WHY I LOVE... GUIDED BY VOICES
By Fab Moretti From The Strokes
"They're, like, the band that when I started to get into music kinda
reassured me maybe I had a more of a chance of being able to do it.
Like
when you're in High School the teachers are like, 'Yeah, keep
dreaming.'
with the whole music thing. Then I heard them and their songs were so
great
and the fact that they recorded some of their stuff on a four-track
recorder
- wow. I was like, 'Shit, maybe, you know... it's still possible.'
I just think Robert Pollard is a very smart, beautiful human being.
Just
inspiring to me and the band. And he should be inspiring to a lot of
people.
They're just a really great band. We were fortunate enough to meet him
and
also tour with them. Then at Leeds festival when we were headlining we
brought him out to sing 'A Salty Salute' from 'Alien Lanes'. No-one
knew the
song or anything but we really didn't give a shit.
When I was like 15, 16, I had a best friend at that time. He just knew
all
these bands. He would never play them for anyone but for some reason he
would play me bands every once in a while, I'd just hang at his house
and
play guitar with him. He started playing Guided By Voices, an album
called
'Vampire On Titus'; there's this song called 'Donkey School' on there I
remember listening to it over and over again driving to a party and I
just
couldn't believe that I'd never heard this. It was almost like hearing
for
the first time. When I lestened to it, I almost felt, like, that same
cool
feeling I had when I first heard the Beatles - except it was great.
Everybody calls it dirty. It's recorded on a four-track and I really
like
that. It feels really intimate. It feels like you're finding a tape of
someone that no-one else knows about and it's just for you.
If you go out and party and you can listen to them at, like, six in the
morning... it's great. And if I feel sad I put some on and it just,
like,
helps you go to sleep. I'd listened to them for, like, eight years.
Then in
LA a year and a half ago, I found a new song of theirs I'd never heard
before. I couldn't belive I'd never heard something so... perfect.
Even though lots of songs are really short they also feel just right...
they
don't seem short... you just want to push 'play' again. It's so nice he
(Robert Pollard) actually told us that once - when he heard our first
record
- he said, 'You guys have great replay value.' Meaning you wanna keep
pushing 'play' after the song's over.
He's so funny, man. When we opened for him, he drove us back to our
hotel in
the van, he was just saying all these jokes. And you know... he told me
I
can call him Uncle Bob."
Fab Moretti was talking to Mark Beaumont
WHAT TO BUY
Vampire On Titus - Scat - 1993
Their breakthrough record: rough as sandpaper, recorded in a bin, but
overflowing with top-flight tunes.
Alien Lanes - Matador - 1995
Yes it's long (28 tracks). Yes, it's self indulgent. But so are GBV.
And
with songs of the calibre of 'Motor Away' in their pockets, they can do
no
wrong.
Human Amusements At Hourly Rates - Matador - 2003
Best-of compiling all the band's best moments and ditching the ones
that
sound like they're made on a broken Dictaphone