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Robert Pollard-Mania! #70: SOME OF THE MAGIC SYRUP WAS PRESERVED

Acid Ranch
Some of the Magic Syrup Was Preserved
2002, The Fading Captain Series

No one else in rock makes more colorful use of their unreleased archives than Robert Pollard, but then most musicians don’t share his collage artist sensibility.

The vastness of it all–thousands of songs on decades’ worth of tapes–helps, too. Throw in a powerful nostalgia for his own past, the hard-earned independence that allows him to put out whatever he wants and a segment of his audience who are always up for a trip, no matter how strange, through Pollard’s famous suitcase full of old cassettes and you get Some of the Magic Syrup Was Preserved.

The conventional way to release an album like this, a double LP of lo-fi cries in the night from two decades previous, is to present it as a row of tagged and bagged corpses. Cold specimens to study for your advanced degree in Pollardology. Call it something like Guided by Voices: The Early 1980s Tapes for a straightforward approach. Or, more wisely, maybe call it Robert Pollard, Jim Pollard, and Mitch Mitchell: Archival Basement Improvisations to temper expectations for the ragged ride ahead.

It should sound useful and not confusing, right?

WRONG, Pollard says here. That shit’s boring. Art doesn’t have to be useful–what is it, a spatula?–and it’s okay if it’s confusing. His eye and ear for presentation—enigmatic sleeve art, crazy track-lists, impeccable song sequencing–won’t let him treat his old tapes like museum pieces. No, he has to put a unique band name on them. Build a mystique around them. Make a living thing out of them. Otherwise, why bother?

Enter Acid Ranch, where Pollard gives body and breath to a strange early phase of his music circa 1981-82.

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Robert Pollard-Mania! #69: CALLING ZERO

Go Back Snowball
Calling Zero
2002, The Fading Captain Series

I was born in 1976, which puts me at the perfect age to have been an insufferable indie rock dork in the 90s.

When I wasn’t in rock clubs with my arms folded, I was getting into serious discussions about whether or not Sonic Youth still “matter” and other fascinating topics (zzzzzzzzz…) like that. I also constantly needed to flex my music “knowledge”. All that I did was spend a little too much time at the record store, but I acted like I’d walked on the goddamn moon. I was a ball of insecurities and I had no good reason to be arrogant about anything, so I filled that vacant space with my super-awesome music opinions. I thought that I had shocking and unique views. Now I’m cool and I have something to say. 

Why couldn’t I just be a human being? Why did I have something to prove all of the time?

Eh, youth. The only thing that I miss about it is being able to eat a whole pizza and not feel like shit for the rest of the day.

I’m not saying that everyone who was into indie rock at the time shared my malfunctions. I’m also not putting down the music itself. 90s indie rock was a good thing that revealed possibilities and expanded horizons. People had great times with that music.

Some of it even holds up, though there’s so much that I can’t listen to anymore without recalling what a Cringe Machine I was. It was a full-time job for me back then.  It kept me so occupied that I didn’t have any time to get into Superchunk.

Maybe I just haven’t heard the right songs. Maybe I haven’t given enough time to what I have heard. Maybe it’s because Superchunk never, to my battered memory, played North Texas during the peak of my live show-going (1996 to 2000), Maybe I’m a giant idiot (always and forever a possibility).

And this is how I approach this lovely record by Go Back Snowball, an album that follows Life Starts Here like spring follows winter.

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Robert Pollard-Mania! #68: LIFE STARTS HERE

Airport 5
Life Starts Here
2002, The Fading Captain Series

My guess is that many deep-digging fans of Robert Pollard are White Album people.

It’s the old, dead-horse debate. Did The Beatles’ White Album need to be a 30-track double-LP? Do its detours and excesses hold up? Was it really necessary that we hear “Revolution 9” and “Why Don’t We Do It in the Road?” and “Wild Honey Pie”?

My answer to those questions is YES, YES, and YES. That’s my favorite Beatles album. It’s crazy and lively and packed with ideas and I would sooner chop off one of my fingers than lose any of it. The frosty clip collage “Revolution 9” is cool as shit. It makes the closing lullaby “Good Night” creepy.  On The White Album, the most famous rock band in the world deconstruct their sound in a fast-paced flurry of genres and the only way to end it is on an apocalyptic note. It’s as good as it gets.

Some disagree. Some would prefer a smoother, more conventional ride. They’ve got a whole list of Lennon-McCartney and Harrison songs that they wish they’d never heard. I think that these people are goofy, but, hey, it’s a big world. There’s room for all kinds.

What I’m trying to say is that Robert Pollard’s music has some of the same appeal and leads to similar division.

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Robert Pollard-Mania! #67: THE TROPIC OF NIPPLES EP

Richard Meltzer, Robert Pollard, Smegma & Antler
The Tropic of Nipples EP
2002, Off Records

There’s a charm to music that doesn’t care about being liked. Music that farts right in your face and doesn’t even say “excuse me”.

You can criticize it for being tuneless, I guess, but what does that mean if it doesn’t seek to be tuneful? You can call it trash, but how sharp is your blade when the music is happy to be damaged? You can say that it’s an insult, but how many megatons is your bomb when these sounds are intended to be an affront?

Tropic of Nipples is one of those records. It’s one of those outsider things. It’s proudly ugly, pointedly disheveled and wantonly fucked. A negative review is as much of a recommendation as a positive one. Its twelve tracks (it’s a stretch to call most of them songs) all crammed up on the original 7″ come and go too quickly to enjoy much on their own. They’re parts of a whole, individual scribbles of graffiti on the same brick wall.

Our two vandals are Richard Meltzer and Robert Pollard.

This isn’t really a Robert Pollard record. He’s the co-star. The title is Meltzer’s. Meltzer also gets the first and last tracks on the original release.

Pollard contributes cover art and six tracks (plus two more on the CD), but the real auteur here looks to be Off Records founder Chris Slusarenko.

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