C or D : Guided By Voices.

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?

I've been following that Hot Freaks service with some interest, but honestly I have a hard time dropping a hundred bucks all at once. I wish there was a monthly billing option or something, that would probable be easier to swallow.

Freedom Cruise actually released two songs - "Cruise" on the Freedom Cruise/Nightwatchers split and another once called "Sensational Gravity Boy". originally on one of those Red, Hot + Bothered comps but a slightly different version was on that 2xCD Crickets comp.

Pop Zeus is truly great -- longtime fave in my house

Esp the inscrutable lyrics,

Pop Zeus, electric noose
paper boy

or Pop Zeus, electric newspaper boy?!

although i hope it's the latter bc i don't like white ppl singing about nooses tbh

It's the latter.

Periodically I try getting to grip with his post-GBV career but it's a hard slog!

is there a link to that playlist you can share Hadrian, or am I just being stupid and not seeing it?

I can send you a link to download if you dm me—it's an actual mix, not a playlist

— last of the Spotify holdouts

got it, message sent with thanks!

Pop Zeus, electric noose
paper boy

or Pop Zeus, electric newspaper boy?!

the latter. it's a reference to rich turiel (i think?) who started postal blowfish, the email mailing list for GBV fans, which bob referred to as his "electric newspaper"

it's definitely a ref to the founder of PB, i'm just not 100% that was rich (tho I think it was)

Rich didn't start Postal Blowfish. He was among the early members (as was I) before he met the band and became their tour manager, etc. That newspaper boy reference is to Ed someone who was a friend of Bob who would print off reviews and other gbv related web content (maybe PB too, I don't know) and bring it to Bob on paper, because Bob didn't have a computer.

^^^ Yeah, this gets mentioned in Closer You Are, though I don't have it at hand to confirm further. But yeah, someone would print reviews of the internet and hand them to Bob to read.

That's it, Ed! It's been well over a decade since I was a PBer, tbh. I'm pretty sure ED would print off the PB digest for Bob.

lol
i know i have had this convo about Pop Zeus before too

He was among the early members (as was I)

raising my hands for the early postal blowfish roll call. the day i sent my first email to the group, maybe the day after, two total strangers who lived near me in brooklyn emailed me to invite me on a road trip to see gbv in philly, and i thought to myself "i'm not getting in a fucking car with two total strangers just because we like the same band. what if they kidnap me? or murder me? what if they make me drink warm beer and listen to nightwalker songs the whole way down?" it was matt & jon, the brothers who started spare me records, totally awesome dudes as i later learned, but i didn't know that yet. i passed on that particular road trip.

Ha, I did roadtrip early on with Matt and Jon, from nyc to Dayton...w/o having met them before except on PB. Their sister came too I think?

Got the whole tour and stayed at Don Thrasher's place.... we caravaned to a show at Southgate House in KY and then with the band to some greasy spoon afterward, a trip highlight for me as I prompted Bob to change the song Melted Pat to Patty Melt, and he obliged with a couple verses

I remember listening to The Shoes all the way back, and also Bob finishing Jim's fries and singing "cold fries for robot boy" as he did so

ha ha ha awesome.

later postal blowfish memories include michael azerrad starting a long, combative thread in which he argued, repeatedly and repetitively, that gbv's lo-fi recording aesthetic was a good thing because the lo-fi aesthetic was an essential part of their sound whereas pavement's lo-fi recording aesthetic was a bad thing because the lo-fi aesthetic was not an essential part of their sound and in fact detracted from one's ability to enjoy the music and therefore was not only bad, but evil, because music is an essential part of our lives and music can actually save our lives, like medicine, and anything that gets in the way of that, like an unessential lo-fi recording aesthetic, should be considered a crime. or something like that. this was before twitter was invented and, therefore, before the block button was invented, unfortunately.

I for one am grateful that some of my worst opinions predated the Constant Record

oh god me too

my PB memories are mostly the kleenex girl wonder dude trolling people

i love reading these memories, feel like the only band i was ever so fanatical about during their nascent years went on to do things that don't impress me much, so it feels very embarrassing.

Azzerad was on PB??

Azzerad was on PB??

indeed he was, for a short time in the early days.

Oone thing that kind of bothers me about Pavement's "lo-fi" distinction is that they recorded everything up to Crooked Rain at Gary Young's original studio that had a 24-track MCI console which if you are familiar with is approximately the size (132"x41"x38") of ~200 Tascam 424s (18"x14"x4") such as the ones actually used by GBV, Sebadoh, Silver Jews, et.al. Slanted & Enchanted is extremely hi-fi compared to Alistair Galbraith or The Grifters music from the same period.

I've come to the conclusion that Sgt. Disco might be one of the most underrated albums in Pollard's catalog.

it's so good, also the next two after that,Ataxia and Gringo

Kind of can't get over 'Society Dome' at the moment

Streaming show this Friday...from the official website:

"Full electric set from an empty venue to your living room. Professionally mixed and pre-recorded with 7 cameras on a big socially-distanced stage. Unlike a lot of other streams, this is not acoustic in the living room… It will look and sound amazing."

Which is a little disappointing because I think I'd prefer to see sad man in him room GbV.

what's the capacity of that venue?

Maybe it's out there somewhere, but I haven't been able to confirm what they mean by "venue". In true Pollard style, it should be a Dayton garage somewhere.

Occupancy: Brightside Bar Only - 130 Bright Bar + Vodvil Ballroom - 430

https://www.thebrightsidedayton.com/

What music or art have you turned to for comfort?

I read a lot. Mostly biographies, conspiracies, or metaphysical stuff. Alice Bailey, H.P. Blavatsky, that sort of thing. I have art books, and I like to occasionally examine the works of people like Ernst, Rauschenberg, Pollack, Jasper Johns, Basquiat, collagists like Kurt Schwitters, Hannah Hoch. Lots of surrealists. Of course, I listen to a lot of rock. Mostly Sixties and Seventies.

https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/gbv-album-styles-we-paid-for-robert-pollard-1033011/

Bob getting into theosophy is funny and awesome

Great article, thanks.

I think it was the alien lanes thread a couple months ago where people were convinced that Bob was a sports-bar-schlub, and I was saying that was an unfortunate (quasi-classist?) angle of their initial marketing (Scat/early-Matador) that stuck. The guy's obviously well-read and possessing well beyond average awareness of post-modern art.

I think I was arguing in that thread that you can be both

there's nothing to argue about
of course you can be both!

That particular intersection is much narrower than you guys are making it seem, ime/imho.

I was worried for a while that he might be a Trump guy, but then he was sending videos to Beto O'Rourke saying "we are with you in your anger" so I feel a little better now.

If a 'sports bar schlub' just means a guy who likes drinking beer and watching sport then that's not all that narrow an intersection tbh.

xp what in the world would ever make you suspect that?

Those Cash Rivers records leaned pretty heavily into his "it's politically incorrect and if you don't like it don't listen to it" shtick that seems to pop up here and there. Just a bad vibe. More than happy to be wrong!

I didn’t know Beto was a GBV head

Re: his politics, I've never gotten bad or edgelord vibes except from some lyrics that use homophobic slurs and some pretty, uh, questionable lyrics that could be construed as misogynist...but the former instance is singular ('coming into town with the giggling faggots') and the latter is just sort of a thing that I think pervades most of cis male fronted guitar music.

he also said he would allow "no girls in the clubhouse" and that tipped me off to his particular brand of misogyny. most people at least pretend.

aw I don't think that's misogynistic—any more than the No Boys Allowed! thread. Just a bunch of married dorks watching basketball.

I think Tobin Sprout is a conservative

^^ he is
and i disagree Hadrian. the power dynamics are different with no boys allowed and i think that's pretty obvious.