Special Feature: When You Lose Your Favorite Band
14 Cheerleader Coldfront: Guided by Voices

Tonight I will see my favorite band play live for the last time. They will have 6 shows left after tonight, but this is it for me. It's been something like 15 or so live shows, 50 plus CDs, probably around 1000 songs. It's weird when you are forced to stop being obsessive about something. It's not like I don't understand why it's ending, and I'm not as obsessive as I once was, and Robert Pollard will continue to make music, but it's still a big deal. It's the end of an era in my life. So, for the next five days on GBOAT we will go through this bands career in painstainking detail and look at why they are the only one, the only and actual true Greatest Band of All Time. I'm going to go chronoligacally through the band(and Robert Pollard)'s musical history, and give you the extended primer. Today will be from conception (84 through Propeller in '92).

I know what you are saying/thinking...five days on these old washed up drunk, non sensical, rehash hack job artists that put out 2 good records in the mid 90s. My response to that is: what good has professing a cliched negative every boring music critic opinion ever done for anybody. This band/man has soo many more brilliant songs than anyone else in the world. This band is the epitome of rock n roll. They play for 3 hours every night, people chant their name, they have insanely rabid fans, they whip people into a frenzy, they play loud, sometimes sloppy, everyone sings along, and they party hard.

In so many ways Robert Pollard is like the dreams of every rock n roll fan. He's just some dude from a midwestern town (just outside of Dayton, OH) who was obsessed with music and record collecting. He thirsted for knowledge about bands in his town where he felt like nothing was going on. In school he made up fictional bands and drew album covers and made logos and t shirts for his bands that would never exist. He kinda knew how to play guitar and he sorta wrote songs. All of the rock fantasies just seemed like pipe dreams. He did start to play in some bands (a metal band called Anacrusis) and eventually started writing and recording his own music. He made his fake band, it was called Guided by Voices. He went to college, got a job teaching school, got married, and had some kids. He made some albums but they never got out of Dayton, Ohio. They played some shows early in the early 80s, but pretty much stopped playing live. They were still basically a fantasy band. So, how did it happen that a man in his late 30s became an icon in indie rock and has for the last 10 years consistently toured, been on a major label, and generally lived the life of an indie rock star. It seems like the stuff that Disney movies about aging pitchers who finally make it to the big leagues are made out of.

Guided by Voices started in 83 or 84, who really knows, I mean that was like 20 years ago. They started playing house shows in the living rooms and playing local bars to scant crowds. They stopped playing live around 87, I believe, and didn't play live again till 92 or 93. So, for the bands first ep and 5 albums this band was like this hidden secret. Seriously, no one knew. This is the period I am looking at today. The band's first release was the ep Forever Since Breakfast in 1986. I did not hear this ep until a couple years ago, because it wasn't reissued in Box, the box set that reissued the first 4 full lengths. A solid debut, but no amazing songs. It sounds like mid 80s indie rock music. It shows the first hints of Pollard's REM obsession that is pretty prevelant over the first few albums. There is some great melodies, and the stand out track has to be "Like I Do," which is the prettiest melody on the album but is covered in a layer or two of sounds of people talking and some other indinstinguishable noises. It is foreshadowing of Pollard not being afraid to use noise and non traditional recording styles to add texture and warmth to his recordings.

The Box was released in 1995 by scat records and was 5 cds comprised of GBV's first four albums along with a 5th disc of unreleased material. In my early GBV obsessed days I would eye Box lovingly in the record store, and I got it as a birthday present from a friend in 1997. It was so daunting but I waded through this old weird material. The experience was incredibly rewarding though, as some amazing songs exist on those albums and it felt like my favorite kind of history lesson.

Two albums were released in 1987, first was Devil Between My Toes, Guided by Voices' debut full length. It is a fairly dark and rugged affair. More a weird dark rock record than a pop record, Devil Between the Toes is sorta reminiscent of some of the weirder more recent Pollard stuff like Chereographed Man of War or the Circus Devils albums. Sandbox followed later in the year, and is a much different record than Devil Between My Toes. Sandbox is the most studio feeling of the early records. All of the early records were recorded in a studio and have a not so attractivity naivity when it comes to the production of them. The record is much lighter and poppier than the previous, and it probably the most REM influenced GBV record. Pollard hadn't even found his true voice that is so recognizable and at times sounds like a different man. Sandbox also has a little flavor of Husker Du. It's a weird record, but sometimes can sound so awesome.

Self Inflicted Aerial Nostalgia is the best of the bunch of the first four albums. It was released in 1989 and it definitely contains more great songs and feels more solid, the production is still a little goofy, but as an album is works pretty dern well. It has some classic numbers like "Chief Barrel Belly," which even though marred by some raunchy tones plays out something like a Little Wings' "Faith Children" with it's repeatable/chantable uplifting chorus of positivity. It seems like the best tracks on these early albums, like the beautiful "Liar's Tale" on this album, are the ballad type jams, because they are the least adorned and the beautiful songwriting can be the focus without getting gunked up by some regrettable production. "An Earful of Wax" is an epic jam that ends in a guitar solo that is Dino Jr. in nature, which is an amazing compliment.

The 4th LP released by Guided by Voices, and the final one included in Box is Same Place the Fly Got Smashed. This 1990 album was Pollard's attempt at a concept record. The album is engaging, but not a revolution, and the concept is sorta hard to grasp. It has something to do with someone being killed, and the trial and someone being electrocuted, but maybe every song doesn't have a role in the narrative, who knows. Accordingly, the number of killer songs continue to rise.

At this point, the band has been Pollard and a rotating cast including names like Eric Payton, Don Thrasher, Eric Comstock, and more GBV associated names like Jim Pollard, Mitch Mitchell, and Tobin Sprout, but it certainly has not been the "classic line-up" that people refer to of Pollard, Sprout, Mitchell, Demos, and Fennell. The band had gone through 4 albums and 1 ep wth literally no success, as defined by financial success or critical praise. It must have all seemed pretty pointless. They were getting no feedback other than a few friends and family. Therefore, Robert Pollard decided that their next album would be the last. He was feeling pressure from family members that this hobby was too expensive and not healthy for his family life. He wanted to make one more album, his last great one, so he collected all his great songs and went to make a record.

Propeller was originally only released in an edition of 500 LPs all with unique hand done covers, a truly special was to go out as a band. Something weird happened, though, because some of those 500 copies starting to get into the hands of influential people like Matt Sweeney of Chavez and Thurston Moore. GBV started to get just the teeniest, cutest amount of buzz. Why did this happen now? Was it just persistence or was it an accident or a fluke?? No way, Propeller was a huge leap for leap for the band. the first album where Pollard truly found his vocal vibe, and the productions are much better, and the songs are really all classics. The album opens with what sounds like a pretty large crowd chanting "GBV! GBV! GBV! GBV!" It seems like a cheap ploy, but it really works and gets you pumped. The album features the band's most driving and powerful rock anthems so far, with the epic opener "Over the Neptune/Mesh Gear Fox," and the punk "Exit Flagger," and equally as powerful but in a haunting way songs like "14 Cheerleader Coldfront," which is the first collaboration between Pollard and Tobin Sprout. It is the 1st album that really feels like a classic GBV album that could be identified as GBV as a casual fan. The band started to get a little attention from a few labels (up until this point the band had been releasing the albums themselves) and a few more reviews for the album. Soon thereafter to band agreed to work with Scat records. I believe GBV played their first live show in forever not too long after this at CMJ. They drove to New York just for the show, and Pollard was so nervous for the show he had to get real drunk to do it, and that started that tradition in the band. Propeller is a true turning point for the band, and maybe their biggest stepping stone to their soon to come fame.

5 albums. 1 ep. Over one hundred songs. GBV had been plugging away for years and they were on the brink of something huge. They were soon to become The Greatest Band of All Time.

note: sorry for the overwhelming amount of mp3s, but it's my favoirte band and it's been so hard just to whittle it down to this many. they have soo many songs, so trust me, these are good ones.

Stay tuned...tomorrow: Vampire on Titus, Bee Thousand, Alien Lanes, and a bunch of eps.