C or D : Guided By Voices.

I want to train a neural network on Bob song titles but exclude "Your Cricket Is Rather Unique" and take bets on how long it takes the neural network to come up with "Your Cricket Is Rather Unique".

"Tiger on Top" is pretty fun! Otherwise Sweating the Plague feels like he's on autopilot so far.

Guitar player in my old band used to lighten the mood by launching into fake Pollard songs: “This one’s called Canadian Toothbrush Girls!” “This one’s called Umbrellas Go Viral!”

There are a lot of fake Pollard songs on this one.

His songwriting would be a lot more interesting to me at this point if he veered off of the rock music highway even periodically. I feel like he is very conservative in this way -- esp w choice of collaborators etc. Someone with as much energy as he has could be writing more ambitious music.

But isn’t the lack of ambition sort of his thing?

Not that I was aware of? Back in the 80s he probably dreamed of this day if I’m to believe the stuff I’ve read. Now we are here.

I think his major ambition was to make a rock record that sounded like FM stuff he listened to growing up.

he did try that once or twice

pretty sure "overloaded" is my OPO from '10s gbv. dunno what my pick would be when restricted to pollard songs
― ciderpress, Wednesday, March 4, 2020 1:59 PM (one week ago)

Same, I'd say this is the best GBV song 2010-2019.

My 2nd favorite is "Hang Up and Try Again." Class Clown Spots a UFO is probably the least-spotty LP from start to finish.

I don't know, I don't really want him to show more ambition. Restraint, on the other hand...

But obviously from his standpoint it's more a question of reputation vs. steady income so ::shrug::

So now that I've backtracked to Sweating the Plague and Warp and Woof and found them both rather meh, I'm that much more impressed with Surrender Your Poppy Field. Looking at the tracklisting of Zeppelin Over China and thinking maybe I'll hold off before diving into that thing.

I might need to give Space Gun a few more spins since everyone seemed to like it way more than I did, new one has definitely passed August by Cake in my personal rankings though. Will also add "Physician" to the list of essential tracks, that was a big grower for me.

I shudder to think how many new songs there will be in the next six months

Alien Lanes getting vinyl reissue in the summer. It's 25 years old. I am so so old now.

we are sweating the plague while doing isolation drills

half smiles of the decomposed under the bushes, under the stars

There's a terrible action movie playing on the background on television at the moment and, every so often, I glance over at it to see Robert Pollard in it - except it's Tom Berenger and, if anything, Pollard looks even more like him now they're both ruddy faced, bloated and silver haired.

Pollard looks much less bloated for 62 than I ever would have thought, actually.

I've been taking advantage of the lockdown to go through all of these records and give add'l listens to *all* the Fading Captain stuff and "side" stuff, solo records etc. gumming up my hard drive. Decades of getting numbed to the glut has really made me take this catalog for granted. It's pretty mindblowing, chaff be damned.

One thing that w/ time and a wider lens really jumps out: the current version of this band is fucking great, and every one of their now seven records save for maybe Sweating The Plague is better than every one of the seven preceding "reunion" records. You can hear how these guys respond Bob and encourage subtler and more dynamic writing on his part. And this last one is maybe the best of those, too?

Haha, I'm doing a similar chronological trip through Pollard's catalog. Up to Half Smiles of the Decomposed right this minute, which is a lot better than I'd remembered and has a killer first side.

I had the same experience w/ that one...I found it totally unremarkable on release but there's a bunch of good stuff there

Is that so? Good to hear. I've only ever really been focused on the "classic" lineup and earlier because back then Bob (with Tobin) was so interested in experimenting... after that era is was just Bob striving to be the indie The Who. Every song became another mid-tempo big chord rocker... therefore only a few albums here and there stood out but all of it is so complacent in that formula. Even if done well it blends together. The experiments of the old days were like these little audio sketches and Bob's collages complimented them well in that regard; like these tiny little surreal worlds cut and paste together. And all the "throwaways" were at the very least palette cleansers and/or functioned as interludes to the bigger moments. Albums were like journeys through backroads where you see a lot of weird things pass by quickly and frequently, later albums just felt like taking the highway- a lot of the same with steady momentum.

My copy of that new Zeppelin Over Dayton album-by-album book is supposed to arrive tomorrow, and I just finally finished Closer You Are - so it's gonna be a Pollard summer around these parts.

I have that in the mail, too.... Evan, there's been a lot more shorter/out stuff on the recent records

after that era is was just Bob striving to be the indie The Who. Every song became another mid-tempo big chord rocker...

I'm actually looking forward to my revisit through the years between GbV. I'd almost forgotten just how many interesting projects he tossed off in that inter-zone - Keene Brothers with Tommy Keene, Mars Classroom with Gary Waleik from Big Dipper and Cosmos with Richard Davies. This was also the era when he started my very favorite side project band, Boston Spaceships.

Fair! To clarify that was just my impression having not checked out every album beyond 1997. However I really like Earthquake Glue!

xp

https://i.imgur.com/wu1uRKB.jpg

NIGHTMARE ON NEEDMORE

If anyone here is curious abt the more marginal/dark/lysergic stuff (or just interested in a distillation) I made this noise/psych/folk tape collage/soundscape incl. Acid Ranch, Circus Devils, Nightwalker, Howling Wolf Orchestra, Antler, Sunflower Logic, Teenage Guitar etc

It's loooong but good for dropping in anywhere in the middle, more of a damaged radio station... hmu!

GBV lol:
my partner tried to cheer me up by getting me that t-shirt from the time bob was in the paper for his no-hitter. unfortunately, it didn't come in any ladies' sizes or even a "small"

totally predictable SAD TROMBONE

i like that album w the Keene bros -- there's one song in particular that I LOOVED...can't remember what it's called...

I thought about ordering that t-shirt, but jeez talk about not so subtly reinforcing the idea that GBV is only beloved by dudes.

"Death of the Party"!!!

She drives like an exodus
Slow to the steeple
And her touch is sad
The cold room is clean
And it's distant from people
But the bugs are bad
<3 <3 <3

the melody is so poignant + i like the lyrics a lot, they feel very classic bob to me

Oh yeah, that is a great one!

Could go for a Spotify playlist of the best bits of the side projects!

yes plz

Once I work my way through, maybe I'll try and throw one together!

these Boston Spaceships songs belong on there: Let it Rest for a Little While, Bad Whiskey, Christmas Girl

oh and The Naked Wall and Island of Lost Lucys from that Keene Brothers album, those too

One of the fun things about working my way back through all of these is picking up things like Bob having had the title for Zeppelin Over China as far back as "Thelonious Has Eaten All the Paper" back on the Circus Devils record from 2005.

Also...Bobby Bare Jr is this band now?? weird

― The Desus & Mero Chain (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Tuesday, July 10, 2018 4:08 PM (one year ago)

Haha, yeah, he joined in 2016 after the "classic lineup" split up again.

Could go for a Spotify playlist of the best bits of the side projects!

ha, so I did that too

https://i.imgur.com/fdOXLdr.jpg

MILES OF CONCENTRATION

Again, this one's super-long but zero filler—111 tracks drawn from 52 records. Obviouslt not to be listened to in one sitting, again more like a radio station. The longer tracks are edited down so it flows more like an early GBV album...all segued and w/ some light EQing here and there

This covers non-GBV recordings since 2001... the solo records + Boston Spaceships / Carbon Whales / Keene Brothers / Cosmos / ESP Ohio / Airport 5 / Freedom Cruise / Lifeguards / Psycho and The BIrds / Mars Classroom / Phantom Tollbooth / The Takeovers etc... DM me if you'd like

Nice! Those both sound absolutely killer.

Thank you!!!

I remember listening to a Tommy Keene track off of The Merry-Go-Round Broke Down... I think it was the epic "The Final Hour" song and thinking how cool it would be if Pollard collaborated with him... THEN found out they already had? It blew my mind a little.

DM'd you Hadrian! My big Pollard blind spot is pretty much the 10-year period after the 2004 breakup, and the idea of going back to see what I missed has been intimidating, so this playlist sounds like exactly what I need.

Anyone else doing the Hot Freaks subscription service? I signed up a couple days ago and I've been catching up on the stuff that was sent out over the past several weeks. Most interesting thing for me so far has been the Do the Collapse demos. 20+ tracks of Doug working out his lead parts over Bob's acoustic demos, occasionally adding full-band arrangements. Hearing the songs stripped down like this makes me feel like Bob was really at a high point in terms of pure pop songwriting around this time. Just lovely, interesting chord progression and melodies all over the place. Apparently Ocasek made the call to drop some of this stuff and Bob came up with a few proggier things ("Liquid Indian," etc.) at his request. Most of the scrapped tracks ended up on the Hold On Hope EP (which is fantastic).

On top of that, Speak Kindly of Your Volunteer Fire Department came out a few months after DtC, with some of the best pop songs Pollard's ever written. I don't know how "Pop Zeus" hasn't remained a live staple since those days.

I'm tempted but yikes at $100...and just as I'm finally getting my arms around these 2,500 or whatever songs

I shld add that above "side project" mix^ has a smattering of reunion-era GBV, only cuz on review I didn't feel those records merited their own mix, but whatever it's all Bob

Speak Kindly is easily ni my top 5 gbv/gbv-related LPs.

the Freedom Cruise project is just one song or is it more?