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the insider one daily report


Friday, August 31, 2001

They Want The Plastic Everlasting

Neumu's Michael Goldberg writes: Robert Pollard makes albums under different names. You are most likely acquainted with the music he's released as Guided By Voices, but whatever the name, the music is always interesting, and often quite amazing.

Today I've been listening to an album called Tower in the Fountain of Sparks by "Airport 5." The liner notes reveal that Airport 5 is actually Mr. Pollard and former Guided By Voices member Tobin Sprout.

You can float away, listening to the cool, slightly '60s-influenced, sometimes exuberant/other times ominous Brit-pop music and the sound of Robert Pollard's mod vocals. This is the sound of great rock 'n' roll. It is music so perfect. You listen, again and again, as I have done, and you wonder how is it that that two men have such powerful vision, such exquisite taste, such an intuitive feel for what should be in a recording, and what shouldn't.

You can just groove to the sound, and trip on the lines that pop out: "The network consumer...," "Whereby we dig the beauty...," "How can you believe that patience brings reward...," "No one gets the brakes, that's the breaks, baby."

Or you can dig in, listen to every word, read the lyric sheet, attempt to decipher the words, the code.

One song that fascinates me is called "Burns Carpenter, Man of Science." Whoever plays guitar on this track — Tobin Sprout? — gets this metallic sound that is so cool. I can just listen to the simple riffs over and over.

The song is about a scientist who has discovered a "liquid form of love" that he wants to sell. One problem, as Pollard sings with overdubbed voice in the chorus to a beautiful power-pop kind of melody: "This kind of love (kind of love) will destroy the ozone."

In the song Burns Carpenter is unable to take his love potion to market: "Taken to the test/ But regrettably not sold/ For ultimately it must fail."

Sometimes I think Madison Avenue thinks they've got love in a bottle, which, again and again, they palm off on a nation of lonely people desperate for love. Buy the car, get the girl. Buy the —, get the girl.

Pollard has some heady things on his mind. In the second song, "Total Exposure," he begins: "How dare you say/ 'You have a good one'/ When it's obvious/ I don't."

The album feels written under the shadow of Big Baby George Bush, and the energy "crisis," and the negative trend of these past nine months. Later, in "Total Exposure" he sings, "And the power plants/ A doomsday crop."

I read today in the New York Times about one man who is building an 18,000-square-foot house in Marin County and another who lives in a 12,000-square-foot house in Lake Washington, near Seattle. "I know there's a natural inconsistency," said Mr. Van der Ryn, the man building the 18,000-square-foot house. "I mean, how can you be green at this size?"

Well, you can't. Here in the U.S., we want it all. We want SUVs and monster homes, and yet some of us also want to be politically correct. We love the Web and computers and the newest technology, but do we think about the toll that making those products takes on the environment? Sings Pollard: "Dreams can't wait/ For tomorrow/ They want the plastic everlasting/ Now or never."



The InsiderOne Daily Report appears weekdays at 9 AM PST, except when it doesn't.

by Michael Goldberg



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