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Monday, June 18, 2018

Hand-Outs In The Deep Ward

I'm going to see Guided By Voices tomorrow night at Trees and I couldn't be more excited.

I was heavy into Spin magazine in the 90s, and had no doubt read about GBV when I picked up the cassette for Alien Lanes in the music store. I was living in Eldorado, Arkansas, they had a good music store and the video rental at the Brookshires was on point. Got to rent a lot of Ed Wood movies. Otherwise that town was hick shitsville.

Anyway I fell in love with Alien Lanes and by the time I bought my first Sony Discman, still in Eldorado, my first CDs were that one that has Vampire On Titus/Propeller, and then Under the Bushes Under The Stars. Bee Thousand on CD I think I finally listened to a couple of years later when I got it from the library, once I'd moved back up to Fayetteville.

I had enough money to buy Mag Earwhig, Do The Collapse, and Isolation Drills on CD, and loved them all. I think I saw them twice during this time, once in Lawrence and once in Tulsa, maybe? Not sure what years, I'll have to ask my buddies about that. In Lawrence we ran into the band at a record shop and I got Pollard's autograph on a Jimi Hendrix postcard, while totally embarrassing myself. I kept calling him "Mr. Pollard." He seemed non-plussed. That postcard keeps disappearing and reappearing. I think I have it somewhere, but not sure where.

Universal Truths and Cycles came out in 2002, and by that time I was out of money and for a while anyway out of love with GBV. I stopped listening and that break lasted for well over a decade, I guess I just needed some space. But now I am full on back in love with our fading captain. 2017's August By Cake wasn't as awesome as I hoped it would be, but still had some good songs of course.

How Do You Spell Heaven, released the same year, and this year's Space Gun, are both great albums. I checked out the set lists for the shows and they're playing a lot of new stuff, which I'm excited about, the album Space Gun is killer diller all the way through.

A GBV podcast I've been enjoying is Self-Inflicted Aural Nostalgia, a guy talking about every GBV album, every two weeks. I'm only up to Bee Thousand, but it's good stuff.

I've been getting into Pollard side projects as well.