February 28th, 2011 1:00am
This Time The World Did What It Told Me It Would
The "classic line-up" of Guided By Voices got back together last year. It was cool and
I enjoyed the show I saw in Manhattan. But here's the thing: If you were actually a big GBV fan and went to a lot of their shows during the years when the band was actually a popular touring act, this "classic line-up" wasn't classic at all. Yes, they were the guys who backed Robert Pollard up on the band's most acclaimed and beloved albums, but they were long gone by the time GBV got around to building its reputation for drunken, goofy marathon sing-along shows. This was the "classic line-up" if you're either a super early adopter, a sentimental pedant or a Pollard dilettante. If you love Guided By Voices and went to the shows and followed the regular flow of new records and "side projects" -- the actual experience of being a GBV fan in the late 90s through the mid 00s -- the real classic line-up is Pollard, Doug Gillard, Nate Farley, Tim Tobias and whoever happened to be playing drums at the time.
As far as I am concerned,
Live in Daytron ?6 is the definitive Guided By Voices record, at least in the sense that it has the highest concentration of top-shelf Pollard songs and represents the band in the form that I loved them most. I saw GBV at least 14 times between 1999 and 2004. For me, the band isn't about any particular album so much as the accumulation of great songs. Like I always say, you never really get how amazing Pollard is until you realize that he has written 100 of your favorite songs.
The GBV setlist was a regularly mutating thing -- it had a solid foundation of regularly played hits, but also a rotation of deep cuts, music from whatever album was new at the time, and songs from records that were not released under the GBV name but were definitely GBV songs. This live record includes a lot of classics from that category -- "Pop Zeus," "Tight Globes," "Submarine Teams," "Stifled Man Casino," "Waved Out," "I Drove A Tank," "Get Under It," "Psychic Pilot Clocks Out," and "Alone, Stinking and Unafraid," which became one of the band's most enduring live anthems despite being originally released on a small-run EP under the name Lexo and the Leapers. It annoys me when this stuff gets edited out of the band's legacy. The same goes for post-
Mag Earwhig gems like "Teenage FBI," "Chasing Heather Crazy," "The Brides Have Hit Glass" and "Things I Will Keep." Like I said, that reunion show was nice and all, but it was just weird for me to seeing the band without hearing a lot of these songs since they were so essential to the GBV experience.
Anyway, if you want a solid introduction to Guided By Voices or a good sense of what myself and many others loved about them back in the early 00s, I strongly recommend this live record.
10 Responses.
2/28/11 1:01 pm
Man, this post perfectly captures my feelings about the reunion show I saw last year. Downloading Live in Daytron now. Thanks.
2/28/11 3:33 pm
The idea of a “classic lineup” for GBV seems like a joke to me. Weren’t they always fairly fluid?
I liked Bee Thousand and a few others in the mid-90s when I was in high school but for some reason lost interest by the late 90s and haven’t even listened to GBV or Robert Pollard since. I saw them in the mid-90s, and even then they were putting on a pretty drunken, goofy show. I thought they were a fairly well-established act with Robert Pollard and Tobin Sprout, et al, through the 90s. I guess I didn’t realize that they became more popular after Mag Earwhig! or whatever. Of course, I lived in Dayton for awhile and always had friends there even though I spent most of the 90s elsewhere, so my perspective on GBV’s popularity is likely skewed a little.
2/28/11 5:22 pm
For some reason I hate the live recordings where it’s obvious Bob (if I may) is slurring. For that reason Jellyfish Reflector will apparently always be the gold standard…
2/28/11 7:42 pm
Ha, isn’t slurring just part of the Pollard experience?
2/28/11 9:44 pm
That’s kind of an aesthetic question with this band, maybe uniquely (I don’t think people necessarily enjoyed listening to falling-down drunk Mats), and somehow it hasn’t bothered me much in person, but it makes me a bit sad to listen to it. On Jellyfish Reflector there is some desperation (”Hey kids, I promise this one’ll rock” and such) but he doesn’t let himself go — he doesn’t degrade the songs. So maybe the slurring is the evidence of a certain lack of pride and craft to me, and that’s strangely part of what he always stood for.
3/1/11 8:57 am
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Uh, no.
The classic lineup was exactly as advertised… Sprout, Fennell, Mitchell, Demos and Uncle Bob.
3/1/11 6:20 pm
If that’s Jim Greer — your book was great and you are of course right. Even the new gold standard, Wikipedia, backs that.
3/18/11 12:24 am
I agree with Greer. Sorry if you got to the party late, but not all flavors of GbV are the same. And there were plenty of drunken sing-alongs in ‘96, too.
3/18/11 9:34 am
I agree with everyone.
The classic line-up is the classic line-up. Hands down. But the set-lists during the Late 90’s-2000’s were EPIC. Just EPIC. The height of the Fading Captain Series, getting to hear Subspace Biographies, Make Use, Edison’s Memos, Beg for a Wheelbarrow, Big School, Surgical Focus, Pop Zeus, Red Ink Superman, Fair Touching (Fair Touching is such a good song) Anything off of Kid Marine… Cheyenne!! Plus the old stuff. Dear god those shows were near religious experiences.
The 90’s shows were a grab bag of insane awesomeness. Bob should just do a tour with that line-up as well.
For me, it’s a case of Classic line-up vs. Classic set list.
3/18/11 9:37 am
I’ll Replace you with Machines!!!!