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=> GENERAL DISCUSSION => Topic started by: Bags on November 17, 2003, 11:13:00 am
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November 17, 2003
The Band That Can't Stop Recording
By CHRIS NELSON
Avid record collectors might understand someone acquiring eight copies of the same album. Truly devoted fans might even fathom paying $950 for a copy of that album. But certainly only a fanatic for the indie-rock group Guided by Voices could sympathize with Breck Rowell, who paid up to $950 each for eight copies of one of the group's vinyl records, and Mr. Rowell doesn't even own a turntable to play them on.
The record is "Propeller," originally released by the band's own Rockathon Records label in 1992. Each of the 500 copies pressed at the time has a unique cover handmade by Guided by Voices and its leader, the singer and guitarist Robert Pollard. Mr. Rowell, a 39-year-old from Placentia, Calif., who runs the Guidedbyrobertpollard.com fan Web site, said by telephone that he bought most of his copies through eBay and one through a former Guided by Voices guitarist, Tobin Sprout. That he would hunt down so many copies of "Propeller," and shell out so much for them, is indicative of the obsessive relationship many Guided by Voices fans have with their favorite band.
Such zealous devotion "gives me a sense of job security," Mr. Pollard, 46, said by phone from a tour stop in Towson, Md.
His output is, to say the least, rare in pop music. According to the online Guided by Voices Database, Mr. Pollard has released 811 songs since forming the band in Dayton, Ohio, in 1983. By contrast, Bob Dylan has put out about 450 in 40 years.
The group, still based in Dayton, has issued 15 albums, 16 shorter, extended-play releases and 18 singles, not to mention a handful of additional semi-official live albums, piles of tracks on compilations and split-releases with other bands. And then there are the two dozen albums and singles cut by Mr. Pollard under his own name or with other indie-rock bands like Airport 5, Go Back Snowball and Robert Pollard and His Soft Rock Renegades.
His songs run a short gamut between guitar-driven, supremely hummable power-pop and spacey progressive rock, with classic-rock echoes of the Who pulsating throughout. Mr. Pollard's lyrics are often fanciful; some of his earlier work is so nonsensical as to border on Dadaistic. When songs aren't stocked with musings on girls, they're likely to invoke space ships, airplanes or military imagery. A song title like "Back to Saturn X Radio Report" from 1992's "Propeller" would sound right at home next to "Father Sgt. Christmas Card" on last year's "Universal Truths and Cycles."
At the moment Mr. Pollard has two new Guided by Voices albums in the works, along with another box set of unissued material to be culled from the 500 songs he estimates he has written but not released. In addition, the band, which played the Brooklyn club Warsaw last Wednesday, tours regularly. (The current members are Doug Gillard, guitar; Nate Farley, guitar; Chris Slusarenko, bass; and Kevin March, drums.)
Mr. Pollard knows that every album, every single and all the side-project discs he issues will probably be bought by at least a corps of diehard fans, which he numbers at about 3,000. Several Guided by Voices albums have each sold about 50,000 copies. While those aren't platinum figures, they're enough to allow Mr. Pollard to continue answering his apparently chatty muse.
Earlier this month Guided by Voices released "Hardcore UFO's: Revelations, Epiphanies and Fast Food in the Western Hemisphere," a five-CD and DVD box set â?? the band's third box in eight years. That collection coincided with the new single-disc compendium, "Human Amusements at Hourly Rates: The Best of Guided by Voices." Both were issued by Matador Records, which just put out Guided by Voices' "Earthquake Glue" in August.
In 2003 alone, additional labels, including Mr. Pollard's own Fading Captain Series, have released four other new albums by Mr. Pollard or his extracurricular bands.
All of this would be nearly impossible to keep track of were it not for the ardent efforts of fans like Jeff Warren, 32, of Austin, Tex. His Guided by Voices Database (www.gbvdb.com) is a Guided by Voices geek's dream, a searchable index of Mr. Pollard's mammoth output. Todd Robinson, who is both a collector and one of Mr. Pollard's two partners in the Fading Captain Series, was only half joking when he called the drive to obtain each release a sickness.
Mr. Pollard's impressionist songwriting style seems to attract fans with a, well, fanatical bent, Mr. Warren said. "You probably get a lot of people who are more, I wouldn't say artistic, but creative," Mr. Warren said. "Or maybe just anal-retentive."
Still, some supporters who laud the quality of the music admit to being exhausted by the quantity. Andrew Carden, a 33-year-old fan from London who began his love affair with Guided by Voices in 1995 with "Alien Lanes," said he had finally begun to run out of steam as a collector. "If I was going to try and keep pace, it was going to damage my bank balance," he said by phone.
Even Gerard Cosloy, an owner of Matador Records, called the output "impressive but unwieldy." With so many titles from Mr. Pollard on store shelves and more always around the corner, it is difficult to create the sense that each new Guided by Voices release from Matador is an event, he said. At the same time, he acknowledged Matador's contribution to the flood.
A fervent record collector himself, Mr. Pollard said he understood some fans' fixation on possessing every song he writes. Yet he said it was strange to know that some continued collecting even when they had lost interest in the music. "They need to keep that collection complete, you know," he said. "Now it's too late; there's no turning back."
Mr. Pollard was already recording his lyrics at age 9. By fifth grade he was imagining conceptual albums, and during high school he created about 150 different album covers, which he has since destroyed, he said. Even today, Mr. Pollard designs most of his own album art. It wasn't until 1994, 11 years after he started Guided by Voices, that he quit his job as an elementary-school teacher to pursue music full time.
Part of Mr. Pollard's appeal is his stature with his fans as both an average dude and an artistic genius â?? as both a basement-music-player-turned-rock-star and a creator whose fecundity is legend. Will the well ever run dry?
"I don't think that really Bob's songwriting talent or prowess is going to falter," said his partner, Mr. Robinson. Such is the fervent hope, of course, of Mr. Pollard's loyal following. At Guidedbyrobertpollard.com, Mr. Rowell admits to having worried about Mr. Pollard's losing his golden touch.
"I'm not sure how I would deal with that," he said.
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Several of the people quoted in this article are on GBV's listserv, Postal Blowfish, and were surprised by which quotes were used in the article, or more accurately, which quotes were not used in the article. It talks very little about the music. Anyway, I am off to see them twice this weekend in Chicago, last shows of the tour, with Tobin Sprout opening, in what appears to be an Irish Pub (Abbey Pub), woo hoo.
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Enjoy! I'll have to wait for the next go 'round myself.
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Pollard,
I am going also with E. Gross and a couple others. Where are you staying? Any word on a preshow as of yet? We are leaving the DC are on Friday.
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Originally posted by marchdoe:
Pollard,
I am going also with E. Gross and a couple others. Where are you staying? Any word on a preshow as of yet? We are leaving the DC are on Friday.
Going with one other person, we are staying at one of the chain hotels on Michigan Avenue (can't remember which now), probably not very close to the venue, but we will probably cab it, no idea about preshow yet.
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kind of an off the wall question, but do any of the hardcore fans have any idea if gbv usually hits maxwell's in hoboken?
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Originally posted by god's shoeshine:
kind of an off the wall question, but do any of the hardcore fans have any idea if gbv usually hits maxwell's in hoboken?
http://gbvdb.com/albums.asp?album_title=maxwell&setlist=True (http://gbvdb.com/albums.asp?album_title=maxwell&setlist=True)
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http://www.guidedbyrobertpollard.com/propeller/ (http://www.guidedbyrobertpollard.com/propeller/)
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wow, two fantastic GBV shows this weekend in chicago, best I have seen in terms of both performance on stage and fun in the crowd
and now I sit here back in DC, 1 hour of sleep, 9 or 10 hours after the second show ended and wondering how I am going to make it til the end of the work day, and not able to hear
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maybe you should go and have a beer
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here is the setlist from Sunday nights GBV show, which might be the best show I have ever seen, add to this 6 or so GBV songs Tobin Sprout did as the opener
Lethargy
Of Mites and Men
Idiot Princess
Little Lines
She Goes Off at Night
Wire Greyhounds
Skin Parade
Finks
Mix Up the Satellites
Tractor Rape Chain
Everywhere With Helicopter
My Kind of Soldier
Mascara Snakes
Start At The River
Get Under It
I'll Replace You With Machines
Queen of Can and Jars
Red Ink Superman
Things I Will Keep
A Trophy Mule Particular
Apology in Advance
Secret Star
Game of Pricks
Christian Animation Torch Carriers
Back to the Lake
The Ids are Alright
Useless Inventions
Bull Spears
Postal Blowfish
Trap Soul Door
Beg for a Wheelbarrow
As We Go Up. As We Go Down
The Best of Jill Hives
Shocker in Gloomtown
Watch Me Jumpstart
Twilight Campfigter
Harrison Adams
Buzzards and Crows
Drinkers Peace
Main Street Wizards
The Official Ironman Rally Song
Hey Aardvark
Hot Freaks
Murder Charge
Cut-out Witch
encore:
Skills like This
Motor Away
Alone, Stinking and Unafraid
Glad Girls
I Am a Scientist
Baba O'Riley
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ok, gbv has started announcing their 2004 dates. . .nothing close by yet, although they are doing a jaunt through the south, missour-a, and ohio. sparx, any word on area dates?
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Originally posted by Venerable Bede:
ok, gbv has started announcing their 2004 dates. . .nothing close by yet, although they are doing a jaunt through the south, missour-a, and ohio. sparx, any word on area dates?
I think I will be headed to Louisville and Columbus.
and I know that was probably for my benefit but Missouri (as in Missouree)
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Originally posted by pollard:
Originally posted by Venerable Bede:
ok, gbv has started announcing their 2004 dates. . .nothing close by yet, although they are doing a jaunt through the south, missour-a, and ohio. sparx, any word on area dates?
I think I will be headed to Louisville and Columbus.
and I know that was probably for my benefit but Missouri (as in Missouree) [/b]
i hate the server where i work. .
don't know if i could go to columbus, what with their own sniper, and i'm doing enough travelling in january. . .
my mom and the rest of my family that still live there call it missour-a. . .course, they live in the ozarks and probably still make their own moonshine.
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Originally posted by Venerable Bede:
my mom and the rest of my family that still live there call it missour-a. . .course, they live in the ozarks and probably still make their own moonshine.
oh I am well aware a lot of people there say it incorrectly
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So are you Show Me Staters voting for the aptly-named "Dick" Gephardt (http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&u=/031201/480/dcn10412012304&e=1&ncid=1756)?
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i have a friend or two in columbus...but i hate traveling in the cold. signs would point to a weekday date if they hit pittsburgh, too. if it was a saturday or even sunday date, i would be travel home, i bet.
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Originally posted by ggwâ?¢:
So are you Show Me Staters voting for the aptly-named "Dick" Gephardt (http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&u=/031201/480/dcn10412012304&e=1&ncid=1756)?
well it would be great to have dick and bush run against each other but I can't stand him, nice picture
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From Rich T. the gbv.com webmaster -
After January tour I wouldn't expect any major touring for a little while.
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But no idea if they'll be coming to DC?....
I hate that I missed that Phillie show.
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Originally posted by Bagster:
But no idea if they'll be coming to DC?....
I hate that I missed that Phillie show.
the january dates have been announced already no dc
Wednesday December 31
San Diego, CA - 4th & B
345 B St
Tickets on sale at Ticketmaster.com on 12/6 at 12 PM
Thursday January 8
Nashville, TN - Exit In
Tickets on sale at Ticketmaster.com
Friday January 9
Athens, GA - 40 Watt Club
Saturday January 10
Gainesville, FL - Market Street Pub
Monday January 12
Orlando, FL - The Social
Tickets on sale at Ticketmaster.com
Tuesday January 13
Jacksonville, FL - Jackrabbits
Wednesday January 14
Tallahassee, FL - Beta Bar
Friday January 16
Houston, TX - Engine Room
Saturday January 17
Austin, TX - La Zona Rosa
Sunday January 18 TBA
Tuesday January 20
Columbia, MO - Blue Note
Tickets on sale at Ticketmaster.com
Wednesday January 21
St. Louis, MO - Mississippi Nights
Friday January 23
Louisville, KY - Headliners
Saturday January 24
Columbus, OH - Little Brothers
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Brian Jonestown Massacre will open all of the January tour dates
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Originally posted by pollard:
Brian Jonestown Massacre will open all of the January tour dates
Shit,now I've gotta make a road trip.Anybody hittin any of these show?
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Originally posted by SPARX:
Shit,now I've gotta make a road trip.Anybody hittin any of these show?
got tickets for Columbus today, may be going to Louisville
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Originally posted by pollard:
Originally posted by SPARX:
Shit,now I've gotta make a road trip.Anybody hittin any of these show?
got tickets for Columbus today, may be going to Louisville [/b]
Make sure you wear your flak jacket and helmet on the way to Columbus,particularly I 270.I'm still hoping for an add of a coupla shows the last week of January.
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...just not here on the 29th. don't want to have to choose between them and les savy fav
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Originally posted by Venerable Bede:
ok, gbv has started announcing their 2004 dates. . .nothing close by yet, although they are doing a jaunt through the south, missour-a, and ohio. sparx, any word on area dates?
Looks like their could be a Pittsburgh and NYC shows added to the tour but nothing confirmed yet.(fingers crossed)
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Originally posted by SPARX:
Originally posted by Venerable Bede:
ok, gbv has started announcing their 2004 dates. . .nothing close by yet, although they are doing a jaunt through the south, missour-a, and ohio. sparx, any word on area dates?
Looks like their could be a Pittsburgh and NYC shows added to the tour but nothing confirmed yet.(fingers crossed) [/b]
The Pittsburgh and NYC will be BJM only.I can post the dates as they are confirmed if anybody is interested.Last show with GBV is Columbus.Hope they catch that damn sniper before then.I really hate being shot at,it's absolutely no fun at all.
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Originally posted by pollard:
Originally posted by SPARX:
Shit,now I've gotta make a road trip.Anybody hittin any of these show?
got tickets for Columbus today, may be going to Louisville [/b]
Count me in for Columbus.It's a Saturday night AND the last date of their tour together.Should be one helluva party!!The Dayton "Monument Club" wil be in full attendance.Man those guys can throw down!!
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non gbv fans ignore
Here are some pictures of GBV in the studio recording their next album from this weekend. Yes that is Tobin Sprout in the studio with them.
http://www.gbv.com/waterloo2004.html (http://www.gbv.com/waterloo2004.html)