We Conjure Ghosts And Then We Feed Them

Guided By Voices @ Terminal 5 11/7/2010

Tractor Rape Chain / Game of Pricks / I Am A Scientist / Shocker In Gloomtown / Goldheart Mountaintop Queen Directory / Gold Star For Robot Boy / My Valuable Hunting Knife / Motor Away / A Good Flying Bird / Cut-Out Witch / Matter Eater Lad / Watch Me Jumpstart / Striped White Jets / My Impression Now / Awful Bliss / 14 Cheerleader Coldfront / Lethargy / Break Even / Buzzards and Dreadful Crows / Exit Flagger / Hot Freaks / The Closer You Are / Gleemer / Quality of Armor / Queen of Cans and Jars / Echos Myron / Unleashed! The Large-Hearted Boy / A Salty Salute / Smothered In Hugs // Postal Blowfish / Hey Aardvark / Pimple Zoo / Bright Paper Werewolves / Some Drilling Implied /// Dodging Invisible Rays / My Son Cool / Don’t Stop Now //// Johnny Appleseed / Weed King

Guided By Voices “Watch Me Jumpstart”

I had forgotten what it was like to be in a Guided By Voices audience. People get very intense; it becomes this very physical and vocal display of deep emotional connection to this large body of work. If you notice, Pollard stacked the top of the show with most of the biggest hits, which resulted in a frenzied energy on the floor for the first half hour of the set. Pollard brings out something rare and special in his fans — most everyone sings along, people move and point and jump and flail about, and it’s all together, people sing along to each other, to total strangers. It seems like you’re all suddenly friends and bonding over these impossibly catchy, ineffably weird, incredibly sad rock and roll songs. A lot of the crowd were holdovers from the old shows, but a rather substantial chunk of the audience were very young — early to mid 20s kids who were experiencing this for the first time. It makes me so happy that this music is finding a new audience.

Guided By Voices “Cut-Out Witch/Man Called Aerodynamics” (Peel Session)

Since I did see GBV several times over between 1999 and 2004, I wondered going into this if I’d miss a lot of the late period concert staples — “Teenage FBI,” “Things I Will Keep,” “Alone, Stinking and Unafraid,” “Subspace Biographies,” “Submarine Teams,” “Glad Girls,” “Back to the Lake,” etc — but no, it was cool. It’d be nice to see them again sometime, though. Late 90s/early 00s Pollard is totally underrated. There were songs from the “classic” era of the band that I wish they were playing, though. Like, where was “Official Ironmen Rally Song,” “Peephole,” “If We Wait,” and “Big School”?

Guided By Voices “Buzzards and Dreadful Crows” (Live in Austin, 2004)

It was so sweet to watch the “classic” band guys in action. I’d never seen this version of the band, only the version with Doug Gillard at the center of things. They have a lot of charm, especially Mitch Mitchell, who is a true midwestern rock and roll lifer badass. (He sang both “Lethargy” and “Postal Blowfish” with a cigarette clenched in his mouth the entire time!) It was nice to watch these guys get a chance to be rock stars again, or really, for the first time.

Guided By Voices “Weed King”

I’m not sure how this started, but a thing that people do at Guided By Voices shows is point up at Bob when he sings a line with particular resonance, as if to signal to him “hey, I like that line!” This is an incomplete inventory of lines that inspired my excited pointing last night.

– “Parallel lines on a slow decline.”

– “I never asked for the truth but you owe that to me.”

– “I am a lost soul, I shoot myself with rock and roll, the hole I dig is bottomless but nothing else can set me free.”

– “P.S. dump your boyfriend!!!”

– “THE GOLD! HEART! MOUN! TAIN! TOP! QUEEN DIRECTORY!”

– “Everything I think about, I think about, and everything I talk about, I talk about with you, but you don’t know what I go through – you don’t know.”

– “Do you think she can change your life?”

– “Shoot me down! And bring me down!”

– “Don’t let anyone find out or expose your feelings.”

– “There’s something in this deal for everyone, did you really think that you were the only one?”

– “She told me, ‘liquor’ – I AM A NEW MAN!”

– “The worst offense is intelligence, the best defense is belligerence.”

– “And all of a sudden I’m relatively sane, with everything to lose and nothing to gain, or something like that.”

– “DIS! ARM! THE! SET! TLERS!”

– “But I believed you! No neeeeed for furrrrther questioning!”

– “SOMETIMES I GET THE FEELING THAT YOU DON’T WANT ME AROOUUUND!”

– “Soooooooooooooooo cherry.”

– Pretty much every line of “Weed King” but especially “We can’t keep this violent pace.”

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