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

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