Journeys With GBV, Part 1
Saturday will be the last time I ever get to see my all-time favorite live band, Guided By Voices, who plan to break up after their current tour. This week will be devoted to GBV!
I was living in Seattle when I was first put on to GBV. Mark of course — with his stacks & stacks of CDs — many wonderful, many head-scratchers — was the start of it all. We had both moved up there in various states of loneliness and weird life inflection points to find Seattle dark, depressing but really open to finding new bits of alt.culture. This was at the tail end of grunge, but the city’s hipoisie had already moved on. The celebrities of grunge were still there, though. They’d never really “gone big” and most of the the Sub Pop level folks were still accessible and visible.
So Mark calls me up and says there’s this band I have to hear that sounds like Gang Of Four but poppy. My suspicion that he’s trying to put one over on me is confirmed by the record he brings over, “Bee Thousand.” It sounds like it’s been recorded in the basement, but every song has different imperfections — like it was recorded in a 100 different basements. The songs are catchy, but difficult to hear. The titles are surreal — “Gold Heart Mountaintop Queen Directory,” “Kicker Of Elves,” etc — but the singer seems entirely committed to… whatever he’s saying. There are 20+ songs, but the album is only 33 minutes long. Rumor has it they are all 4th grade teachers, all over 40. This is weird.
We head down to Crocodile Cafe to check them out. It’s a typically cold, dark, rainy Seattle night, just frozen enough to chill you, but not enough that you break out the deep winter clothing. This was my secret life in business school; none of my hopelessly square classmates are the least interested in Seattle’s underbelly. GBV takes the stage. And they are drunk. Really drunk. In fact, come to think of it, I saw them hunkered over a table in the dining room before, downing Bud after Bud. Geez, I thought those were some fans.
They are magnificent. Every song sounds like it’s been awakened from the CD. The singer comes on, does a letter-perfect scissor kick, turns bottle after bottle of beer upside down his throat and so clearly LOVES what he is doing. This is Bob; I’m going to see a lot of Bob over the years. The band completely rocks. It’s like The Who disguised as a bunch of record store clerks from Ohio. They play like 50 songs in 2 hours and all of them sound like instant classics, the kinds of songs so good that they sound like they always existed and somebody unearthed them.
I am sold. My cassette of “Bee Thousand” stays in or near my car stereo for about six months.
The next time we see them, Mark, Eric and I meet at Eric’s for a barbecue. This is late spring and Seattle looks great. It’s sunny and we’re getting a good beer buzz on. We argue about what songs to play from the new record “Alien Lanes,” which has a mere 28 tracks in its 38 minutes. This time they’ve brought the cooler right on stage with them, and they pass beers back and forth all night. That night, the rhythm guitarist was called away for the birth of his daughter, so the roadie steps in to play instead. He’s never gigged with the band before, but he clearly fits right in. Like Lou Gehrig, Nate hasn’t relinquished his spot since that night.
A love affair is born. I’m going to see these guys probably 15 times in the next 10 years.
[Soundtrack]
Guided By Voices – Tractor Rape Chain.mp3
Guided By Voices – Game Of Pricks.mp3
Guided By Voices – Motor Away.mp3
