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Robert Pollard-Mania! #118: SPIDER EYES

Robert Pollard
“Spider Eyes” b/w “Battle for Mankind”
2007, Happy Jack Rock Records

Robert Pollard and Todd Tobias both have brothers who’ve been important to their work.

Jim Pollard has co-songwriting credits throughout the early days of Guided by Voices, was a part of Acid Ranch,  has picked up a guitar here and there, and has knocked over an amp here and there while tape was running.

Tim Tobias has been in bands with his little brother forever and created the music for many standout Circus Devils tracks.

Brotherhood is a theme in Pollard’s songs and his history and when he and Todd Tobias get together, they sometimes make records that are brothers. Same DNA, different results. Bonded but sometimes clashing. Romulus and Remus. Thor and Loki. Gallagher and Gallagher II.

From a Compound Eye and Normal Happiness are brother albums. One brother is into being expansive and epic, the other reacts by going leaner. But they both still look alike, were raised in the same home, and generally get along.

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Robert Pollard-Mania! #117: RUD FINS

Robert Pollard
“Rud Fins” b/w “Piss Along You Bird”
2007, Happy Jack Rock Records

The year is 2007 and if you’re of Generation X vintage (or older), the music industry is mutating into something different from what you knew before.

Record stores are dying off. The venerable Tower Records chain closed late last year in 2006, which is a big deal. It’s normal for people around you to say that they don’t pay for music anymore. Some of them are outright hostile to the idea.

If you still enjoy buying and owning records, somebody in a warm home near you thinks that you’re an idiot. You’re too dumb to know that you can get music for free now. Either that or you’re some backwards ass who lives in denial of the revolutionary new way.

At this same time, the vinyl comeback quietly percolates. You can’t buy it from Target or Amazon yet. Secondhand prices are still reasonable. Most record stores that are holding up remain dominated by CDs, but the occasional news article comes out about how LP sales are ticking upward while CD sales are ticking downward. It’s also suddenly common for new LPs to come packaged with a slip of paper with a code for a digital download, which solves that old problem of “I want to buy vinyl, but I hate that I can’t play it in my car”.

(The first album that I can remember that addressed this issue was Shellac’s 1000 Hurts in 2000 on Touch & Go. The vinyl floated a CD copy in the sleeve like it was no big deal, like it was a cheap giveaway in a cereal box. This was a major topic of discussion at the time.)

It was 2007 when a younger co-worker labeled me a “hipster” because I was into collecting records (and had been for about ten years). We were generally friendly and I don’t remember what my retort was to this twerp, who liked some cool music and proudly pirated everything, but it was one of those little moments that showed me that I’d gone out of sync.

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Robert Pollard-Mania! #116: BAD FOOTBALL

The Takeovers
Bad Football
2007, Off Records

Young listeners and new listeners to Robert Pollard’s work tend to be awed by the big pile of it, as they should be.

I used to think like that, but then I got old and Pollard’s songs have been a daily presence in my life for over thirty years and there’s a new color to my feelings about it all.

Over time, Pollard has become more and more relatable to me. He’s not from planet Krypton. He’s a guy who shows up and does the work. Just like I’ve been doing forever. You, too, I bet.

Five albums a year isn’t so crazy if you think of all of the shit that YOU do each day, all that you tolerate and work against just to finish what needs to get done so you can get paid, take care of the kids, contribute a little something to the big merry-go-round, and be a proper member of the human race.

I’m not saying that every musician should do it this way. I like My Bloody Valentine, Kim Deal, and Fiona Apple. Some brilliant people thrive on a deliberate approach. They have no taste for banging it out. If it takes a decade to feel out where the sounds in their head should go next, they’re willing. Each release is painfully realized, an exhaustion of a vision that leaves nothing left afterward, to the point that you might not hear from them again until the next Halley’s Comet. That path is risky in its own fashion and I have nothing bad to say about it.

But Pollard’s working artist thing, an almost blue collar cycle of turning out work and staying in the zone, no time to waste, speaks to me like nothing else. I’m hooked, I’m damaged, and I relate in my own crazy way.

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Robert Pollard-Mania! #115: CRICKETS: BEST OF THE FADING CAPTAIN SERIES 1999-2007

Various Artists
Crickets: Best of the Fading Captain Series 1999-2007
2007, The Fading Captain Series

Your copy of Crickets should be beat up. The spine should be frayed on the edges. The digipak from 2007 should feel like it may come apart soon if you don’t decide to be more careful with it. Hopefully, you didn’t lose the booklet. It’s a nice one.

My copy looks pretty bad. If yours looks worse, I tip my hat to you. Maybe you should be writing your own series. You clearly have a story to tell.

If you own a pristine set, I don’t get you, unless you just don’t listen to CDs. Otherwise, this two-disc compilation has long been the perfect thing to pull off the shelf when you want to hear some Robert Pollard, but you don’t know which of his galaxy of records will hit the spot. So how about a little of everything?

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Robert Pollard-Mania! #114: LIVE FROM AUSTIN TX

Guided by Voices
Live from Austin TX
2007, New West Records

We’ve talked a lot about why Guided by Voices went on a farewell tour in 2004, but there’s another reason that was in the air at the time that we haven’t sunk our claws into yet.

Robert Pollard addresses it twice during this set, notably during “Secret Star”. The song is one of the giants from Earthquake Glue and it’s built with a quiet section that, during the Electrifying Conclusion tour, became the platform for him to deliver what amounted to a sermon about the legacy of Guided by Voices while the band rumbled beneath. Much like the always-changing setlist (a mark of a good band), Pollard’s spiel wasn’t the same every night. It rose out of the moment. Ending this chapter of his life was a heavy thing and he didn’t need a script to talk about it.

(Does some crazy collector out there have a dusty CD-R on the shelf of nothing but Electrifying Conclusion tour versions of “Secret Star”? I hope so.)

In the sermon on November 9, 2004, before television cameras and under the bright studio lights of PBS’s Austin City Limits, Pollard says this fascinating thing: 

“Rock ‘n’ roll is for the kids. And all of the adults who think it’s for them, get out of the way. It’s for the kids. The kids are confused…”

That’s a 2004 time capsule moment. That’s a statement from when it was still considered undignified to grow old in rock music. One might get away with it as a solo act, particularly if their music “matures” for the effort (Pollard himself would soon play around with making his solo records more stark and singer-songwritery). Hardly anybody made fun of Lou Reed or Neil Young for aging, but performing under the guise of a band as the wrinkles around your eyes set in was somehow unbecoming.

Read interviews with Pollard in 2004 and when he explains why he’s ending Guided by Voices, he repeats the idea that he’s too old now to be a “gang leader”.

Today, nobody seems to care about that stuff. Why?

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Robert Pollard-Mania! #113: EAT 3: KEEP YOUR CHRISTMAS LIGHTS UP FOREVER

Robert Pollard
EAT 3: Keep Your Christmas Lights Up Forever
2007, Rockathon Records

Sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll?

No. Not at my age (just turned 49 this month). All three are fine on their own, I guess. Depends on the sex. Depends on the drugs. Depends on the rock ‘n’ roll. Put them together though, and people get stupid. People become monsters. People start dying young.

My mind is nowhere near that stuff anymore. Tell me the stories again about Kiss or Led Zeppelin’s party days and I’ll only reflect on how some of our flock become pathetic when they feel invincible. I don’t care about how many TVs Keith Moon tossed out of hotel windows. I don’t care about who slept with who in the back of the tour bus.

These days, I’m into people who make things and keep making things long after others give up, burn out, or overdose on their own mythology. I’ve heard all that I want to hear about how humans can flame out by age 27. What I want now are stories of endurance.

Thankfully, my favorite rock star is Robert Pollard and that’s his whole trip. He’s about to turn 68, as of this writing, and he keeps going and going.

Collage art, poetry, and rock ‘n’ roll.

And do it all until you drop, which we hope doesn’t happen for a long while.

Rock doesn’t have to use you up and kill you. It can keep you alive sometimes.

That I can get behind.

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Robert Pollard-Mania! #112: SILVERFISH TRIVIA

Robert Pollard
Silverfish Trivia
2007, Prom Is Coming

In a 2014 interview conducted by John Valania for Magnet, Robert Pollard tells a story that has always stuck with me:

“One time I finished an album”, he says,”and I went to this bar and there’s a band playing. And there were all these middle-aged women up there dancing to it. I started kind of just daydreaming and gazing and second-guessing myself about what I just did. I was watching the dancers and was like, “Would they dance to my new record? Would they be dancing like that?” And the answer was yes. Yeah, they would dance to it. So, I got rid of the whole thing.”

Firstly, that’s funny as hell. Secondly, this small moment says so much about Pollard’s thinking at one point as an artist who’s wary of letting his music fall into certain traps as he ages. Thirdly, it illustrates how complex “influence” can be. What an artist doesn’t like, and seeks to avoid, can mean just as much as what they do like.

In the article, we get no further details about this lost album, but people who know Pollard have confirmed that he’s talking about an LP originally called The Killers and once intended as his solo follow-up to Normal Happiness. 

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Robert Pollard-Mania! #111: THE GREAT HOUDINI WASN’T SO GREAT

Acid Ranch
The Great Houdini Wasn’t So Great
2007, Record Company Records

Framed on the wall in my living room is an awful 12″x18″ comic strip that I drew for high school art class in 1993.

In it, I’m walking with my friend, Marty, the Talking Balloon, who floats next to me on a string. He’s a non-judgmental, captive, literally brainless audience for the self-centered thoughts in my clueless teenage head and, boy, do I let rip.

Marty responds by questioning me like I’m fascinating because that’s what you crave when you’re a kid.

Every inch of this rotting piece of paper is devoted to 16-year-old me blabbing about how I do everything wrong, no one likes me, and I don’t know how to fix it. THE END.

It’s junk, but I love the artwork. Past kindergarten, I’ve never drawn much. I still don’t draw or have a feel for how to express anything by doing it. Envy is a useless emotion and I want nothing to do with it, but if I’m envious of anyone on Earth it’s of people who draw well. That’s one of the freakiest talents to me. It’s so interesting because it’s something that one preserves from childhood. Every kid draws. A select few of us never lose that and do beautiful things with it.

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Robert Pollard-Mania! #110: MEET THE KING: ASSHOLE 2

Robert Pollard
Meet the King: Asshole 2
2007, Yuk Yuk Motherfucker

Don’t ask me for my favorite Robert Pollard album. There are too many. I don’t have a good answer. I may never have a good answer.

Here’s a juicier question for the deep-digging Pollard freaks in your life: What is your favorite year of his music?

Now that’s something to think about. As I revisit these old records, I find a curious coherence in Pollard’s path. Even when he puts out five albums that explode in several different directions in a year, he will circle around the same topics and there’s meaning in the contrasts.

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Robert Pollard-Mania! #109: NORMAL HAPPINESS

Robert Pollard
Normal Happiness
2006, Merge Records

Double albums are peachy keen and all, but their follow-ups are also fun to think about.

Or what does the artist do AFTER they’ve made an epic? This is a vulnerable place and where they go is revealing.

Some authors and filmmakers get into a groove of thinking in grand terms every time. See Marcel Proust or David Lean. There’s nothing wrong with that, but rock music, rooted in blues, folk, and jukebox 45s, seems to come with a natural gravitational pull back down to Earth after a big statement.

There are many paths to take. Here are a few that come up a lot:

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