Why in the name of all that is holy do people like Guided by Voices?

I was at that show too, and just for the record, they were beer cans, not bottles.

Well at the very least, at their SUV's.

sleater-kinney, who opened for them that day, blew them away.

All that said, for some reason I was intrigued by Earthquake Glue and damn if it wasn't one of my favorites from last year. It seemed like Pollard finally got a band behind him that didn't just indulge his whims, but nudge them further and form them. (I say that not knowing shit about whether he's been recording with these same guys for years or not.) It was a pleasant surprise.

the alien lanes-era stuff was all homemade, recorded by pollard himself with an entirely different and somewhat vague cast of co-conspirators, and as far as i know pollard has never made clear who actually did what. it's generally assumed that pollard played a lot of the stuff himself, with big help from his guitar homies tobin sprout and mitch mitchell and drummer kevin fennel. but the "band" on any given song may have involved any given dude who happened to be in the room the day pollard wrote it.

gbv didn't start playing live until 1993, and it's quite possible that a good deal of the stuff for both bee thousand (1994) and alien lanes (1995) had already been recorded by that point. again, they've never been too clear about this.

But then again, so do I!

(Well, not really...)

And I'm an old old man who otherwise can't stand indie-rock.

is your name robert pollard by any chance?

I remember enjoying My Beloved Revolutionary Sweetheart back when I still cared about that sort of thing!

[FYI: "Myonga Von Bontee" = song title]

I freaking love "Uncle Dave" from the Grifters split 7", which as far as I know has never been reissued...
-- Douglas (Douglas), Saturday, November 8, 2003 6:10 AM (3 years ago) Bookmark Link

I love this song also. It has grown on me tremendously. Is it just me or are the lyrics really cool? Maybe it's how the singer sings them.

81323
I believe i can't behave
I behave like uncle dave
I've got one foot in the grave
Thanks a lot to uncle dave
=============================
Chorus: uncle dave
Raise your hand
Repeat these words
=============================
Uncle dave
The words you've seen and heard
=============================
Be ?? to hamster love
What the hell is hamster love <---favorite part
Chorus
You are a pretty strange bird
And fun is for the ??

just been loving propeller lately.

matos is really on some fucking bullshit on early on in this thread.

GBV wrote great fucking pop songs.

they are so great when they are on some inspiration, blue collar dreams type shit.

beyond a shadow of a doubt
beyond the power of your clout

like shit like this reads horribly but in context it is <3 <3 <3

sixteen cheerleader cold front is my new jam.... sad tune

not a huge fan or anything but I love that song.

i still have a really big soft spot for GBV, even though i hardly listen to music made with geetars any longer.

to me:
"Goldheart Mountaintop Queen Directory"
"Tractor Rape Chain"
"I Am A Tree"

also, matt, i do love that song, too. i ought to pull out my GBV cds.

Had no idea there was such a thing as an unreleased GbV song?

http://soundcloud.com/north-of-onhava/guided-by-voices-angry-pillows/s-TH6C2

Don't worry, that'll be included in "Suitcase 42" along with various samples of Robert Pollard clearing his throat.

it's a good one though

I'm surprised no one has wheeled out one of Christgau's nastier smackdowns...

Bee Thousand [Scat, 1994]
On most of these 20-tracks-in-36-minutes, the tunes emerge if you stick around, but they're undercut by multiple irritants. The lyrics are deliberately obscure, the structures deliberately foreshortened, the vocals a record collector's Anglophilia-in-the-shower; the rec-room production is so inconsistent you keep losing your bearings, as befits resident art-rock fan Robert Pollard's boast (which echoes Lou Barlow's, what a coincidence) that some recordings aren't just first takes but first plays, of songs he'd dreamed up since the last time the band came over. In short, this is pop for perverts--pomo smarty-pants too prudish and/or alienated to take their pleasure without a touch of pain to remind them that they're still alive. B-

greer has been posting a bunch of (surprisingly solid) unheard GBV tunes lately.
pop for perverts, eh? i mean, i don't disagree w/ xgau there -- one of the great things for me about classic GBV is the tension betw. the gorgeous melodies and the murky production. is that perverted?

so bad Jim seems to take them down every once in a while, I missed a few of them :(