No, the gold-print-on-red-sleeve cover art isn’t much more clear in person than it is in this photo.
Guided by Voices The Grand Hour
1993, Scat Records
In the Season One finale of The Guided by Voices Story, the band had just recorded Propeller, their masterpiece. And then they broke up because they were getting old and Robert Pollard’s family was giving him the stink-eye over this stupid rock band that he had going.
It was all just a hobby anyway. A goof-off. Something to pass the time. Pollard is now over this music stuff and he won’t even miss it. Right? Cut to credits.
Season Two begins with a phone call to Pollard’s house.
Guided by Voices Propeller
1992, Rockathon Records
Reissue (via the vinyl version of the Box set): 1995, Scat Records
The final Guided by Voices album. The closing chapter. The grand exit. One last blast before Robert Pollard retires his mic, packs up his guitar, throws his songwriting notebooks in a drawer, never makes Bee Thousand, never makes From a Compound Eye, never makes Space Gun, and kisses his dreams goodbye.
That was true for about five minutes in 1992, at least, when Pollard caved to pressure from his family who didn’t think that a 34-year-old man with a wife and kids should be wasting his time and money making records that nobody except Byron Coley hears.
Guided by Voices Same Place the Fly Got Smashed
1990, Rocket #9
Reissue (via the Box set): 1995, Scat Records
Robert Pollard’s music is optimistic. He’s not going to tell you that life is all merry-go-rounds and back rubs, but if you put in some work that’s worth doing and aren’t an idiot, you might enjoy being a living, breathing person on our ruined planet of shit and misery.
There are sad songs and melancholy moments and horror stories in his music, but little that I would call depressing. Or angry. Pollard is so great at anthems because he likes to write about human triumph over things big and small. His way with melody belies an artist who wants to make the world a prettier place. The volume of his work reveals an artist who’s not tired of life and gonna fight the grave for as long as he can.
Guided by Voices Self-Inflicted Aerial Nostalgia
1989, Halo Records
Reissue (via the Box set): 1995, Scat Records
This is the first Guided by Voices record that sounds like Guided by Voices. It took ’em four tries, but they did it. This psych-pop treat from 1989 walks and talks exactly like the band that I’ve been stuck on for twenty-three years now.
Hey, it takes time to find yourself. Sometimes in life you think you’ve found yourself, but nope, it’s only some jerk-off who happens to look like you and has worse taste in clothes. There’s still more work to do. More trial and error in your future. More tearing down and rebuilding. It helps if there’s no one around telling you that you’re hot stuff all of the time. We all get big ideas about ourselves. Some of those ideas could stand to be kicked into the dirt. Being humbled makes you a better person and obscurity is the most fertile soil there is for creating something new.
Guided by Voices Sandbox
1987, Halo
Reissue (via the Box set): 1995, Scat Records
A review of Sandbox strikes me as a perfect place to tell you about the absolute, numero uno, most misunderstood thing about Guided by Voices.
I’m real sick of seeing this. I’m ready to rumble over it tonight in the alley behind the closed Burger King. It’s time we start busting heads. Let’s put an end to it here and now.
It’s simple: There are some GBV fans out there, walking among decent people like you and me, who think that they’re a power pop band.
They think that Guided by Voices are The Beatle Boots Band Explosion Revival and that Robert Pollard is a pop melody maker who just keeps forgetting to wear his skinny tie. These are the same people who think that Robert Pollard “needs an editor”. These are the people who might love sweet melodies like “I Am a Scientist” and “My Valuable Hunting Knife” and then not understand why that same guy is involved with Circus Devils or writes stuff like “A Hair in Every Square Inch of the House”. These are the people who say that life would be so much better if Robert Pollard would stop releasing five albums a year and prune everything down to a neat and tidy twelve songs that might sound good piped into Whole Foods while you browse the organic kumquats.
Guided by Voices Devil Between My Toes
1987, Schwa Records
Reissue (via the Box set): 1995, Scat Records
Box set reissue copy, ladies and germs. No, I don’t have an original. This is good enough for me.
When no one’s paying attention to me, I sit at home in pajama pants, drink Trader Joe’s wine and watch Youtube videos for nine hours.
When no one was paying attention to Robert Pollard and Guided by Voices, they wrote songs and made terrific, underrated records just for themselves pretty much.
Clearly, I have a lot to learn from Guided by Voices.
The one thing I do have in common with Guided by Voices circa 1987 is that neither of us get out much. At the time of this album’s release, they weren’t playing live. They weren’t seeking out a label or management. They weren’t auditioning for anyone or anything. They were working guys in Dayton, Ohio making music in basements and garages because that was how they got through the day. Pressing it onto vinyl, on their own dime, made it “real” and inducted them into the rock brotherhood, whether anyone heard it or not. The songs are the message, the album is the bottle, the outside world is the ocean.
He puts out more records in one year than a lot of bands release in ten years. He has one of the most insane legacies in rock and it continues to expand all of the time. At his age (born on October 31, 1957), he’s learned just about everything that there is to know about rock music, but he somehow missed the lesson that said that your body of work should be neat and clean and not confuse people.
Terrible iPhone photo shot by yours truly, taken from Guided by Voices playing in Austin, TX, September 2012.
Robert Pollard also never learned that lo-fi isn’t all right.
Nobody ever told him that a songwriter who can write a brilliant pop melody shouldn’t write far-out psychedelic stuff, too.
And he never listened to anyone who’s ever made the point that rock music is a business and not the place for a restless creative mind that comes up with more than twelve songs a year.
Guided by Voices
Guided by Voices
Guided by Voices
