Tag: Todd Tobias

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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.

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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.

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Robert Pollard-Mania! #77: THE HAROLD PIG MEMORIAL

Circus Devils
The Harold Pig Memorial
2002, The Fading Captain Series

Night. Stars shine and shadows crawl over the fresh grave of Harold Pig. The other bikers who knew him gather and talk. Stories about dangerous days and deadly nights fill the air like exhaust fumes. Some of those stories might even be true.

Harold Pig is an abstract presence here, a collage of stitched-together skin and mismatched eyes and limbs belonging to Sonny Barger and Peter Fonda and the hairy Hell’s Angels goons at Altamont, as seen in the great Rolling Stones concert documentary Gimme Shelter. He’s the loser and outlaw that defines the classic vision of the freedom-loving icon on two wheels.

Some say that the world is better off without him, but Robert Pollard refuses to keep it that simple. He had an idea for a story about a dead biker. His wrote a batch of songs that circled around it and approached it from the weirdest angles. Like most good rock concept albums, The Harold Pig Memorial is flummoxing. It doesn’t have a plot, but it does have a mood.

Roll me a fat joint at 2 AM and give me a lighter and turn off everything except for the stereo and I might be able to connect some dots between tracks such as “Dirty World News” and “Exoskeleton Motorcade”, but I don’t have those things now.

I turned 45 last week (Pollard’s age when this album came out on Halloween, his birthday, in 2002) and all I have is this old body and some sparkling water and The Harold Pig Memorial sounds to me like an album about saying goodbye.

By your mid-40s, you’ve said goodbye to so many things.

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Robert Pollard-Mania! #64: RINGWORM INTERIORS

Circus Devils
Ringworm Interiors
2001, The Fading Captain Series

Sometimes on the internet, an innocent lamb who’s in the middle of discovering Robert Pollard’s body of work will step forward and ask where they should start with Circus Devils.

It’s a fair question. At fourteen albums released over sixteen years, this collaboration with fellow Ohioan oddballs Todd and Tim Tobias is not only Pollard’s longest-running side project, but it’s also the strangest. Their sound is a kind of psychedelic rock birthed from a mutant strain. It’s a creature that rose up out of toxic waste. Lots of slime, lots of teeth.

There are quiet Circus Devils records and loud ones and ones that sound like they were created by lizard men from Jupiter. Sometimes they sound like a rock band, sometimes they sound like mad scientists performing sinister experiments in a backyard tool shed. Their records are as varied as dreams, and often as haunting.

Their music comes in a few different flavors, but it all has a demon inside of it. There’s an eeriness in every sound that they make (Pollard got into the spirit and timed most of their albums for a Halloween release). It hides somewhere in even the project’s gentlest moments.

It’s a demon that runs naked and free and howling at the moon on their unhinged first record.

So, where to start with Circus Devils?

I say start at the BEGINNING. Start with Ringworm Interiors. Meet the demon. Get the full Circus Devils experience. Be surprised and assaulted like we were back in 2001 with what’s still one of the most bugfuck albums in Pollard’s whole discography.

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