Special Feature: When You Lose Your Favorite Band
Day 4 - Picture Me Bigtime: Guided by Voices

1999, what a year, it was filled with tension, that amazing mix of anticipation and fear. It seemed as though everyone was making moves, making sure they were happy, re-evaluating things, and securing things. Robert Pollard was antsy. He wasn't quite sure what he needed in his Y2K survival kit. He needed something more than the comfortable indie world he was existing in. He wanted more, he wanted to hear his songs on the radio, he wanted to write songs that were in movies, or something! He didnt just want to coast along in this safe world anymore. Guided by Voices signed to TVT records and started to record their major label debut album with uber producer Ric Ocasek. The thing that set Robert Pollard apart from almost every other band who signs to a major label is that he knew he wouldn't be happy just making a small amount of very commercial music, and had a relationship with TVT where he could release solo albums and other projects stuff without a problem. It was an unsure time, but it was this clause in the contract that let us all know that everything would be OK anyway about it.

Pollard's first release while signed to the major label was actually not on the major label, but one of the contract clause albums. It was a solo album by the name of Kid Marine and it was the first release on Pollard's own Fading Captain Series label. This album is truly a Pollard great. It really did let us know everything would be alright. No matter what GBV released as he reached for the stars there would always be material like this album for those of us who cared enough to search it out. This album brought Greg Demos, classic lineup bassist, back into the mix, as well as Jim Macpherson, former Breeders drummer who had also worked on the Waved Out album and was soon to become a full fledged member of GBV. One of the great things about Kid Marine is the inclusion of Jim Pollard as producer. It seems as though when Jim Pollard's name is involved with releases it always means there are some interesting noises and weird tones and textures. He is always credited for things such as "dropping an amp" or "detuned guitar" or things like this. I view this album as a more sucessful and more cohesive attempt at marrying a big rock sound to a bit of a strange narrative like GBV tried to do on Mag Earwhig. This album flows really wonderfully and seems to be telling a story of some type. Like on Mag Earwhig, Pollard give some songs more length, but on here it is done with more purpose than just adding another verse and chorus as here it allows different ideas to come into songs or songs to develop better or just even to drone on and I mean drone on in a positive way. I remember listening to this album near Lake Shasta on I-5 heading north on the way home from my first rock-n-roll tour and there is an road with an exit named Pollard Flat, and all things just seemed perfect.

Two more releases soon followed on the Fading Captain Series: a mostly forgetable weird noise CD by the Bloomington, IN band Nightwalker (which was actually Pollard), and Ask Them by Lexo and the Leapers, which was Pollard recording with a Dayton band called The Tastees as his backing band. Ask Them is a really great EP that features a few great songs that became live staples for years ("Time Machines" and "Alone Stinking and Unafraid) and one song ("Fair Touching") that was actually rerecorded for a GBV album down the line.

The major label debut, Do The Collapse, dropped in August of 1999. Everything about the album is foreign to GBV. All GBV albums upto this point had that creat collage artwork of Pollard, but this album featured some slick goofy art. It was a bit of a disaster. It, of course, has some amazing songs, but as an album it sounds pretty dry and flat (dry and flat???)and a bit dead. Apparently, Ocasek clamped down hard on the band's partying in the studio and was a bit of a taskmaster. Ocasek pushed hard for the pop tunes and as a result the big single pushed from the album was the schmaltzy ballad "Hold on Hope," which got some awkward plays on TV medical dramas and was performed equally as awkwardly on Conan O'Brien with shiny shirts and a string quartet. Pollard has denounced "Hold on Hope" completely since then and does not talk positively about recording with Ocasek. Even the weird Pollard stuff, like "In Stitches" sounds just so crisp and digital and yucky and neutered. And the cutesy, cloying "Wrecking Now," features strings used in the absolutely worst way. It's just too clean. The album doesn't work....BUT...it is still chock full of some great songs like the amazing anthem, "Teenage FBI," the beautifully wandering "Surgical Focus," and the mega melodic "Much Better Mr. Buckles." Overall, pretty much a train wreck, so let's move on quickly.

Continuing his recent trend Pollard followe up a big GBV release with a solo album that topped the GBV release. In November Speak Kindly of Your Volunteer Fire Department, which is a release credited to Robert Pollard with Doug Gillard, was released and it totally took our minds off of Do The Collapse. It has maybe more great pop songs than Do The Collapse has with "Frequent Weaver Who Burns," "Pop Zues," "And I Don't So Now I Do," and "Tight Globes." In between all the great pop jams are a handful of much more touching jams than any of the crud ballads on Do The Collapse. I was stop harshing DTC but listening to this great album makes you realize the failure that the previous was. All the instruments on this record were recorded by Doug Gillard, and he co-wrote a few tracks on this album. I think that Pollard works best and produces his best output when he is working with someone he is very comfortable with and the majority of the album is made by a small tight crew.

The major release for the year 2000 was the epic box set Suitcase. It was 4 CDs each with 25 songs each, for a grand total of 100 songs all of which were all unreleased. We all knew that they had this material in them, but it was still incredibly exciting and overwhelming to get this huge lump of it all at once. The CDs are very inconsistent, but overall very rewarding. To sit down and listen to these tracks which range in years from 1976-2000 is really amazing. It's like watching an incredible documentary about a band you love. So many great songs you had never heard, so many. Word is, there may be a Suitcase 2 on the way. It's such a weird band to love so much. There is so much material to go through, and so you never have to get bored, but it can get expensive and tedious from time to time, but I think they are one of the best bands to have these sorts of love feelings about.

GBV returned to the studio as a band, and emerged with a 2nd album for TVT Records. This record was called "Isolation Drills" and was released in April 2001. The album is a vast improvement over "Do The Collapse," and I really hold a special place for this album. This is the major label album that Guided by Voices was supposed to make. It is a more palatable version (at least in vibe and tone) of earlier records like Bee Thousand or Under the Bushes Under the Stars. It still has the big and clean major label vibe, but it feels so much more honest and true to the band, and more a product of them and less a product of the producer. I'm also just a sucker for that classic Robert Pollard melancholy, which felt like it was completely missing from Do The Collapse but is very well represented here. Isolation Drills features Pollard's most literal and open lyrics of all time, I believe, as he documents his marriage falling apart on some beautiful sad songs like "How's My Drinking," "Fine To See You," and "Privately." The album was produced by Rob Schnapf, best known for working with Beck and Elliot Smith, and I think he did a really tremendous job. He does a great job of making GBV, which for the second album comprises of Pollard, Gillard, Macpherson, Nate Farley, and Tim Tobias; sound like a real band. The pop singles are also excellent, "Glad Girls," "Chasing Heather Crazy," and "Twilight Campfighter" are all really rad. The album is not all good as there are a couple of stinkers, and is not as classic as Bee Thousand or anything, but it is definitely one of my favorites.

The next release was Robert Pollard and the Soft Rock Renegade's Choreographed Man of War for the Fading Captain Series. A hard rocking affair, it is somewhat unspectaular. The same team of Pollard, Demos, and Macpherson that worked on Waved Out and Kid Marine worked on this album. It sounds like an album that was made while having fun and in a relaxed setting, which is good, but I just don't think that the album is as realized as it could be and more time could have been taken on it.

Airport 5 was a relief to many people because it was something people had been waiting five years for. Airport 5 was the return of Robert Pollard and Tobin Sprout working together. Airport 5's first album Tower In the Founatin of Sparks was released in August of 2001. The project sounds like a sequel to the Tonics & Twisted Chasers. The album is filled with junky drum machines and trebly guitars, in short, the production on the album is bad. The album is exciting though, to hear these two old favorites working together on some quality songs, even if Tobin does make them sound weird, at this point we are ready for some janky Pollard vibes after the major label jams.

One more new project was to follow in 2001, and that is the heavy weirdo noise rock of Circus Devils. Ringworm Interiors came out on Halloween, and was the work of Pollard, Tim Tobias, and his brother Todd Tobias. Pollard's most experimental music in a long while, was a shock to the system and felt great. It's loud, fast, broken, and weird.

The big news was about to hit in very late 01/early 02: lukewarm sales of their albums had caused TVT to drop GBV. The major label dream was over like that, Robert Pollard had failed at taking over the airwaves, but what had really come out of the TVT period was the realization that Pollard made his best music away from those restriction that were coming from labels, producers, and even himself to produce hits or succeed in tradtional ways. Pollard had found his own road to success with his rabid fanbase and his own label. GBV immediately announced that they had a new album ready and it would be released on their old stomping grounds, Matador. Guided by Voices had failed, but found a more satisfying success that, like all of the other Greatest Bands of All Times, was on their own terms.