Tag: matador records

Guided by Voices
Plantations of Pale Pink
1996, Matador Records

As I said way back about a hundred years ago when we talked about the group’s 1987 album Sandbox, Guided by Voices to me are a psychedelic band. They’re drunken Midwestern psychedelia. Robert Pollard can craft a hell of a pop song, but he also likes the kind of noise, distortion and weirdness that can scramble your eggs harder than you might like if you came here expecting The Power Pop Skinny Tie Homecoming Dance Revival. The songs may be short, the budget may be low and the equipment might not be the best, but the vision is expansive.

Even better, there’s nothing pretentious about GBV’s brand of fuckery. They don’t have that art school thing going, despite having two visual artists in the band, master of the collage Pollard and painter Tobin Sprout. They’re not from New York City or San Francisco. They’re from Dayton, Ohio. Their roots are blue collar–and it shows.

When they get weird, it sounds like nothing more or less than regular guys fucking around in the basement, shutting out the rest of the world and accidentally creating their own worlds. Those are some of my favorite GBV records.

I’m talkin’ the lovingly wrecked Vampire on Titus. I’m talkin’ the supremely drunk Clown Prince of the Menthol Trailer. I’m talkin’ the band’s majestically screwy 2012 comeback album Let’s Go Eat the Factory (can’t wait to get to that one in this series; I consider it a major work).

And I’m talkin’ the nightmarish Plantations of Pale Pink. It’s the best of the band’s EPs that happened after their 1993-94 explosion of 7″s. It’s a bad trip in the best way.

Continue reading “Robert Pollard-Mania! #31: PLANTATIONS OF PALE PINK”

Robert Pollard
Not in My Airforce
1996, Matador Records

I can tell you exactly when I went from being a casual toe-dipper fan of Robert Pollard’s music to being the mental case presently on display before you.

It was in the fall of 1996 when I got hooked big time on Pollard’s whale of a first solo album, Not in My Airforce. 

This record kept me up nights, was a constant companion and it still feels like a part of me nearly twenty-five years later. I sank deep into my headphones for this one. For years, I considered it my favorite Pollard record of all, GBV or otherwise.

So, what’s the difference between Guided by Voices and a Pollard solo album?

In 1996, not a whole hell of a lot.

Continue reading “Robert Pollard-Mania! #29: NOT IN MY AIRFORCE”

Guided by Voices
Cut-Out Witch
1996, Matador Records

The only Guided by Voices picture disc, as of this writing, and like most picture discs, it’s inessential. Audio dorks say that they inherently have worse sound quality than regular records, but a slob like me wouldn’t know anything about that. This one sounds fine, I guess.

But it is pretty much a trinket, a bauble. Something for the nerds. If you have this, you’re a nerd.

Not that there’s anything wrong with the music on it (in my nerd opinion, at least). On the A-side are two fine album tracks from Under the Bushes Under the Stars and the B-side offers two fine performances live in the studio for WHFS in Washington DC for rock critic Dave Marsh’s “Inside Dave’s Garage” radio show, recorded in August 1995.

Continue reading “Robert Pollard-Mania! #28: CUT-OUT WITCH”

Guided by Voices
“The Official Ironmen Rally Song”
1996, Matador Records

I don’t have ONE favorite Guided by Voices song. I’m also not one to make lists of favorites. If you ask nicely, I could cough up a list for you, but when left to my own devices, I’m not a big list-maker. I think that the guy from High Fidelity is deranged.

Your humble servant here just wants to throw a bunch of records on the floor, open a bottle of wine and chill out. I don’t carve pronouncements onto stone tablets. I just drink too much and talk too much and if I like to spout off about history or analysis from time to time, I try to never stray far from the state of simply blissing out by the stereo, records tossed about like unswept confetti after a party.

What I’m trying to say is that we here at The Constant Bleeder are real INFORMAL. We’re loose and disheveled. We forget to put on pants before we answer the door. We don’t always get the wine and cheese pairing right. We’re stranded in the combat zone. We walk through Bedford-Stuy alone. We ride our motorcycle in the rain. We quote Billy Joel hits at odd times. We have a bad habit of referring to ourselves in the “editorial we” even though there’s zero reason for us to do that on our personal website in which we are the only writer.

I’m not organized enough to have a favorite GBV song, I guess. And my list of top ten GBV songs has about 127 songs on it that change daily depending on my mood and the direction of the wind and whether or not Venus is in Gemini.

However, if the Devil comes up to me one day and demands that I name one favorite GBV song or else I’ll be forced to watch every Logan Paul video on Youtube in an endless loop for all eternity (or some other cruel fate like that), I’d go with “The Official Ironmen Rally Song”.

Continue reading “Robert Pollard-Mania! #26: THE OFFICIAL IRONMEN RALLY SONG”

Guided by Voices
Tigerbomb
1995, Matador Records

So, we’ve talked about how Guided by Voices went into a studio and recorded shined-up versions of a few Alien Lanes songs, presumably as offerings to the gods of radio, MTV, and licensing.

But then they (or maybe it was Matador’s decision) did something that I still think is weird and released those recordings only on vinyl, a format that was next to dead in 1995. Some cooler indie stores in cities or near universities still stocked it, sure. You could also get an envelope and buy a fuckin’ stamp and send a check or money order to Matador Records in New York City and get this in your mailbox six weeks later, okay (no Paypal yet, kids). The big chain stores though, where Joe Schmoe bought his music, had been done with it for about five years.

So, color me confused on what they were thinking here. Not that I take great issue with it. GBV’s vinyl-only releases motivated a shy young man named Jason to buy his first turntable in 1996. It was a year for me when every dollar was vital and a plastic $100 Sony from Sears was a major purchase at the time, but I did it. I was done with being locked out of the 7″s that I was reading about in magazines like Puncture and CMJ. When I learned that Guided by Voices had new vinyl-only releases, it became essential that I become equipped to play them.

So, I took the plunge. I bought a turntable and very quickly became a real freak for the needle.

Continue reading “Robert Pollard-Mania! #23: TIGERBOMB”