Tag: Robert Pollard

Posted on

Robert Pollard-Mania! #94: LIGHTNINGHEAD TO COFFEE POT

The Moping Swans
Lightninghead to Coffee Pot
2005, The Fading Captain Series

Every now and then, Robert Pollard gets together with some guys he knows and they form a band who last long enough to record an EP, usually in one day.

That was Lexo and the Leapers in 1999. That was The Howling Wolf Orchestra in 2000. That will be a project called The Sunflower Logic coming up in 2013.

In 2005, that was The Moping Swans and they made my favorite record in this little subgenre of Pollard music. All of them are different. Lightninghead to Coffee Pot is the post-punk blast of the batch, but with a classic rock kick.

It sounds like something that you’d find in a cool record store in 1979. I wish that I could visit a cool record store in 1979. but there are probably better things to do with a time machine. So I guess I’ll just listen to this.

Continue reading “Robert Pollard-Mania! #94: LIGHTNINGHEAD TO COFFEE POT”

Posted on

The 100 Best Robert Pollard Songs, Ranked

As of this writing, Robert Pollard has somewhere in the neighborhood of 120 albums out, plus another tall stack of EPs, singles, and box sets. The first Guided by Voices record came out in 1986 and he’s refused to shut up ever since. This scares off some people while others have the time of their lives geeking out over it all.

I’m one of the geeks. I love it. I mean, aren’t most great rock icons crazy? Or at least appear to be? Little Richard was crazy. David Bowie was crazy. Glitter and punk and rockabilly were whole genres of bands aggressively looking crazy. Looking crazy, like you don’t follow the normal rules, is what makes a band cool. Looking crazy is a test for the listener. Not everyone gets it, but those who do will cling to it.

Ex-college jock, ex-schoolteacher, current rock ‘n’ roll cult hero Robert Pollard (born on October 31, 1957) doesn’t seem too crazy if you look at him, but take the long, strange journey into his records and that’s when you see it.

Yeah, he’s crazy. He’s as crazy as any of ’em.

The sensible way to make a list of 100 songs from this Sargasso Sea of music would be to apply a filter to it. Stick to his flagship project Guided by Voices maybe. That would be smart. Or make separate lists for different eras of Pollard’s work. That would be smart, too.

I’m not smart, though. I had to do things the hard way.

I had to be the guy who tries to jump his Kawasaki motorcycle over a few too many cars and then needs to be rushed to the hospital.

This list has one rule: Robert Pollard must have a songwriting credit. That’s it. Songs from Guided by Voices, his solo albums, Boston Spaceships, Circus Devils, and assorted other projects are all welcome. There’s even one song here that Pollard wrote yet doesn’t sing or perform on the record.

This also means that the work of other songwriters aren’t here. If I made a dedicated Guided by Voices list, some choice Tobin Sprout moments would sit in the ranks for sure (“Dodging Invisible Rays”, “To Remake the Young Flyer”, “Waves”), as would Doug Gillard’s “I Am a Tree”.

I made this decision because the Guided by Voices of 1986 and of 2023 have only one thing in common: Robert Pollard. The story of Guided by Voices is fractured because there is no definitive lineup. Pollard’s songs are the one thing that connect the various eras, so that’s where I direct my surgical focus and his songs are found in many different places.

The BIG problem with a list like this though is that there are many more than 100 great Pollard songs. In ten minutes I will change my mind about nearly everything here.

In the spirit of Pollard’s music though, there are times when it’s best to blurt out whatever you’ve got and then move on. Sometimes good things are about the moment and perfection isn’t so important. Moments can mean a lot and lists are one of those things that will never be perfect.

So, this is my list, as of this moment at 10:58 AM on May 24, 2023.

Continue reading “The 100 Best Robert Pollard Songs, Ranked”

Posted on

Robert Pollard-Mania! #93: ZOOM

Robert Pollard
Zoom
2005, The Fading Captain Series

2005 is one of the weirdest years for Robert Pollard’s music. We spent most of it not knowing when his new solo double album, From A Compound Eye, completed around mid-2004, was coming out.

Meanwhile, Pollard kept a low profile (no tour, few interviews), but he continued to make things. He had something new out every few months, all of it strange. It was like a year full of B-sides and I mean that as a compliment. All real rock fans love B-sides.

Then there were the reports about how Bob’s music was about to potentially blow up in the movies.

Big shot director Steven Soderbergh was a fan. In 2002, he used the song “Do Something Real” (from Speak Kindly of Your Volunteer Fire Department) in his film Full Frontal. He would go on to write the introduction to Jim Greer’s book Guided by Voices: A Brief History, out later in ’05. He had a film coming in the fall called Bubble that would feature new Pollard music (we’ll get to that in #97 of this series). Soderbergh was also developing a movie about Cleopatra, an audacious musical to star Catherine Zeta-Jones and built around Guided by Voices songs, screenplay by Jim Greer.

The Cleopatra thing never panned out, as of this writing eighteen years later, but we didn’t know that yet in ’05. It was exciting to think about.

And I wonder… I just wonder… if maybe the Zoom EP was inspired by all of this movie stuff happening.

Just look at that cover collage.

Continue reading “Robert Pollard-Mania! #93: ZOOM”

Posted on

Robert Pollard-Mania! #92: RELAXATION OF THE ASSHOLE

Robert Pollard
Relaxation of the Asshole
2005, Yuk Yuk Motherfucker

Technically, this is Robert Pollard’s first solo album after the end of Guided by Voices and I’m down with that.

In the cold January of 2005, when some fans were just getting over their hangovers from GBV’s New Year’s Eve grand finale, Pollard dropped a new record that, depending on your point of view, was either:

A)  a weird and funny artifact of his unique personality

or

B) a new low from an artist whose lax standards for quality control had been bothering you for awhile.

Considering how quickly this sold out, we could also tack on a third group: The collectors. They can smell limited vinyl from five hundred yards away.

Relaxation of the Asshole is a comedy album made up of clipped-out excerpts of Pollard’s stage banter at Guided by Voices live shows. It’s got twenty-five tracks, but only one joke.

That joke is that this record exists at all and I think that’s funny.

Continue reading “Robert Pollard-Mania! #92: RELAXATION OF THE ASSHOLE”

Posted on

Robert Pollard-Mania! #91: BEE THOUSAND: THE DIRECTOR’S CUT

Guided by Voices
Bee Thousand: The Director’s Cut
2004, Scat Records

As we get further away from 2004, this triple-LP set may become more and more confusing for listeners.

I’ve heard people dissect Bee Thousand on recent podcasts and it’s normal for them to not know what to make of this other version of the album. It’s mostly different songs in a different sequence and some people (understandably) don’t get why it even exists.

Also, since it’s called The Director’s Cut, someone somewhere on the globe, now or thirty years from now, might wonder if it’s the REAL Bee Thousand and the familiar one was a compromise.

I’m going to explain as much as I can here. Or at least I’m going to tell my own best version of the story.

As of this writing, The Director’s Cut is long out of print. It’s an extravagant vinyl set that sells for collector’s prices so I don’t expect a Blade Runner situation, where new audiences don’t know what edition is most essential, but on the internet things can last forever and that’s a long time.

I try to stay away from predicting the future because I’m always wrong about it, but I can talk about the past. I was there. For some of it.

So let’s get into it. Let’s dig into the who, what, when, where, and why.

Continue reading “Robert Pollard-Mania! #91: BEE THOUSAND: THE DIRECTOR’S CUT”

Posted on

Robert Pollard-Mania! #90: HALF SMILES OF THE DECOMPOSED

Guided by Voices
Half Smiles of the Decomposed
2004, Matador Records

And now an ending.

As you may know, this was the grand finale of Guided by Voices at the time. No more Guided by Voices after this. They were going out with an amicable break-up. Robert Pollard needed to move on. The news was everywhere. Maybe you read about it in Rolling Stone. Maybe you read it on some music news website or a message board.  Maybe you went to a record store in the autumn of 2004 and saw Half Smiles of the Decomposed snuggled in the new release racks with a sticker on the shrinkwrap straight from Matador Records that touted it as The Final Album.

If you were a fan, you likely felt an urgency to not miss out on The Electrifying Conclusion tour, which was a shorter tour than usual. No Europe. No Canada even. It officially began in August, wound its way through about two dozen reliable stops in the US, and had a hard ending. New Year’s Eve in Chicago.

The band whose show was always a party would end on the biggest party night of the year.

And then lights out. That would be it. So long, Guided by Voices.

Or maybe not.

Continue reading “Robert Pollard-Mania! #90: HALF SMILES OF THE DECOMPOSED”

Posted on

Robert Pollard-Mania! #89: FICTION MAN

Robert Pollard
Fiction Man
2004, The Fading Captain Series

April 24, 2004. Guided by Voices played The Bowery Ballroom in New York City.

Robert Pollard often gets chatty on stage and this night he spilled the news to the crowd that Guided by Voices were breaking up. It was the first public announcement. The people in that room got the scoop before any music journalist did.

One of the few bands out there that seemed incapable of ending without an act of God stopping them was closing up shop. It felt weird, but it made sense, too. Middle-aged people will understand.

Pollard went on to say that night that the final GBV album, Half Smiles of the Decomposed, was coming out in August with a farewell tour to follow. The last show would happen on New Year’s Eve and he promised that the band would go out grandly. Everyone was getting along. Past GBV lineups went down in drama, but this one would get a happy ending.

(If you want to hear that announcement, you can. A recording of it came out on Meet the King: Asshole 2, one of Pollard’s later “comedy” LPs composed of excerpts of his stage banter. The track is called “Blaze of Fire” and it still plays as a heavy moment today.)

A little over two weeks later on May 10, 2004, Pollard’s next solo album, Fiction Man, came out. The break-up news overshadowed it, but Fiction Man was the secret beginning of the post-GBV era.

One of the charms of Fiction Man in retrospect is that no one knew this at the time, including, I suspect, the two men who made it. Every Pollard solo record back then was different. They had different moods and different collaborators. In ’04, Fiction Man was merely more of that.

It was a batch of new Pollard songs, but this time played, arranged, and recorded by multi-instrumentalist oddball and fellow Ohioan Todd Tobias.

Continue reading “Robert Pollard-Mania! #89: FICTION MAN”

Posted on

Robert Pollard-Mania! #88: EDISON’S DEMOS

Robert Pollard
Edison’s Demos
2004, no label

When I wrote about Earthquake Glue six entries ago, I chose to not yet say a word about this limited vinyl-only LP of Robert Pollard’s solo demos of most its songs.

As sweet as it is, Edison’s Demos doesn’t add anything to my take on the album.

Also, the release of it came as a surprise the following winter. It got no advance announcement. It’s not a part of Pollard’s Fading Captain Series label (or any other label). Its artwork, which is almost as stark as a Jandek LP, makes it look like something that’s been sneaked out to the world in secret. In the tradition of past Guided by Voices live records, it presents itself as a bootleg.

So I decided to treat it that way, too. Edison’s Demos is something under the radar and from out of the blue. It’s something that you might miss if you aren’t paying attention. It’s something that no one was thinking about or knew was coming until it appeared one day in a puff of smoke.

Continue reading “Robert Pollard-Mania! #88: EDISON’S DEMOS”

Posted on

Robert Pollard-Mania! #87: EAT

Robert Pollard
Eat
2003, Rockathon Records

I’m curious to know when Robert Pollard figured out that he was a serious collage artist. If you’ve looked at nearly any record he’s ever put out, you’ve seen his work (the TVT albums are among the few exceptions) and you’ve seen it evolve.

The earliest Guided by Voices LPs have collage elements. Found clippings are a part of albums such as Devil Between My Toes and Self-Inflicted Aerial Nostalgia, but the compositions are primitive and the images tend to come off as truly random. They look like old punk rock show flyers. That’s a part of their charm, but as GBV got more famous, Pollard stepped up his art game.

By Bee Thousand he was playing with empty space, ultra-bright colors, and asymmetry. Throw in the lyric sheet on which each song is attached to a simple and memorable piece of imagery and the result is iconic and it doesn’t age almost thirty years later. If the rough, lo-fi music bothers someone, the artwork alone might persuade them to give it another chance. It both offsets and deepens the mystery.

Nine years later in 2003, Pollard launched an art magazine dedicated solely to his own work. He called it Eat and, as of this writing, there are seventeen issues of it, with more to come.

Collage art dominates most of them. Lots of poetry shows up in the early volumes. The presentation would get fancier over time (the latest issues of Eat are basically softcover books; they’re heavy with a thick spine). A few later installments come packaged with a 7″ record. Then there’s the oddball issue that’s all short, wry prose pieces by Pollard, telling stories from his past.

Eat is a full-color, psychedelic happening. It’s a place for the REAL deep-diggers. And it starts here.

Continue reading “Robert Pollard-Mania! #87: EAT”

Posted on

Robert Pollard-Mania! #86: HARDCORE UFOS: REVELATIONS, EPIPHANIES AND FAST FOOD IN THE WESTERN HEMISPHERE

Guided by Voices
Hardcore UFOs: Revelations, Epiphanies and Fast Food in the Western Hemisphere
2003, Matador Records

Around 2001, a rumor blew in the wind that a new Guided by Voices box set was in the works from John Fahey’s Revenant Records. To my memory, the plan was to collect the elusive and out-of-print mid-90s 7″ EPs in one place (finally!) with some mysterious extras. Revenant had just made a big splash with a lavish 5-CD Captain Beefheart rarities set, Grow Fins, along with a vibrant catalog of lovingly reissued old blues, folk, and jazz. The prospect of them working with GBV and maybe presenting them in the context of weird Americana was exciting.

That box set never happened, but another box did happen on Matador Records a few years later. Were the Revenant rumors true? I don’t know, but I do wonder if Hardcore UFOs ascended from its ashes.

It’s a six-ring circus celebration of Guided by Voices, partly from a Matador perspective. It’s NOT a collection of the old EPs (that were released by a variety of labels, which makes gathering them in one place complicated legally), but it does neatly collect many non-album moments and a lot more.

In the big picture though, the five CDs, one DVD, and great liner notes of Hardcore UFOs take their own unique shot at telling one of the oddest success stories in American indie rock.

Continue reading “Robert Pollard-Mania! #86: HARDCORE UFOS: REVELATIONS, EPIPHANIES AND FAST FOOD IN THE WESTERN HEMISPHERE”