Tag: TVT Records

Guided by Voices
Isolation Drills
2001, TVT Records

Robert Pollard gave the mainstream dream of fame and big money and an overplayed radio hit that eventually annoys everyone exactly as many chances as it deserves.

Two.

A restless artist like Pollard can’t beat his head against that wall for too long.

Two shots. That’s enough. In most cases, the first album is the best that the band can do at the time in this new place and with these new expectations. The second is for sharpening their blade and improving on whatever wasn’t quite perfect about the first.

Obviously, Robert Pollard, with his fifteen years of putting out good records at the time, didn’t need to “find himself” after Do the Collapse, but there are a few things about it that the band had to throw off before they could move on to this second grab at the golden apple.

Continue reading “Robert Pollard-Mania! #58: ISOLATION DRILLS”

Guided by Voices
“Chasing Heather Crazy” b/w “On With the Show”
2001, TVT Records

The story goes that TVT Records didn’t “hear a single” on Isolation Drills, the second and final album that Guided by Voices would submit to those music industry gurus (note: TVT went bankrupt in 2008). Me, I hear at least five singles on it so I don’t know what to make of that. I’m no Do the Collapse hater, but Isolation Drills is a ferocious step up in confidence. It’s got anthems. It’s got pretty flowers. It’s got a melancholy heart, but it’s determined to rise up. It’s GBV’s one last hard push toward big-time success (produced by Rob Schnapf, known at the time for his work with Beck and Elliot Smith) and I think it’s as great as anything they could have made toward that goal.

More on that in the next entry.

Before it, we got this 7″ preview. To my memory, it came out a month or two ahead of the album.

SO, like I said, TVT heard the album and said “Where’s the single?”. “Glad Girls” somehow wasn’t enough. “Unspirited” wasn’t enough. “Fair Touching” wasn’t enough. According to Robert Pollard, they wanted a song about “girls and cars” (what year was this? 1965?). From there, Pollard went off and banged out a single. And it was lovely.

Continue reading “Robert Pollard-Mania! #57: CHASING HEATHER CRAZY”

Guided by Voices
Hold on Hope EP
2000, TVT Records

Back in the video store days, if you wanted to rent sleazy B-movies you had to pull the tape or DVD off a shelf and take it to a cashier, who then got a good look at exactly the kind of creep who rents Erotic Gladiator or Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers—and that kind of creep was ME.

Today, I’m old and wouldn’t give a damn, but back then I was young and fragile and hideously self-conscious (especially if a girl was working the counter). I also wasn’t very bright and I somehow felt less embarassed if I mixed a “respectable” movie or two in with the garbage that I really wanted to see.

So, on an average night at the video store, I might go up to the counter with Bikini Slave Girls II and a movie like Gandhi. 

Looking back, I’m not sure what statement I was making with this. Maybe the cashier would think that I was really there to rent Gandhi, but Bikini Slave Girls II just happened to tumble off the shelf and land in my hands?

“What’s this? Bikini Slave Girls II? How did this get here? What a strange turn of events! You know what, though? I’ll be a madcap and rent it anyway! Please, seriously, go to no trouble to restock. I don’t want to be a problem here. It’s not your fault that this movie accidentally fell down on me. This building clearly needs foundation work. Bikini Slave Girls II. Fine. I’ll watch it. Maybe it will have some interesting mise-en-scene. Here’s my $6 and please don’t think that I’m a weird pervert.”

I was hoping to make up for the embarassing thing with something that’s not embarassing.

And that’s EXACTLY how GBV give us “Hold on Hope” on this record.

Continue reading “Robert Pollard-Mania! #49: HOLD ON HOPE EP”

Guided by Voices
Plugs for the Program
1999, TVT Records

If I ran the music industry, there would have been a big, fancy 20th anniversary Do the Collapse reissue in 2019. Two discs. three discs. Whatever it takes to get in all of the B-sides and stray songs and BBC recordings and demos and anything else good from the time that may be laying around unloved somewhere. A live set. A couple of 2,000-word essays in the liner notes. Stickers, balloons. Whatever trinkets usually come with these sort of things would be in there. We’d do it up big. It would be the kind of thing that you spend all day going through.

Because Do the Collapse has major reputation problems these days. When people on the social media beehives talk about it, they often begin by saying “I know that everyone else on planet Earth hates this album, but I guess that I’m a crazy lunatic because I like it!”.

I’ve seen this several times. It’s a cliche by now.

Continue reading “Robert Pollard-Mania! #48: PLUGS FOR THE PROGRAM”

Guided by Voices
Do the Collapse
1999, TVT Records

Mainstream American rock radio in 1999 was the shittiest thing ever. It was the frat party of your dullest nightmares. There were no “artists”, just warm and breathing piles of tattoos. It was the land of Lit and Smash Mouth and Korn. Bad facial hair was everywhere. Whiny singers. The worst production ever. Nothing sounds like human hands made it. Guitars and drums have such little personality that they come off like they’re on a programmed loop (and they probably were). The singers sound electronically pitch-corrected (and they probably were). And all of this nonsense is turned up WAY too loud and compressed to death.

There were few real songwriters there anymore. Bombast was all they had.

It was bad bad bad, is what I’m trying to say. It was terrible. It was awful.

You’re probably still wondering how bad it was.

It was so bad that when The Strokes debuted two years later, people actually thought that they were GOOD.

How anyone thought that Guided by Voices stood a chance at fitting in among that crowd, I’m not sure, but from Robert Pollard’s perspective, I think he needed to at least TRY.

Continue reading “Robert Pollard-Mania! #45: DO THE COLLAPSE”

Guided by Voices
“Surgical Focus” b/w “Fly Into Ashes”
1999, TVT Records

Summer of 1999 was the last time that the music industry was truly comfortable. They were the last few months of business as usual.

Napster was brand new, but the controversy over it didn’t kick in until autumn when college kids went back to school and had access to their university’s high-speed internet connection. For the average schmoe like me, it was still a dial-up world, and in a dial-up world an album could take hours to download via your 56k modem–and that’s IF your fragile connection didn’t crap out on you every ten minutes.

It was also a world without portable digital music players. CD burners were around, but they were expensive and only a niche saw the need for one. Meanwhile, it was normal for cars on the road to still have cassette decks in them, even some new cars.

In 1999, the future of music as an intangible digital experience was here… and it was free and illegal. And it also kinda sucked unless your favorite place to listen to music was at your computer through speakers that were probably shitty.

Things were in transition. The rules were changing. We were all mixed up.

And this was the world in which Guided by Voices went major label.

Continue reading “Robert Pollard-Mania! #44: SURGICAL FOCUS”