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SUITCASE: FAILED EXPERIMENTS & TRASHED AIRCRAFT
Guided By Voices
(Rockathon / Luna)
Singers with perfect pitch say it can be as much a curse as a blessing. It comes in handy at work, but in the real world -- where tinkling silverware, taxicab horns and barking dogs seldom harmonize -- their gift can drive them nuts.
Perfect pitch is, frankly, not a problem Robert Pollard has to deal with. But the singer, frontman, songwriter, benevolent dictator and sole constant member of indie-rock legends Guided By Voices suffers from a musical malady we suspect is equally double-edged. Pollard is a compulsive songwriter. In fact, he might be the most prolific composer in rock. By his own count, he's penned between 2,000 and 3,000 songs. Fast, slow, long, short, funny, serious, loud, quiet, you name it, they flow from Pollard's mind and mouth as effortlessly and gracefully as blessings from a priest -- or lies from a politician.
Sure, it sounds like a good deal for a songwriter. You always have new material and you never have to stoop to singing something the drummer wrote. But here's the rub: When you write a coupla hundred songs a year, you can't release them all. Not even a workaholic like Pollard, who crams a couple dozen onto a new disc every six months. Even at that rate, scads of usable (and often great) material ends up in the slush pile -- or in Pollard's case, in a suitcase full of home-recorded cassettes that the former teacher keeps in the basement of his Dayton, Ohio home.
Recently, Pollard decided to get rid of some of that musical baggage, so to speak. So now we have the aptly titled Suitcase, a mammoth four-CD box with 100 -- count 'em 100 -- unreleased songs recorded by Pollard and various incarnations of GBV over the decades. For a rabid GBV fan like us, it's like putting a quarter in that big scoop at the arcade and having it pick up all the prizes at once. Suitcase is stuffed with all the GBV trademarks: grungy garage-rock riffs by the pound, British Invasion melodies till hell wouldn't have 'em and more non-sequitur lyrics than a Donovon box set. And of course, there's a heaping helping of home-recorded demos, alternate versions of familiar tracks, half-baked ideas, chunks of oddball tomfoolery and more than a few moments of inspired madness and pop genius, all captured on hissy mono tapes with more dropouts than an inner-city high school. In other words, it's like every other GBV album you've ever heard -- except way, way longer.
But Suitcase also has a few things we haven't heard. Like the bouncy acoustic ditty Little Jimmy the Giant, a home-recorded number that supposedly dates back to '74 when Pollard was still a high school student. Or the rockabilly-metal jam Big Trouble, where Bob transforms into Elvis Caligula, barking and strutting like a cross between the King and the Lizard King. Or the audience-recorded live cut Try to Find You, where a reunion between two women in the crowd practically drowns out the band. Or the Who-circa-'65 power of Pluto the Skate and Let's Go Vike, the Dylanesque vibe of Shifting Swift is a Lift, the Lennonesque blues of Sabotage, the endlessly hilarious titles like Bottoms Up! (You Fantastic Bastard) and Ding Dong Daddy (Is Back From the Bank) and so on and so on ... and so on.
To be fair, it isn't for everybody. Many find Pollard's short-attention-span style, stream-of-consciousness lyrics ("Breakfast is the plan / Are you coming with the ha-ha man?") and no-fi production grating. Casual fans and GBV newbies who only know the major-label disc Do The Collapse would do better to start with an album like 1994's Bee Thousand. Still, even if you don't dig Pollard's uniquely weird style, you have to give the man props not only for creating all these songs, but having the patience to sift through them all again. Not to mention the fact that after 20 years, he can still remember everybody who played on every single one of these tracks.
Obviously, along with being a compulsive songwriter, Pollard is also one helluva packrat. We hope he never gets over either condition.
Track Listing
Disc1
01.Terrible Two - Styles We Paid For
02.Bloodbeast - Standard Generator
03.The Kissing Life - Huge On Plato
04.Bottoms Up! (You Fantastic Bastard) - Whitey Museum
05.Tear It Out - (The Amazing) Ben Zing
06.Cinnamon Flavored Skulls - Meat Kingdom Group
07.Bunco Men - Elf God
08.Bad And Rare - Judas & The Pile Drivers
09.Dorothy's A Planet - Eric Pretty
10.Pluto The Skate - Global Which Awakening
11.Let's Go Vike - Magic Toe
12.Sabotage - Hazzard Hotrods
13.Pink Drink - Tax Revlon
14.James Riot - Champion Hairpuller
15.It's Easy - Burns Carpenter
16.Dank Star Ground Control - A A Bottom
17.Spring Tigers - Crushed Being Groovy
18.Born On Seaweed - Rex Polaroyd
19.Flesh Ears From June - Monkey Business
20.Driving In The U.S. of A - Ghetto Blaster
21.My Big Day (3 Versions) - Turned Up Turner
22.Have It Again - Maxwell Greenfield
23.Little Jimmy The Giant - Little Bobby Pop
24.Taco, Buffalo, Birddog And Jesus - Bozo's Octopus
25.Ding Dong Daddy (Is Back From The Bank) - Mooshoo Wharf
Disc2
01.Supermarket The Moon - Clinton Killingsworth
02.Hold On To Yesterday - Stingy Queens
03.Ha Ha Man - The Judy Plus Nine
04.Our Value Of Luxury - Nicotine Cranes
05.Bug House (2 Versions) - Artur Psycho And The Trippy Warts
06.Rainbow Billy - Groovy Lucifer
07.Shrine To The Dynamic Years (Athens Time Change Riots) -
08.On Short Wave - Eric Petty
09.I Can See It In Your Eyes - Artrock Unicorns
10.Tobacco's Last Stand - Kuda Labranch
11.Shifting Swing Is A Lift - Elvis Caligula
12.Sing It Out - Tabatha's Flashpot
13.Messenger - Ricked Wicky Comstock
14.The Fool Ticket - K.C. Turner
15.Mallard Smoke - Brown Smoothies
16.Mr. McCaslin Will Sell No More Flowers - Edison Shell
17.Shit Midas - Ceramic Cock Einstein
18.Blue Gil - Moonchief
19.Invest In British Steel - Ricked Wicky
20.Spinning Around - Pearly Gates Smoke Machine
21.Let's Go (To War) - 1st Joint
22.Grasshopper Rap - Antler
23.I'm Cold - King Of Cincinnati
24.Damn Good Mr. Jam - Ghost Fart
25.In Walked The Moon - Ben Zing
Disc3
01.Long Way To Run - Fake Organisms
02.Mr. Media - Tom Devil
03.Settlement Down - Urinary Track Stars
04.Mr. Japan - Red Hot Helicopter
05.A Kind Of Love - Doctor Formula
06.Meddle - Ben Zing
07.Big Trouble - Hazzard Hotrods
08.A Good Circuitry Soldier - Eric Pretty
09.Devil Doll - Antler
10.Pantherz - Indian Alarm Clock
11.Cocaine Jane - Flaming Ray
12.Exploding Antlhills - Grabbit
13.Perch Warble - 8th Dwarf
14.Medley: This View/ True Sensation/ On The Wall - Coward Of The Hour
15.What Re We Coming To? - Oil Can Harry
16.Scissors And The Clay Ox (In) - Too Proud To Practice
17.Cody's Antler - Zeppelin Commander
18.Once In A While - God's Brother
19.Buzzards And The Dreadful Crows - Antler
20.Carnival At The Morning Star School - Kink Zego
21.Cruise - Royal Japanese Daycare
22.Gayle - Stingy Queens
23.Gift - Homosexual Flypaper
24.The Flying Party - Fast Forward Life
25.Trashed Airport - Bus Of Trojan Hope
Disc4
01.Trying To Make It Work Again - Pete Eastwood
02.Turbo Boy - Panzee
03.Chain Wallet Bitch - The Unfriendly
04.Little Head - King Of Cincinnati
05.Why Did You Land? - Matted Pelt
06.Time Machines - Ben Zing
07.A Farewell To Arms - Hazzard Hotrods
08.Best Things Goin' Round - Jumped Or Pushed
09.Sickly Sweet - Good Parts Only Corporation
10.United - Ben Zing
11.Unshaven Bird - John The Croc
12.Black Ghost Pie - Go Back Snowball
13.Go For The Answers - Brown Star Jam
14.Rocking Now - Factory Rat
15.Excellent Things - God's Brother
16.Static Airplane Jive - Antler
17.Where I Come From - Fake Organisms
18.Try To Find You - Fat Chance
19.Deaf Ears - Antler
20.Good For A Few Laughs - Academy Of Crowsfeet
21.Raphael - Nelly And The Dirtfloor
22.My Feet's Trustworthy Existence - Maxwell Greenfield
23.Eggs - Bravery Umpire
24.Wondering Boy Poet - Clinton Killingsworth
25.Oh. Blinky - Styles We Paid For