Why in the name of all unholy fuck do people like Guided By Voices?

Why in the name of all that is holy do people like Guided by Voices?

;-)

;-)

-- Ned Raggett (ne...), August 12th, 2004. (tracklink)"

Yes Ned, but mine has a swear in it.

I've heard more than the two albums currently in my possession, and I think that it sucks too. Isn't 'Bee Thousand' meant to be their best? 'Cause I've heard it, and would be quite happy to never hear it again.

but i dont think anyone likes them anymore

ps: teenage fbi is good

You make this sound like a bad thing!

Am I nutso? I think the last two (incl. Half Smiles) are their best. I absolutely loved Earthquake Glue. The only ones I've heard that actually had songs the entire way thru.

I know someone will just come along and put the scarlet R on me - but that ain't it at all. I'm not privileging those forms. I'm just saying, I frown upon the opinions of a guy who never evinces an ability to listen to them critically. In a way that interests me. That doesn't involve amateur sociology. And of course, big SR himself is the ultimate rockist. That's why he wrote a whole book about a subculture with an annotated discography.

besides sr used to listen to nothing but indie rock in the '80s, there's even a typically unreadable mm reynolds excerpt in the liner notes of one of my go-betweens cd's. i wouldn't trust him on bluegrass either but he has a pretty good grasp of indie

FrankE, I'm starting to come around to the last one, but I still haven't been moved by any of the songs like "Underwater Explosions" or "Your Name Is Wild" or some of those others on Under the Bushes Under the Stars.

diamond kinda sounds like me: "some people are too smart to review music" ... C Eddy (or peeps like him) vs. J Pareles (or peeps like him)

ok, carry on.

p.s. i like a lot of gbv stuff.

well, i can't say much about what that record sounds freshly to an ear in today's post-9/11 world, you know, cause everything's different now, but when it came out, it was fresher than hot nuts stickin to your fingers. sure, it was obviously a mix of rehash, but it was such a wonderful reheat. grandmas everwhere, even sammy hagars cross dressing as grandmas, approved like it was a fresh batch of pancakes. no one said, "oh but we had pancakes in the 70s! this is redundant bullshit!" it was good.

it was, "HOT FREAKS!"

but hey, i lost interest not so long after that, so...
m.

All I've got from the fans is ranting and raving about my language in the title post, or that it sounded good *then*.

If I can explain to people why I like the Fall, then y'all should be able to do a whole lot better.

i mean, we're talking totally nonsensical lyrics by a freakin school teacher with an afro from dayton no less! we're talkin rem/who hybrid action. lo-fi sparklies. kung fu kicks on stage. perfect pop songs all in different shades creating a mix tape, yet of one band's pantheon, from the heights of winky spiritful elation to the lusty rock beer belly sprawl gutter shiv. i am a scientist. tractor rape chain. kicker of elves. hot freaks! the MOTHERFUCKin The Goldheart Mountaintop Queen Directory!

"what does it all mean?", asks 18 year old msp.

it did sound good then. it sounds fuckin great now. that's the point noodle. programming at an earlier date. cha-ching.

how can i detach from those moments and tell you why i like something now when it's so clouded from the monster bliss of all those past bits?

i guess i'll have to call up the MOTHERFUCKin The Goldheart Mountaintop Queen Directory!

got the number for that?

"do a whole lot better"... sheesh and grumble. sheesh and grumble.
m.

woot!
m.

i don't really see what "the techne of human beings interacting with instruments in their hands" has much to do with anything, though. i mean, simon does talk about techne, if by techne we mean craft - read him on the 303. and as far as GBV goes, they were usually so drunk (on stage anyway) that what they did with their instruments was pretty thoroughly modulated by chance. and on record, their recordings are so lo-fi that the machinery itself, in all its limitations, becomes an integral part of the techne -- the machinery swallows half the effect of instruments-in-hands anyway. in its four-tracker's authenticity, it becomes artificial all over again; it is almost literally electronic music, in that half of the "music" comes from the machinery.

but what do i care. like i said, loved the records. my tops is probably "motor away," followed by "my valuable hunting knife."

It's a view I'm kind of forced to surmise, considering the thrust of his usual commentary. I don't see too much rock OR jazz OR country OR improv or blues or whatever. There's no doubting that he has done immeasurable work in terms of documenting a sadly underrepresented form of music (hey, the city of Chicago is finally recognizing the music's rich history this very month!) I just really can't really countenance him sneering down his nose at a genre he's basically abandoned. Perhaps Guided by Voices DO suck, maybe they don't (and as I say, I absolutely loved them for that brief burst of mid-90s lysergic energy), but I am just saying: I don't care to hear about it from a guy who basically turned his back on the form. At base, he just doesn't strike me as a well-rounded critic. Just a kind of subculture journalist, I guess. I don't know. If we have to pick British critics, give me Marcello Carlin any day of the week. Not a guy who owns the latest white label 12, just a guy who can write swimmingly great prose about a wide swath of music, and can recognize a decent musician when he hears one.

If I can explain to people why I like the Fall, then y'all should be able to do a whole lot better.

I don't know if i can explain why i love GBV. Part of it - certainly from Propeller thru Alien Lanes, and on the Box material too, though to a lesser extent - is that sense that there's some alternate pop universe where these songs were as big as 'hey jude', as 'hey mr tambourine man', as 'i want you to want me', and GBV albums are like some C S Lewis wardrobe that lets you peek in there and hear these faux-nuggets. But that's too simplistic, as Bob's no mere parodist, a la Neil innes - its a more passionate, personal thing, and his frame of reference and influence is broader than many credit.

But a lot of it has to do with just loving that sound - and at the peak of their lo-fi era, say, Alien Lanes, that sound wasn't remotely unlistenable, and it certainly didn't obscure their music prowess, or charming lack thereof. what you get is a war,th to the tone of the instruments, and especially to bob's vocals - they never sounded the same after he quit recording them on four-track.

as it is, he's kept writing amazing songs and shitty songs and sticking them together, though the songs on later GBV albums are, to my mind, less amazing and less shitty, which is why i've preferred the solo stuff of late. 'speak kindly of your volunteer fire department' is perhaps his best solo, or 'not in my airforce' - two very odd, very delectable prog-pop records (that is, progressive in structure and experimentalism, an overweening musical proficiency is still not part of the scheme), the anthemic songs eeriely familiar, like you knew them already, the weirder pieces less pungent, more beguiling.

sure, the 'legend' of GBV - the drunk schoolteacher who just so happens to write perfect pop songs about folklore and weirdness, inspired by the most terrestrial things - road signs, pizza places, etc - is a big part of why people get into GBV - its a great story. But its the quality of the music that keeps people listening and buying.

and Do The Collapse and Earthquake Glue are *not* prime GBV, IMHO. They're strong records, but in the canon they can't compete with UTBUTS, Alien Lanes, Propellor/Vampire On Titus's, etc, best moments. and you need to spend a bit of time with their albums, filtering through. often the track i love first play ended up being my least favourite. i like that, records that you grow into, they've always been my favourite. if yr gonna reject Bee Thousand on first listening, well, i think that's really fucking dumb, but its your loss, boss - the Kings Of Leon albums are just over *there*. I'd suggest you don't give up on 'em entirely until you've heard Alien Lanes, where the lo-fi thing is just perfect, and the songs - Game Of Pricks, As We Go Up We Go Down, King & Caroline, etc etc etc - are perhaps bob's strongest, but it sounds like you're really settling into hating GBV, so why don't you see how that suits you??

and also - there've been so many threads on I Love Music about the moonie-like obsession of GBV fans. maybe its time we did one on people who start GBV hate threads and then expect everyone to applaud 'em for kicking an easy target.

i don't think that's completely true. early albums like sandbox were recorded in proper studios -- not high-end new york studios but studios nonetheless -- and while they don't exactly sound great, they're not all hissy and inaudible either. pollard has made it pretty clear that he decided to stop using a studio for his next several albums because he thought the studio sound sucked and he could do better at home. which he pretty much did for awhile, hissiness and inaudibility notwithstanding.

when he started going to big studios a few years later, the problem wasn't that he was selling out. the problem was (a) that his songs had started to suck, and (b) that he was really bad at using high-end studios. i don't know whether to blame bob, his producers or what, but i can't listen to do the collapse or isolation drills all the way through because they hurt my ears. everything since then has just been blah, though i kinda liked an mp3 i heard of the upcoming album, so i don't doubt that the man still has a song or two somewhere up his sleeve.

But it's true, there's something about Bob that only comes in its own when he's messing around with sounds, lyrics, melodies, sitting on his porch or in someone's basement. i think he used these lo-fi recording techniques to get closer to the sounds he heard in his head, they actually sounded better to him and it was a lot easier and cheaper to do it like that, but he was also curious about where he could take these songs if he would record them 'properly' (whatever that means). these days he's working in small studios, mainly with Todd Tobias, i guess it's some middle ground, and i think he's quite happy with the results...

strange that you would write this just before and after some much more sober defenses of the band.

GBV stuff I'm keeping:
Bee Thousand
Alien Lanes
Under The Bushes, Under The Stars
Isolation Drills

everything else is getting tossed now that I cherrypicked my fave stuff onto CD-Rs.