i wanna ask you a question: what is the best song in GBV's Alien Lanes?

"Game of Pricks"

#1 hunting knife
#2 my son cool

decide now!

#1

I jumped in there a bit quick. But "Pricks", in terms of sheer songwriting, is probably the best thing he ever wrote.

Pricks or Good Flying Bird are great choices, but theyre a little over-played for me, so i went with Decide Now! (my son cool)

also, i never understood why Bee Thousands is THE Guided By Voiced record, while Alien Lanes is better.
(though maybe it's because i heard it first).

I'm with you on that one

A Good Flying Bird. Yeah! Yeah! Yeah!

"a good flying bird"

didnt know it's a Sprout song. probably his best.

as we go up we go down

(tho i could pick probably 12 other songs here)

So many great songs! So I had to pick "Motor Away" right away before I'd had a chance to think about it and become indecisive.

i know this record quite well but still i can't really tell the tracks apart. feel it should be game of pricks though

Would go with "Watch Me Jumpstart" if the chorus weren't so much weaker than the verses.

Probably comes down to Game of Pricks / Motor Away. Hope someone throws a vote in for Salty Salute-- great opening track that deserves some love.

they used to open their shows with it,too.

Opening tracks for Bee Thousand -> Alien Lanes -> King Shit and the Golden Boys, all fantastic.

A Salty Salute is the only song on this album that I like.

For me, this album and Bee Thousand are like two long songs. I would never put any of these individual tunes on a mix because I would sorely miss the song that would have come after it. How can you sing "the club is open...yeah the club is open...hey the club is open...cmon cmon the club is open..." and not immediately start singing "I am breathing / yet I see no sky..." right after it??

These albums - along with Propeller - are my idea of perfect records.

That said, even though "Game of Pricks" will probably take this quite easily, I'm going with "Salty Salute," because it signifies the beginning of, err, my favorite, 45 minute GBV song. Unfuckwithable.

That was the one thing I didn't really like abt this album; it seemed so cluttered because every song just immediately turned into the next song without any pause.

Love "Motor Away." I'm a terrible beginner guitarist, but one day I impulsively taught myself to play it, and I was floored how much the band gets out of so little, in this instance.

"Motor Away" by miles & miles: it is what is left when you boil these songs for hours, the absolute essence of the band & absolutely essential.

'Game of Pricks' is easily my favourite but picking a second would be really tricky. Maybe 'Closer You Are' (love the 'lookout rock' bridge bit) or 'My Son Cool'. Always amused by how much Pollard sounds like Liam Gallagher on that "Decide now!" (I guess they're both channelling Lennon).

pimple zoo

"Pimple Zoo!!!" Yes. Good choice. I love how it sounds like it's just two different recordings of the same tune with just that acoustic passage in the middle to distinguish them...

Like I said, if I'm a nerd for any record, it's this one.

yeah, i really think every cut here is fantastic. it's magic. this is their best record.

jim greer has a great story about the recording of "Game of Pricks" here: http://jamesgreerbooks.blogspot.com/2010/02/reconstruction-of-old-guided-by-voices.html
song is just pure goodness.

little whirl = best tobin song

i think you might be right! i was *this* close to voting for it.

watch me jumpstart

i am not trying to be awkward here but always thought the 28 seconds of HIT were the pinnacle

Sorry. 23 seconds, coming into town with the giggling faggots

little whirl = best tobin song

― mookieproof, Sunday, July 18, 2010 4:09 PM (35 minutes ago)

that would be "awful bliss"

I SPEAK IN MONOTONE: LEAVE MY FUCKING LIFE ALONE

i am wayy down with "hit".
i love this opening couplet from "auditorium":

post punk x-man parked his forklift
like a billion stars flickering from the grinders wheel

This band are in my top five ever, without a doubt. Maybe even top three.That should please them.

Get to England again, you old fucks and make another old fooker blissfully happy

come on come on the club is open

Had to vote for the winner but prob would have gone for Hunting Knife or Motor Away otherwise. Or Chicken Blows, love the Beatlesesque vocal harmonies there. Contrary to article upthread i prefer the Tigerbomb ep versions of Pricks and Hunting Knife, heresy i'm sure.

I jumped in there a bit quick. But "Pricks", in terms of sheer songwriting, is probably the best thing he ever wrote.

― tom d: he did what he had to do now he is dead (Tom D.)

"Game of Pricks" was covered by American pop punk band Jimmy Eat World and released on the deluxe edition of Bleed American.

"Game of Pricks" was also covered by British post-Grunge band, My Vitriol.

"My Valuable Hunting Knife" was covered by Motion City Soundtrack.

"A Good Flying Bird" was covered by Milwaukee punk rock band Crappy Dracula.

watch me jumpstart

Pricks was also covered by Owen Pallett and his violin
xpost

also by me about once a day

motor away

don't especially love this album, which is weird as it's the first GbV full lengther i heard.

My Valuable Hunting Knife

this is hard, but it's gotta be "Motor Away" for me too. Also agree the love for B1000 sometimes seems to overshadow what a great record this is, arguably better...

haha, I considered doing a similar poll a week ago, only I would split it in two separate polls for each side of the album with exclusion of GOP, just to make the results a bit more interesting

since Game Of Pricks is way too obvious a choice, I think I'll go with Pimple Zoo so it will have at least one point, though it could easily be something else

I voted for "Game of Pricks" in a Best GBV song poll (back when there weren't limits on poll options) so I voted for my Favorite Tobin Sprout GBV song, "Little Whirl."
I once got an enthused and inquisitive caller at the radio station after playing it. "What was that song?!" Gotta love it.
I don't care what you do anymore.

A Salty Salute is a great opening number, too.

tbh i had no idea before this poll that game of pricks was the obvious choice. gonna vote little whirl just to even it out. xp !

So many I love, but Motor Away.

it always was "as we go up, we go down", i think nowadays it's "little whirl"

closer you are

I love so many of the songs and Game of Pricks is probably the best song here but I gotta give props to Blimps Go 90, such an effortlessly breezy melody with great lyrics.

"Often times I'm reminded
Of the sweet young days
When I poured punch for the franchise
And thus was knighted
Got so excited"

One of my favorite albums, and a pretty much impossible poll to vote on. The songs that deserve to win probably will, so maybe I'll just throw in for "Chicken Blows". I've a soft spot for that pretty, odd little choon.

I am srsly incapable of doing this.

I was a total gbv fanboy in the 90's and went through a prolonged period of trying to create some distance from these records (incl. Bee Thousand and Propeller) for fear they would never justify the ridiculously high esteem I held them in...

Anyway I went back to this and Bee Thousand and Propeller a month or so back and was just completely kind of...overwhelmed...by how fucking amazing these records are. The whole notion of Pollard from this era getting lumped in with other lo-fi acts or even with other melodically adept indie rockers just seems so completely blinkered fifteen years on.

I think Pollard was harnessing real genius here — as opposed to expertise or peak craft or whatever — that he was actually touched with some kind of open-channel thing allowing him to create these perfect self-enclosed and fully formed universes which were only very rarely more art than pop or vice versa.

FWIW as much as I love this record for me the first side of Bee Thousand shatters to pieces just about anything having the misfortune of bumpered listening and I incl. in that estimation hallowed Zeppelin, the mighty Fall, Dylan and maybe even my daughters' laughter.

I voted Motor Away due to it's immediacy when I was first getting into them in the summer before college 12 years ago and my friend made me a GbV cassette and I was literally motoring down an icy street. But it was followed closely by Hit, which was my roommate in college's favorite song (ever).

The Tigerbomb version of "Hunting Knife" is my favourite GBV song ever, but I gotta go with "Salty Salute".

I hate "As We Go Up We Go Down". I got in a teenage fight with a friend who was a GBV hater. Her proof was the flimsiness of the "We see the truth, yeah, it's just a lie" lyric, she thought that if anybody would make a chorus that bad, then any other moment of lyrical resonance must've just been accidental.

My Valuable Hunting Knife

dunno, i love how gloriously dumb "we see the truth yeah" is -- it just sounds soooooo good. xpost

first time i saw them, right when Alien Lanes came out, someone (maybe it was me?) requested "as we go up" and pollard strapped on a guitar for the only time that night and played a (very drunken) solo rendition. was awesome.

btw Owen P., yr "game of pricks" cover was fab.

the most important decision i will make today. and it's "closer you are". the world just stops for those descending chords in the chorus.

tylerw, nice story. "I didn't at first fully understand what was going on, which is to say that we were in fact already recording the song..."

i think 'Motor Away' was the first gbv song i heard

This is a perfect album.

"flimsiness of the "We see the truth, yeah, it's just a lie" lyric, she thought that if anybody would make a chorus that bad..."

OK this is one of many instances where I again feel like I don't understand what makes lyrics good or bad at all, and am completely unable to understand extreme feelings one way or another, making me terrified to try writing any more lyrics myself.

Owen's teenage friend was a moron.

Surprised that there hasn't been a TS: Bee Thousand/Alien Lanes yet.

xp OK this is one of many instances where I again feel like I don't understand what makes lyrics good or bad at all, and am completely unable to understand extreme feelings one way or another, making me terrified to try writing any more lyrics myself.

Well, there's that theory that lyrics themselves are meant to be imperfect, a verbal statement that is best accompanied by music. Not a poem. There's really no way to say one is 'good' or 'bad' outside of evaluating the broader context of the song, delivery, etc.

I mean, if I heard "A Salty Salute" being sung loudly by a bunch of drunk college kids-- and I have heard-- and perhaps have sung myself-- I'd probably think the words were pretty crap.

"Go Up/Down" is really about the 4 second bridge "I speak in monotone", great line in a song I have bad memories of.

My friend was not a moron she was herself a songwriter and her disgust with GBV was strictly professional

Absolutely, but nobody ever seems to address those variables in their criticisms, and they don't break their analysis down enough. Then I'm left sympathizing blankly because I can't understand their point. Part of my problem is that I've never really been interested/barely pay attention to lyrics, and instead study the compositions. I do hate when lyrics lazily just go "I don't know why, I don't know why" or something, so I guess everyone gets set off by certain things.

see, i think that the point is that lyrics *aren't* poetry -- they're meant to be sung! (sorry if that's capt. obvious). Someone in the New Yorker writing "The truth is just a lie" = total duh. But in this partic song, the way that line is sung, so happy, so heartfelt -- it's not a teenagey statement of jaded cynicism, it's more like a total abandonment of .... um something. I've had a couple beers.

these songs are too short

Game of Pricks is obviously the winner.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't My Valuable Hunting Knife considered a bigger hit *at the time* than Game of Pricks? It had the video, and was the first track on Tigerbomb, and everything.

true, and?

Motor Away to me always sounded like The Who circa 66. It is my favorite on this record. Being a midwesterner that saw them a few times, I got to say I like the one before and the album after more though and I was totally into GBV when all of this was coming out new. They were a hell of a lot of fun to drink a lot of beer and see in a bar, they really were. Later on that kind of got a sad melancholia as the band kept turning over and over and it just wasn't the same, but it was fucking great the first few times.

I think GBV would have been killer if they would have had a great melodic lead guitar player to eat up those chord changes and turn some of those two minute dittys into 3 minute popgasms.

Just noting the critical re-evaluation xpost.

wanna fight about it, drew? huh? huh?

oh, you don't. ok.

I think GBV would have been killer if they would have had a great melodic lead guitar player to eat up those chord changes and turn some of those two minute dittys into 3 minute popgasms.
don't really agree -- but this is pretty much the doug gillard era of the band, no?

I dig sad melancholy GBV! My first record of theirs was Isolation Drills, and it still has tons of sentimental value.

I think Game of Pricks is the answer too but I haven't voted yet because I have too many favorites to pick from. I might vote for "Alright," actually, which is one of my fave album closers ever.

"but this is pretty much the doug gillard era of the band,"

For some reason, Pollard went on a big time off streak on his songwriting after "mag earwhig" and when they started trying to record like a regular band. Maybe he had shot his wad, I don't know. That band was really good the first time I saw them, but then it started to kind of slide.

Maybe it's me, I can hear J Mascis solos in some of those earlier GBV songs in my mind and think, that would have sounded pretty dope.

I dig sad melancholy GBV!

totally. isolation drills is my #2 GbV record after B1000.

I think Game of Pricks is the answer too but I haven't voted yet because I have too many favorites to pick from. I might vote for "Alright," actually, which is one of my fave album closers ever.

― drew in baltimore, Tuesday, July 20, 2010 12:01 AM (46 minutes ago)

yes incredible song

Earthquake Glue is an awesome latter day GBV album.

"Little Whirl" over "Game Of Pricks" and "Blimps Go 90"

I think GBV would have been killer if they would have had a great melodic lead guitar player to eat up those chord changes and turn some of those two minute dittys into 3 minute popgasms.

this is basically Isolation Drills, which is a great album

Gillard's guitar playing really got on my nerves after a while

I like how "Hit" was on the Best of Guided By Voices.

i should listen to those TVT-era records again ... I didn't really love them at the time, but i think i was still just buzzing from the "classic era" -- there is probably plenty of good stuff.

"Isolation Drills" is a great album. Don't much like any of the albums that came after it.

isolation drills was basically a second attempt after do the collapse to do a "big rock album production" bit and done much better with much better songs.

(tho do the collapse has Teenage FBI)

... and proper lyrics that meant something

yeah i guess they are pretty straightforward for pollard, some real "divorce" type stuff on that album

Tearjerkers *sniff* ... tho, one of the most moving songs, IMO, is "Privately"... and fuck knows what that's about

I think Isolation Drills works best of the studio albums because it provides a coherent context for the glossy production. By the time I get to the end of that record, I always feel exhausted and punchy from the sheer loudness of it, sort of like being drunk, which I think is the correlative of a lot of the album's lyrical themes. Pollard and Sprout were real geniuses during the lo-fi era at creating an aural context in which all these sketches and fragments could hang together simply and elegantly. I don't think he ever quite managed to hit that balance again after Alien Lanes, though I'm still fascinated by his attempts to get it right. For instance, I love the sound of Under the Bushes Under the Stars even though it never quite clicks with the songwriting, IMO.

The album Isolation Drills reminds me of most is Soundgarden's Badmotorfinger, in terms of how enervating it is to listen to.

i like how the title of this thread sounds like some drunk guy accosting you at a bar

Which is apt

do the collapse is kind of a glorious mess in retrospect imo, pollard decided to bring his most oddball set of songs to the table right as he made the maligned hi-fi transition, so there was nothing familiar on there for people to latch onto as sounding definitively like GBV

i hated it at first too, but now i like it and i definitely don't think it's the worst post-classic-era GBV album

isolation drills is still the better of the 2 hi-fi ones though

I think it's definitely the worst post-classic-era GBV album.

i remember thinking universal truths and cycles was really really boring and hookless

i remember really liking universal truths and earthquake glue when they came out, and i haven't listened to them since. "best of jill hives" is really the only one I can conjure up.

universal truths & cycles was another grower, there's some hookless songs on there but also some great ones and songs have more variety in tempo/structure/rhythm than some of the other late-period albums (half-smiles of the decomposed is my least favorite for this reason, it's pretty much entirely mid-tempo songs, though some of them do have pretty hooks)

i'd rank the 'studio' ones something like
isolation drills > earthquake glue > universal truths > do the collapse > half-smiles

mag earwhig would go somewhere in the middle there if it counts i guess, all of them of course rank after the 'classic' propeller thru UTBUTS stretch

^^

the "volunteer fire department" or whatever pollard lp w/doug gillard is my favorite of the post-bushes era, i think.

yeah, that one is very, very good.

isolation drills > earthquake glue > universal truths > do the collapse > half-smiles

i would swap EG & UT&C but otherwise agree. half-smiles is a bit crap, probably the worst GbV album in terms of being straight-up boring

Do the Collapse is by far the worst. The first time they were ever really boring, IMO.

AAAAAUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUDITORIUM

The scenario is bright for the King and Carol

Echoing upthread about 'Under the Bushes'...man we all had such high hopes for that album

1;15 in King and Caroline -
Bob: And the wisdom they will sell us, and the wisdom they will sellllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll
Tobin: sell!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

^^^^^^yessss

yeah "love king and caroline" - great performance on the daily show, too

^^^ too much time on i love terius

i <3 under the bushes fwiw. second i heard after alien lanes but first i bought. not a duff track on it, honestly, except the sprout ones and i never really dig sprout's stuff tbh.

aww i lovvvvv "atom eyes"!! one of his best.

under the bushes was a big grower for me. i still think the sequence of 'bonus tracks' after "office of hearts" give it a little too much bloat.

but otherwise, great album.

"Redmen and Their Wives" tho!!!

and atom eyes ain't too bad, true.

under the bushes is prob my fav, i guess cuz it's the first one i heard. also my copy came w/ the tigerbomb ep tacked on the end so there were sooo many songs

"Redmen and Their Wives" tho!!!

i dig "take to the sky" and "it's like soul man", but the 3 songs in between sound like my stomach feels after too many beers. i think they would have been more effective if they had been worked into the other 18 songs.

tbh i had no idea before this poll that game of pricks was the obvious choice. gonna vote little whirl just to even it out. xp !

― sonderangerbot, Monday, July 19, 2010 7:51 AM (2 days ago) Bookmark

same here. guess i'm just not up on my GBV fan stats cuz i had no idea that it was the consensus pick. voted for it cuz it made me cry the first few times i heard it, and once upon i played it over again until it wasn't quite so achingly poignant and then walked around singing it for months on end. so many great songs on this record, though - probably their best, though propeller's my sentimental favorite. first love best love.

second choices at the time would have been motor away, my valuable hunting knife, as we go up, blimps go 90. little whirl took a while to click, but man i love that song to death. striped white jets cuz it always reminds me of my brother.

yeah "love king and caroline" - great performance on the daily show, too

― terry squad (k3vin k.), Tuesday, July 20, 2010 9:56 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

^^^ too much time on i love terius

― some dude, Tuesday, July 20, 2010 10:20 PM (Yesterday)

hahahaha u_u

haha i always forget about the snoring on 'ex-supermodel' until i listen to it

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Is there a reason why BIG BORING WEDDING is not a choice?

pass the word: the chicks are back etc.

pass the word: it's on 'under the bushes under the stars'

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

sooo nice that "Motor Away" came 1st (tied, but still), I totally didn't see that coming

I hope that this lone vote fot "Cigarette Tricks" wasn't a joke or sth, I honestly love this "song" (probably more like a "hook")

"Motor Away"/"Game of Pricks" tie = poll justice.

If I'm a fanatic about this album, is the deluxe reissue thing worth getting? Like, are there extensive, 33 1/3 style liner notes and shit?

is there a deluxe version of this record?

wasn't there a double vinyl version, with the songs in a weird sequence, all mixed up, or something? Did I dream this? Maybe it was that Bee Tousand that got that treatment...

Bee THousand, I mean

oh yeah that was the bee thousand directors cut.

that's worth it! it's pretty cool.

kind of surprising that matador isn't doing some kind of expanded alien lanes reissue to coincide w/ the reunion tho.

Yeah, they really should. I'd buy that. As I gushed upthread, this is probably one of my most-played albums of all time.

thanks tyler - I'll check out the BT director's cut!

good a place as any to mention that they've launched a digital store w/ some oop stuff, some live shows, etc: https://www.gbvdigital.com

awesome, thanks tyler

!!! thanks !!!!
trying to mete out my excitement about next week's show in chicago

a little excitement every day so i don't go nuts

20 years old

That revelation is shocking in some cases, but Alien Lanes feels exactly as old as it is.

I would've voted "Game of Pricks," I'm pretty sure. Album still slays.

the club is open

"King and Caroline" was robbed. But tie for first place and the next finisher otm.

"Game of Pricks" is the best song GBV ever did, but "Motor Away" is the best song on Alien Lanes. (O paradox)

i suspect i voted for 'little whirl'

i was otm

things are new in brilliant blue
and striped white jets come speeding through ah!
sh-sh-sh-sh-sh-sh-and we must not forget
the sudden pain of perfect greed
and what's expected of this super-breed . . .
for those who dream to touch the sun
and those who run will always run . . .

"post punk x-man parked his forklift
like a billion stars flickering from the grinders wheel"

Blimps go 90
On with the show

I’m not here to drink all the beer
In the house
in the fridge

So I write music for soundtracks now
I write music for soundtracks now
(That's what I wanted to do anyhow)

Oh, this is not to say
We were not the worst we've ever been

Introducing the amazing rocket head!
you know what the deal is, dude

"Chicken Blows" robbed here btw

Anyone reading the new Pollard bio? I'm finding it slow going so far

For me this is one of the Tobin Sprout tracks!

i was walking home one time through a quiet out of the way neighborhood at like 1am and passed a guy on the street with earbuds in who was drunkenly singing along to Motor Away

i knew we've met before

The hellfire is dying around you, my love

longform (7000-word) oral history in anticipation of 25th yr anni on Monday:

https://uproxx.com/indie/guided-by-voices-alien-lanes-oral-history-25th-anniversary/

Sprout: I can remember we were practicing for Propeller and Bob, after the practice, goes, “Okay, this is it. This is my final album, I’m done. I can’t do this anymore.” So the next morning, I get a call from him about 7:30, eight o’clock. He goes, “I got another song, I got to come over.” So he was there in 15 minutes and we went in the basement and we hooked the 4-track up. Bob sat down and showed me the guitar parts and then he played the drums and I set it up so we could do guitars and drums at the same time. So we recorded that and then he threw the vocal on and threw the lead guitar on. It was “Exit Flagger.” It came together in a matter of 20 minutes.

I also liked the parts about Matt Sweeney talking about how he first learned about the band.

...and later on their first NYC show (after a 6 year live show hiatus!) which blew Gerard & Chris away despite the band being incredibly nervous... some of the band had never been to NYC.

And then the Jon Stewart footage, which begins with perhaps the best 2-minute 1-chord rock song ever broadcast on live TV?

okay last snip:

Sprout: Somebody at Matador called and said, “Look, we’re going to have your album mastered tomorrow. Do you want to talk to Bob Ludwig about it?” And I said, “Sure, why not?” So he called or I called him, and I go, “So have you ever done a master from a cassette?” And he said, “Yeah.” Because he did Nebraska by Bruce Springsteen. So it was like, “Oh geez, all right. I guess you can handle it.”

I love the story of Bee Thousand how the Scat guy called Bob up for another album and bobs all “uh the band broke up.. but wait! I can throw something together”

Good stuff, thanks.

Yeah thanks for linking, that's a great article. Liked the story behind the album title!

Exit Flagger!

is Little Whirl too traditional to do well in this poll? not what people come to GBV for?

i guess Motor Away says that's not the case.

lol i loved this

Matt Sweeney (singer/guitarist for Chavez, hard-core GBV fan, future GBV member): I went to my weed dealer’s house, who was a serious record collector. I went over to buy some weed, and the music that he was playing was so fucking good, and also not like the kind of music that he usually played, because he was definitely over rock music. He was into free jazz and shit like that. Generally, the routine was that I would buy some weed from him, and then we’d hang out and listen to records. We called it the Monday night pot party. He lent me the record, and me and my friend just lost our minds. The record was Propeller.

They sounded like a legit ’60s band. And Mitch Mitchell is on the record? Mitch Mitchell was Jimi Hendrix’s drummer! All of it was so weird. The names didn’t seem like they were real. Tobin Sprout doesn’t seem like a real name.

i speak in monotone

(also i absolutely voted for little whirl)

Reading that was like reading about Ancient Greece: A&Rs, courtships by major labels, middleaged midwestern sports bar schlubs-as-indie-darlings, shooting hoops with Billy Corgan. It also occurs to me that if this record came out today most of the press would be about the "giggling faggots" line (not a defense of that lyric btw). This oral history just really encapsulates what a difference two decades can make, for better or worse.

I also always assumed that it was some weird accordion on "Blimps go 90" and now that I know it's (obviously) a violin, all I can hear is how woefully out of tune it is! Still a great song, though.

i speak in monotone

middleaged midwestern sports bar schlubs

Eh, that was part of the marketing: Bob was a 4th-grade teacher, Tobin was/is an artist + graphic designer/illustrator by trade, Greg Demos is a lawyer (currently magistrate of Franklin County OH).

if you have ever been around these guys, the wider, "Dayton mafia" circle...I mean I love them but it really is the way you imagine it to be and there's nothing remotely ironic about it

Right. Just extrapolating from what I have read written by certain Replacements fan, not based on first-hand experience.

it's a really mix of people, townies are townies and end up doing all sorts of different things according to their capabilities

good vibes all around though

I kind of picture every GBV crowd as being like the one on the Crying Your Knife Away boot. "If you throw up at my afterparty, you're no longer my friend."

if you have ever been around these guys, the wider, "Dayton mafia" circle...I mean I love them but it really is the way you imagine it to be and there's nothing remotely ironic about it

I, um, lived in Austin for a couple of years too so I am not surprised by this kind of thing.

Bob was a 4th-grade teacher,

Are you saying teachers can't be sports bar schlubs? But Pollard, the guy writes poetry, he's had exhibitions of his art etc, I'm guessing he isn't your run of the mill sports bar schlub.

xxp calstars I was just responding to what Albert wrote about the townie-sports schlubs-Bud Light narrative being a sort of mythology for marketing purposes, just saying that it's legit

which isn't mutually exclusive to an interest or proficiency in the arts! Just that there is some hardcore redneck action too

One of the time this most jumped out at me what at that Matador anniversary thing in Las Vegas, when like twenty or thirty of these (always suoper nice!) dudes would load into the buffet for breakfast

it was funny because you very clearly very easily identify ppl who were there for those shows as opposed to the regular hotel guests...and then there was this whole other, much smaller yet equally one-of-these-things-is-not-like-the-other crowd

I used to be able to type

I also remember the casino marquee said in massive letters at the top

KEVIN POLLAK

and underneath in much, much fractionally smaller letters "Matador 40th Anniversary Etc."

Man, Vegas buffets aren’t what they used to be

Xpost

I remember seeing Mitch hanging out and drinking with fans after in the hotel stairwell after their anniversary show set!

Bob Pollard was a jock in high school — haven’t any of you read Guided By Voices: a Brief History? Everything you need to know about Bob Pollard and his general worldview is in there. He’s not a mystery. He’s all of the above.

I read the Bee Thousand 33-1/3 recently and it does a pretty good job describing the millieu, the vibe. lots of insane hard-to-read overanalysis tho (sorry if the author posts here, overall I loved the damn thing)

yeah that was v good I think

I read the Jim Greer book about GBV, which I didn't like much, I hated all the stuff about Bob and boorish buddies boozin' it up in his basement tbh.

For some reason Bob Pollard finds them fascinating but fuck knows why anyone else should.

there are no snobs in heaven

I imagine that way he's always the star and the focal point.

no

If anything it's the opposite. There are ton of different reasons to love spending time with people you've known your whole life.

Jim Greer should write a better book next time then.

yeah that was v good I think

So how does the Dayton Mafia stack up next to The Memphis Mafia?

If anything it's the opposite. There are ton of different reasons to love spending time with people you've known your whole life.

― Yanni Xenakis (Hadrian VIII), Saturday, May 2, 2020 3:06 PM (twenty-eight minutes ago)

MM has political connects

This never really worked for me.

It's reliant on not moving very far from where you grew up.

Right. I have actually been living pretty close to where I grew up for the past decade and half, which caused some deal of anxiety at first, which I believed I touched upon last night in the group hang when it was mentioned.

xxxp yes the B1000 book

james I've had p much the same experience, by choice, but I can also appreciate the value in it

I listened to this album today and the whole lo-fi thing is, in retrospect, not so great - I don't really see what people saw in it, to be honest.

Did anyone read the recent Pollard bio? Or was this alluded to above in code? (Who's the Replacements fan?)

Jim Walsh.

I read and loved it but I don't know if I'm the most objective reviewer, it's great to have anything in-depth to read

their first NYC show (after a 6 year live show hiatus!)

a life-changing night. for me anyway. afterward, on the sidewalk outside cbgb, i bumped into stephen malkmus, who i didn't know, and he told me i should go see the ass ponys, who were playing somewhere else, maybe under acme?, at like 1:30 am, but i went home 'cause my life had already been sufficiently changed, but later i came to regret missing that ass ponys set. that was a good time to be alive and into rock music.

Lol I saw the Ass Ponys open for Afghan Whigs

I saw the Ass Ponys at Brownies once. The opening act was The Upper Crust and Conan O'Brien and Andy Richter were there to see them, I think. All I remember is what seemed to be a really long, drawn-out version of "Ape Hanger." I ended up being a huge Wussy fan in recent years.

I always found the Upper Crust to be a dependably stupid fun time

Yup.

lol if ever there was a song written for dulli to sing it is 'mr. superlove'

obv he did a great job with it

the upper crust rule