Tag: guided by voices

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Robert Pollard-Mania! #15: BEE THOUSAND

Guided by Voices
Bee Thousand
1994, Scat Records

My favorite story about discovering Bee Thousand came from a guy who claimed that he hated it the first few times he listened to it. The lo-fi didn’t bother him. The songwriting simply didn’t hit the mark for his ears. Fair enough. This music isn’t for everybody. He wrote off the album and moseyed on his way. However, over the next week, he kept getting these catchy hooks stuck in his head and he couldn’t remember where they were from. He was your regular music geek, always picking up new stuff and wasn’t sure exacty where he heard lines like…

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Robert Pollard-Mania! #14: GUIDED BY VOICES / THE GRIFTERS Split 7″

Guided by Voices/The Grifters
1994, The Now Sound

The last time we discussed Robert Pollard here at The Constant Bleeder (or Da’ Bleeder, as the kids at the mall like to call it), it was for a fake split single; now on the table this time is a real split single.

The Grifters were one of the few relatively fresh indie rock bands at the time–and by “relatively fresh”, I mean they’d been making records for five years or so–who were about the same age as Guided by Voices. 30s, pushing 40, somewhere in that neighborhood. I don’t know their exact ages, but The Grifters were older than the average pipsqueak and were in the middle of putting out their two best albums of noisy jaded wooze, One Sock Missing and Crappin’ You Negative.

So, here you’ve got two sides of late-bloomer rock from a pair of bands who were in high cotton at the time. Sign me up.

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Robert Pollard-Mania! #13: LUCIFER’S ACHING REVOLVER b/w CRUISE

NIghtwalker/Freedom Cruise
“Lucifer’s Aching Revolver” b/w “Cruise”
1994, Simple Solution Records

Newcomers to Robert Pollard’s work–or fans who lead a more eventful life than I do and haven’t religiously kept up with it all–are inevitably confused by the side projects. It’s understandable. As of this writing, Pollard has recorded and released music under almost two dozen different names and with a variety of collaborators.

As I  make my way through his body of work and write way too many words about each record, I intend to explain every side project and tell you why each one is a little different. I will use my nerdiness to illuminate. I will use my geekiness to elucidate. Summoning the power of my autism, I will demystify and hopefully clarify.

Because I know everything. I am an armchair expert in all things Pollard. There’s not much that you can get by me.

Except for what the deal is with THIS record.

None of the books or interviews, as far as I know, tell the story of this fake split-single for two bands (Nightwalker and Freedom Cruise) who both are clearly Guided by Voices in disguise.

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Getting CLOSER to Robert Pollard

Matthew Cutter
Closer You Are: The Story of Robert Pollard and Guided by Voices
2018, Da Capo Press

The rock star fantasy rests on the myth that none of it is hard work. Maybe a musician’s early starving-artist days provide some strife to talk about, but even that’s often told as a romantic story of young, untethered bohemians who can afford to scrape by on disposable dayjobs and stay up all night in pursuit of their art and/or fortune.

If you can make it to the next level, life becomes a permanent vacation. Go on tour to applause every night. Tell your life story to journalists. Be on magazine covers. The kids all think you’re cool. When you’re feeling exhausted, take a year off. Play golf with The Red Hot Chili Peppers. Take up a drug habit, even. Some of these big rock bands nowadays go three, four, five years or more between their next album of twelve measly songs. Hell, anybody could do that… some regular schmoe like me might think while we punch the time clock, straighten our tie for the office or put on our hardhat.

The refreshing thing about the story of Robert Pollard is that it’s the opposite of all of that. It steps square on the myth’s head.

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Robert Pollard-Mania! #12: CLOWN PRINCE OF THE MENTHOL TRAILER

Guided by Voices
Clown Prince of the Menthol Trailer
1994, Domino

The most fucked-up of the early ’90s 7″ EPs. I bet this one is STILL controversial, but I love it. I’m all about it. I’d get it tattooed on me, but the title is a little too long and I’ve never gotten a tattoo before and I’m a little jittery about the idea and I’d rather stay home and make tacos.

Nevertheless, this record’s rickety madness speaks to my soul.

Now, I don’t know where exactly this fits chronologically into Robert Pollard’s EP freak-out of 1993-94, but my sixth sense (which is wrong six out of seven times) places it toward the end because it sounds like a band who are tired of selling themselves.

They’re tired of proving that a lo-fi band can still rock and deliver songs that should be singles. They’re also, for the moment, tired of building weird fuzzed-out worlds. All they want to do now is rant directly into the tape recorder, everything laid bare and raw. You can hear fingers hit the guitar and bass strings. You can see the sticks hit the drums. You can hear Robert Pollard pop his “p”‘s on a cheap microphone.

On this EP, it’s way past midnight and everyone’s too drunk to give a fuck. And that’s a place where Guided by Voices thrive.

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Robert Pollard-Mania! #11: GET OUT OF MY STATIONS

Dora says, “Get out of my sleeping station”

Guided by Voices
Get Out of My Stations
1993, Siltbreeze

We’re still in the early 90s in this survey–and we will be for about fifty more entries because this was a busy time–so that means another EP. This was a period in which Guided by Voices were determined to claw their way up in the underground, seven inches at a time.

The difference here is that this record came out on Siltbreeze, the far-out Philadelphia label who also worked with the likes of The Dead C, V-3 and Harry Pussy. Serious, lo-fi, noise-rock stuff. Bands who don’t give a fuck. Bands who make you feel stupid for having a Monkees album in your collection. Bands who make music that you listen to alone at 3 AM while planning either a suicide or a homicide.

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Robert Pollard-Mania! #10: FAST JAPANESE SPIN CYCLE

Guided by Voices
Fast Japanese Spin Cycle
1994, Engine Records

Okay, I know that I said before that I’m undecided about my favorite Guided by Voices 1993-94 EP and I meant that, BUT…

If someone ever holds a gun to my head and demands an answer (by the way, I hope that nobody ever does that), I would stake my reputation in City Hall on this one.

You can’t go wrong with Fast Japanese Spin Cycle. If you like Guided by Voices, you’d have to be certifiably insane to not like this. You’d have to have mashed potatoes for brains to not like “My Impression Now”. You’d have to have bees in your ass to not like “Indian Fables”. This is another overachiever EP in which Robert Pollard sticks as many songs as he can onto a little 33 rpm 7″ (he managed eight this time). If this was the first Guided by Voices record you ever heard, it would tell you everything that you need to know.

There are two things that stand out here:

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Robert Pollard-Mania! #9: STATIC AIRPLANE JIVE

Guided by Voices
Static Airplane Jive
1993, City Slang

When it comes to the merry deluge of 7″ EPs by Guided by Voices in the early 90s, no one remembers exactly when they came out. So, when a serious archivist like myself (takes another swig of Maker’s Mark, belches) tries to sort this shit out, we have to wing it. We don’t have Paypal records. We don’t have website archives. We don’t have any of the nerd details.

All we have are some of the best records released under the Guided by Voices name, usually with a handwritten copyright year found somewhere in some corner of the sleeve art–and that’s more than enough, Charlie.

WHY are there so many EPs during this time? Because after Guided by Voices made waves in the underground and weren’t yet under contract with anyone, several small labels came to Robert Pollard with an interest in putting out something new and he said yes to every last one of them sons o’ bitches.

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GUIDED BY VOICES at Trees, Dallas, TX, 6/19/18

Shitty IPhone pic, courtesy of yours truly.

I swore off live music years ago. I don’t like crowds. I don’t like the concrete litter box vibe of most rock clubs. I don’t like having to shout over jet engine-levels of noise when I want to order another Tanqueray and tonic from the bar. I don’t like waiting in line to piss. And I don’t like paying $50-100 for it, when all is said and done, between admission, drinks and parking fees or a Lyft ride.

Also, as a world class eavesdropper (seriously, I love to eavesdrop; I’m all up in everybody’s business), rock clubs are the worst places to do it. Almost every conversation you hear is just people talking about the bands they’ve seen. Or it’s some guy trying to get into some girl’s pants… by talking about the bands that he’s seen. BOR-ING.

In another life, rock clubs were the coolest places in the world to me. Today, in my delicate years, I’ve completely turned around. Now, the coolest place in the world is my couch with a book in my hands or a movie on TV.

I’m not agoraphobic, by the way. I’m just an asshole.

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Robert Pollard-Mania! #8: VAMPIRE ON TITUS

Guided by Voices
Vampire on Titus
1993, Scat Records

There’s a great Pollard quote in issue 82 of Magnet from 2011 on the occasion of GBV’s upcoming Let’s Go Eat the Factory album. Talking about his longevity in music, Pollard says:

One loses one’s innocence because of public acceptance. You become cognizant that the whole world is listening, and you’re not just writing for yourself. You have to maintain the attitude of a child… You have to make records for yourself… It means you’re not trying to make records for the whole world, and the record will be better because of that. I see people to this day complaining about how they keep sending stuff out and banging their heads against the wall and not getting anywhere, and it’s because they’re trying too hard. We don’t try too hard… We try not to try. That should be our motto.

That seems to sum up the journey of early Guided by Voices. They were a band learning in obscurity to not try. And they got a little better at it with every album. A little weirder. A little looser. To get more rough and ragged was their idea of progress. They were stripping everything down and they were serious about it.

Serious enough to make Vampire on Titus, the most fucked-up, wrecked and trashed Guided by Voices album ever, their most lo-fi cry in the night.

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