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Frank Black-O-Rama! #21: SHOW ME YOUR TEARS

Frank Black and the Catholics
Show Me Your Tears
2003, SpinART Records

There’s not much writing about the end of Frank Black and the Catholics. They weren’t the kind of group that anyone gossiped about.

When the Pixies got back together in 2004 some thought that the Catholics might merely go on hiatus. I remember seeing speculation that once this reunion played itself out, the Catholics would return.

Oh, how innocent we were!

That made some kind of sense at the time, though. Also, speculation was all that we had. Black talked to a million writers in 2004 who wanted to know how well he and Kim Deal were getting along and what he thought about Kurt Cobain. No one asked Catholics questions, so it took years for Black to confirm in the press that the Catholics fell apart all by themselves. It was over.

A 2021 interview with Independent.co.uk quotes him:

“[They] were totally burned out on me and burned out on my methodology,” following, he’s previously asserted, “10 years of hard touring and loading our own gear and not making a lotta money out of it”.

I don’t think I need more explanation than that.

From their strict live-in-the-studio recording method to their endless tours, the Catholics did everything the hard way. That was the point of the band. It’s a wonder that they lasted as long as they did.

To their vast credit, they never flinched. Rich Gilbert, Dave Phillips, David McCaffrey, and Scott Boutier were pros. If they were burning out, they never gave it away on record. Each album is a new show of confidence and Show Me Your Tears stands for me as their most beautiful Valentine’s candy box of sad songs.

Let’s cover them one by one. I love this album and I’ve got my coins ready for the jukebox.

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Robert Pollard-Mania! #94: LIGHTNINGHEAD TO COFFEE POT

The Moping Swans
Lightninghead to Coffee Pot
2005, The Fading Captain Series

Every now and then, Robert Pollard gets together with some guys he knows and they form a band who last long enough to record an EP, usually in one day.

That was Lexo and the Leapers in 1999. That was The Howling Wolf Orchestra in 2000. That will be a project called The Sunflower Logic coming up in 2013.

In 2005, that was The Moping Swans and they made my favorite record in this little subgenre of Pollard music. All of them are different. Lightninghead to Coffee Pot is the post-punk blast of the batch, but with a classic rock kick.

It sounds like something that you’d find in a cool record store in 1979. I wish that I could visit a cool record store in 1979. but there are probably better things to do with a time machine. So I guess I’ll just listen to this.

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The 100 Best Robert Pollard Songs, Ranked

As of this writing, Robert Pollard has somewhere in the neighborhood of 120 albums out, plus another tall stack of EPs, singles, and box sets. The first Guided by Voices record came out in 1986 and he’s refused to shut up ever since. This scares off some people while others have the time of their lives geeking out over it all.

I’m one of the geeks. I love it. I mean, aren’t most great rock icons crazy? Or at least appear to be? Little Richard was crazy. David Bowie was crazy. Glitter and punk and rockabilly were whole genres of bands aggressively looking crazy. Looking crazy, like you don’t follow the normal rules, is what makes a band cool. Looking crazy is a test for the listener. Not everyone gets it, but those who do will cling to it.

Ex-college jock, ex-schoolteacher, current rock ‘n’ roll cult hero Robert Pollard (born on October 31, 1957) doesn’t seem too crazy if you look at him, but take the long, strange journey into his records and that’s when you see it.

Yeah, he’s crazy. He’s as crazy as any of ’em.

The sensible way to make a list of 100 songs from this Sargasso Sea of music would be to apply a filter to it. Stick to his flagship project Guided by Voices maybe. That would be smart. Or make separate lists for different eras of Pollard’s work. That would be smart, too.

I’m not smart, though. I had to do things the hard way.

I had to be the guy who tries to jump his Kawasaki motorcycle over a few too many cars and then needs to be rushed to the hospital.

This list has one rule: Robert Pollard must have a songwriting credit. That’s it. Songs from Guided by Voices, his solo albums, Boston Spaceships, Circus Devils, and assorted other projects are all welcome. There’s even one song here that Pollard wrote yet doesn’t sing or perform on the record.

This also means that the work of other songwriters aren’t here. If I made a dedicated Guided by Voices list, some choice Tobin Sprout moments would sit in the ranks for sure (“Dodging Invisible Rays”, “To Remake the Young Flyer”, “Waves”), as would Doug Gillard’s “I Am a Tree”.

I made this decision because the Guided by Voices of 1986 and of 2023 have only one thing in common: Robert Pollard. The story of Guided by Voices is fractured because there is no definitive lineup. Pollard’s songs are the one thing that connect the various eras, so that’s where I direct my surgical focus and his songs are found in many different places.

The BIG problem with a list like this though is that there are many more than 100 great Pollard songs. In ten minutes I will change my mind about nearly everything here.

In the spirit of Pollard’s music though, there are times when it’s best to blurt out whatever you’ve got and then move on. Sometimes good things are about the moment and perfection isn’t so important. Moments can mean a lot and lists are one of those things that will never be perfect.

So, this is my list, as of this moment at 10:58 AM on May 24, 2023.

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Robert Pollard-Mania! #93: ZOOM

Robert Pollard
Zoom
2005, The Fading Captain Series

2005 is one of the weirdest years for Robert Pollard’s music. We spent most of it not knowing when his new solo double album, From A Compound Eye, completed around mid-2004, was coming out.

Meanwhile, Pollard kept a low profile (no tour, few interviews), but he continued to make things. He had something new out every few months, all of it strange. It was like a year full of B-sides and I mean that as a compliment. All real rock fans love B-sides.

Then there were the reports about how Bob’s music was about to potentially blow up in the movies.

Big shot director Steven Soderbergh was a fan. In 2002, he used the song “Do Something Real” (from Speak Kindly of Your Volunteer Fire Department) in his film Full Frontal. He would go on to write the introduction to Jim Greer’s book Guided by Voices: A Brief History, out later in ’05. He had a film coming in the fall called Bubble that would feature new Pollard music (we’ll get to that in #97 of this series). Soderbergh was also developing a movie about Cleopatra, an audacious musical to star Catherine Zeta-Jones and built around Guided by Voices songs, screenplay by Jim Greer.

The Cleopatra thing never panned out, as of this writing eighteen years later, but we didn’t know that yet in ’05. It was exciting to think about.

And I wonder… I just wonder… if maybe the Zoom EP was inspired by all of this movie stuff happening.

Just look at that cover collage.

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Robert Pollard-Mania! #92: RELAXATION OF THE ASSHOLE

Robert Pollard
Relaxation of the Asshole
2005, Yuk Yuk Motherfucker

Technically, this is Robert Pollard’s first solo album after the end of Guided by Voices and I’m down with that.

In the cold January of 2005, when some fans were just getting over their hangovers from GBV’s New Year’s Eve grand finale, Pollard dropped a new record that, depending on your point of view, was either:

A)  a weird and funny artifact of his unique personality

or

B) a new low from an artist whose lax standards for quality control had been bothering you for awhile.

Considering how quickly this sold out, we could also tack on a third group: The collectors. They can smell limited vinyl from five hundred yards away.

Relaxation of the Asshole is a comedy album made up of clipped-out excerpts of Pollard’s stage banter at Guided by Voices live shows. It’s got twenty-five tracks, but only one joke.

That joke is that this record exists at all and I think that’s funny.

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Robert Pollard-Mania! #91: BEE THOUSAND: THE DIRECTOR’S CUT

Guided by Voices
Bee Thousand: The Director’s Cut
2004, Scat Records

As we get further away from 2004, this triple-LP set may become more and more confusing for listeners.

I’ve heard people dissect Bee Thousand on recent podcasts and it’s normal for them to not know what to make of this other version of the album. It’s mostly different songs in a different sequence and some people (understandably) don’t get why it even exists.

Also, since it’s called The Director’s Cut, someone somewhere on the globe, now or thirty years from now, might wonder if it’s the REAL Bee Thousand and the familiar one was a compromise.

I’m going to explain as much as I can here. Or at least I’m going to tell my own best version of the story.

As of this writing, The Director’s Cut is long out of print. It’s an extravagant vinyl set that sells for collector’s prices so I don’t expect a Blade Runner situation, where new audiences don’t know what edition is most essential, but on the internet things can last forever and that’s a long time.

I try to stay away from predicting the future because I’m always wrong about it, but I can talk about the past. I was there. For some of it.

So let’s get into it. Let’s dig into the who, what, when, where, and why.

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Robert Pollard-Mania! #90: HALF SMILES OF THE DECOMPOSED

Guided by Voices
Half Smiles of the Decomposed
2004, Matador Records

And now an ending.

As you may know, this was the grand finale of Guided by Voices at the time. No more Guided by Voices after this. They were going out with an amicable break-up. Robert Pollard needed to move on. The news was everywhere. Maybe you read about it in Rolling Stone. Maybe you read it on some music news website or a message board.  Maybe you went to a record store in the autumn of 2004 and saw Half Smiles of the Decomposed snuggled in the new release racks with a sticker on the shrinkwrap straight from Matador Records that touted it as The Final Album.

If you were a fan, you likely felt an urgency to not miss out on The Electrifying Conclusion tour, which was a shorter tour than usual. No Europe. No Canada even. It officially began in August, wound its way through about two dozen reliable stops in the US, and had a hard ending. New Year’s Eve in Chicago.

The band whose show was always a party would end on the biggest party night of the year.

And then lights out. That would be it. So long, Guided by Voices.

Or maybe not.

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Frank Black-O-Rama! #20: DEVIL’S WORKSHOP

Frank Black and the Catholics
Devil’s Workshop
2002. SpinART Records

There’s only one good reason for a band to put out two new albums on the same day.

They want to get diverse. They want to show off how they can play chess AND execute a backward somersault. They want the world to hear that they can do two different things well without much time to catch their breath in between tricks.

Maybe they’re bragging, but if you’re a fan, it’s a lot of fun.

I had a lot of fun on August 20, 2002, when Frank Black and the Catholics put out two albums that lived in my car, in my CD player, and in my brain for years. I dragged my old CDs around everywhere. They’re a mess now. You won’t want to touch them without gloves.

Black Letter Days is an 18-track sprawler that’s built like a classic rock double record set. It’s indulgent and unapologetic about it.

The other one, Devil’s Workshop, does exactly what it should do, which is be the opposite. It lets the air out of the balloon.

It was recorded a few months after Black Letter Days and I recommend that you listen in that order for the full effect. Take in the epic first and then put on this shorter, sharper self-response.

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Robert Pollard-Mania! #89: FICTION MAN

Robert Pollard
Fiction Man
2004, The Fading Captain Series

April 24, 2004. Guided by Voices played The Bowery Ballroom in New York City.

Robert Pollard often gets chatty on stage and this night he spilled the news to the crowd that Guided by Voices were breaking up. It was the first public announcement. The people in that room got the scoop before any music journalist did.

One of the few bands out there that seemed incapable of ending without an act of God stopping them was closing up shop. It felt weird, but it made sense, too. Middle-aged people will understand.

Pollard went on to say that night that the final GBV album, Half Smiles of the Decomposed, was coming out in August with a farewell tour to follow. The last show would happen on New Year’s Eve and he promised that the band would go out grandly. Everyone was getting along. Past GBV lineups went down in drama, but this one would get a happy ending.

(If you want to hear that announcement, you can. A recording of it came out on Meet the King: Asshole 2, one of Pollard’s later “comedy” LPs composed of excerpts of his stage banter. The track is called “Blaze of Fire” and it still plays as a heavy moment today.)

A little over two weeks later on May 10, 2004, Pollard’s next solo album, Fiction Man, came out. The break-up news overshadowed it, but Fiction Man was the secret beginning of the post-GBV era.

One of the charms of Fiction Man in retrospect is that no one knew this at the time, including, I suspect, the two men who made it. Every Pollard solo record back then was different. They had different moods and different collaborators. In ’04, Fiction Man was merely more of that.

It was a batch of new Pollard songs, but this time played, arranged, and recorded by multi-instrumentalist oddball and fellow Ohioan Todd Tobias.

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Frank Black-O-Rama! #19: BLACK LETTER DAYS

Frank Black and The Catholics
Black Letter Days
2002, SpinART Records

Frank Black’s music is always annoying somebody.

When an artist makes Surfer Rosa and Teenager of the Year and Black Letter Days in a fourteen-year span, they might leave a few fans figuratively stranded at a few train stations. Not everyone follows.

Today, the brief Frank Black and the Catholics period (1998-2003) is well-loved among the deep-diggers. A new vinyl box set of their six formal studio albums is out and the reappraisals are glowing.

Twenty years ago though, when, for all that anyone knew, Black might make Catholics records forever, some people were over it after three albums. They weren’t into this classic rock sound. Maybe they were tired of the broken-heart songs. Others resented that the guy who launched his solo career with expansive studio visions not long ago was now hooked on recording everything live in the studio to 2-track tape like it’s 1963.

On the flipside though, plenty of us enjoyed it. For me, Black was my mutant Bob Dylan. The songs were stunners, but I also got engrossed in how he was building a body of work that would someday look like a bottomless well, full of phases and stages that sometimes conflict and that people argue over.

In 2002, Black and the Catholics moved at the pace of a band signed to Elektra/Asylum in 1975. A new album (or two) each year nearly. Then a lot of long road trips. They sounded like a classic rock band ready to launch their own Rolling Thunder Revue, yet they also had the discipline of a great 80s punk band who take a blue collar approach to the work. They’re ambitious, but not in a way that has anything to do with breaking big in the mainstream. They’re not even thinking about that. It’s more about honing a vision.

After four years of getting better at it, the eighteen-track lost highway of Black Letter Days sounds like what naturally emerges.

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