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Tuesday, January 16, 2007
Jim Connelly's
Favorite Recordings Of 2006
Monday, January 15, 2007
Jesse Steichen's Favorite Recordings Of 2006
Friday, January 12, 2007
Bill Bentley's Favorite Recordings Of 2006
Wednesday, January 10, 2007
Tom Ridge's Favorite Recordings Of 2006
Thursday, January 4, 2007
Lee Templeton's Favorite Recordings Of 2006
Tuesday, January 2, 2007
Anthony Carew's 13 Fave Albums Of 2006
Monday, March 27, 2006
SXSW 2006: Finding Some Hope In Austin
Tuesday, February 28, 2006
Letter From New Orleans
Saturday, February 18, 2006
Jennifer Przybylski's Fave Albums of 2005
Tuesday, January 31, 2006
Music For Dwindling Days: Max Schaefer's Fave Recordings Of 2005
Wednesday, January 18, 2006
Sean Fennessey's 'Best-Of' 2005
Thursday, January 12, 2006
Lori Miller Barrett's Fave Albums Of 2005
Wednesday, January 11, 2006
Lee Templeton's Favorite Recordings of 2005
Thursday, January 5, 2006
Michael Lach - Old Soul Songs For A New World Order
Wednesday, January 4, 2006
Found In Translation — Emme Stone's Year In Music 2005
Tuesday, January 3, 2006
Dave Allen's 'Best-Of' 2005
Monday, January 2, 2006
Steve Gozdecki's Favorite Albums Of 2005
Tuesday, December 20, 2005
Johnny Walker Black's Top 10 Of 2005
Monday, December 19, 2005
Neal Block's Favorite Recordings Of 2005
Thursday, December 15, 2005
Jenny Tatone's Year In Review
Tuesday, December 13, 2005
Dave Renard's Fave Recordings Of 2005
Monday, December 12, 2005
Jennifer Kelly's Fave Recordings Of 2005
Thursday, December 8, 2005
Tom Ridge's Favorite Recordings Of 2005
Tuesday, December 6, 2005
Ben Gook's Beloved Albums Of 2005
Monday, December 5, 2005
Anthony Carew's Fave Albums Of 2005
Thursday, November 10, 2005
Prince, Spoon And The Magic Of The Dead Stop
Monday, September 12, 2005
The Truth About America
Monday, September 5, 2005
Tryin' To Wash Us Away
Monday, August 1, 2005
A Psyche-Folk Heat Wave In Western Massachusetts
Monday, July 18, 2005
Soggy But Happy At Glastonbury 2005
Monday, April 4, 2005
The SXSW Experience, Part 3: All Together Now
Friday, April 1, 2005
The SXSW Experience, Part 2: Dr. Dog's Happy Chords
Thursday, March 31, 2005
The SXSW Experience, Part 1: Waiting, Waiting And More Waiting
Friday, March 25, 2005
Final Day At SXSW's Charnel House
Monday, March 21, 2005
Day Three At SXSW
Saturday, March 19, 2005
Day Two In SXSW's Hall Of Mirrors
Thursday, March 17, 2005
Report #1: SXSW 2005 And Its Hall Of Mirrors
Monday, February 14, 2005
Matt Landry's Fave Recordings Of 2004
Wednesday, February 2, 2005
David Howie's 'Moments' From The Year 2004
Thursday, January 27, 2005
Lori Miller Barrett's Fave Recordings Of 2004
Thursday, January 20, 2005
Noah Bonaparte's Fave Recordings Of 2004
Tuesday, January 18, 2005
Kevin John's Fave Albums Of 2004
Friday, January 14, 2005
Music For Those Nights: Max Schaefer's Fave Recordings Of 2004
Thursday, January 13, 2005
Dave Renard's Fave Recordings Of 2004
Wednesday, January 12, 2005
Neal Block's Top Ten Of 2004
Tuesday, January 11, 2005
Jenny Tatone's Fave Albums Of 2004
Monday, January 10, 2005
Wayne Robins' Top Ten Of 2004
Friday, January 7, 2005
Brian Orloff's Fave Albums Of 2004
Thursday, January 6, 2005
Johnny Walker (Black)'s Top 10 Of 2004
Wednesday, January 5, 2005
Jennifer Przybylski's Fave Albums (And Book) Of 2004
Tuesday, January 4, 2005
Mark Mordue's Fave Albums Of 2004
Monday, January 3, 2005
Lee Templeton's Fave Recordings Of 2004
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Monday, March 4, 2002
GBV's Robert Pollard Needs More Music, Man!
Neumu's Michael Goldberg writes: If there's a recording artist more prolific than Robert Pollard, I wish someone would tell me who it is. In just the past year, the artist best known as the leader of Guided by Voices has released seven albums containing over 100 songs, all of which he co-wrote. The latest additions to the Pollard canon are Airport 5's Life Starts Here, another successful collaboration with former GBV member Tobin Sprout, and Go Back Snowball's Calling Zero, an inspired collaboration with Superchunk's Mac McCaughan. Both albums were released on Pollard's label, Fading Captain Series, in February.
"Some people want me to have a writer's block," Pollard said during a recent interview. "Some labels have told me to slow down. Quit writing music, take a break, go fishing."
Not that he really cares what others might think. "It's too much fun," said Pollard, on the phone from his home in Dayton, Ohio. "I need more music, man!"
Laughing, Pollard continued, "There's not enough good music out there, that's why I have to write so much. There's good music, but not like there used to be. I'm older [so I remember the] good stuff from the '60s and the '70s. That's why I have to write so much, 'cause it's not around any more, my kind of music."
Pollard's non-GBV projects these days are what he calls "postal rock." "Well, I've never been into really sitting down and writing songs with someone unless it's someone I'm really comfortable with and been around a long time, like my brother [onetime GBV member Jim Pollard]," he explained. "I find it much easier to collaborate in a long-distance kinda way. They send me the music and I have all the time that I want to come up with lyrics, and then I sing on top of it."
That approach has resulted in the Airport 5, Go Back Snowball and Circus Devils projects. "I can make a song out of just about anything," he said. "They send me this music that sounds good as instrumentals, but it's still not a song. Then I put the finishing touches on it. When it really clicks in, it's really gratifying to write a song with somebody without having any physical contact with them."
Pollard has been making music all his life, but it was only in the mid-'90s, following the critically acclaimed Guided by Voices album Bee Thousand (which almost single-handedly introduced the "lo-fi" concept to the world), that he was able to quit his day job as a schoolteacher in Dayton and devote himself full time to rock 'n' roll.
He has masterminded a mind-boggling amount of music. There are over two dozen Guided by Voices and solo Robert Pollard albums, including 2000's four-CD Suitcase, which alone contains 100 songs. Beyond that, there are at least a dozen side-project albums, such as Circus Devils' Ringworm Interiors, a psychedelic concept album released a few months ago that Pollard describes as "this weird dark Broadway thing, like a dark Jesus Christ Superstar."
"I don't release anything that I don't like myself," Pollard said. "I'm not putting out records just to make money, I'm putting out records 'cause I think they need to come out. People want to hear this stuff. What I find funny is that the really hardcore fans want the craziest shit; they're searching for what we call the 'brown nugget.' That's the stuff they really want."
The next Guided by Voices album, tentatively titled From a Voice Plantation, was completed recently at studios in Dayton and Kent, Ohio, and is expected out before year's end. The album, produced by GBV and producer/engineer Todd Tobias, is expected to contain 19 songs, including "Christian Animation Torch Carriers," "Everywhere With Helicopter," "Zap" and "Wings of Thorn." "I wanted each song to sound different," Pollard explained. "One way to do that is to record every song one at a time. Completely finishing a song and mixing it before going on to the next one."
Pollard typically spends more time writing and recording GBV songs than on his side projects. "All these other things I do are totally spontaneous," he said. "I've come to the point where I want to take a little more time on Guided by Voices records. I want them to get better, and I don't want to have any relapses, and I don't want to be lo-fi, and I don't want to have a lot of mistakes in the songs.
"'Cause Guided by Voices, that's my vehicle for a little bit of attention from people as a songwriter," he continued. "Most people aren't going to hear about these Fading Captain Series releases. Those are mainly for the fans. But Guided by Voices has a name, people check out the records. We're in Tower Records.... So I take a little more time, I'm paying a little more attention to the songs, I'm fleshing them out, I'm working on finales. We're concerned with using different techniques in the studio. It's important to me for GBV to continue to progress, whereas everything else, whatever happens, happens."
Pollard says that he's made sure that Guided by Voices' recent record contracts gave him the right to release as many solo and side-project recordings as he wants. "At one point I couldn't," he said. "My hands were tied as to what I could do, and I felt really depressed, 'cause I couldn't put out as much music as I wanted to. But we bargained for this, and we started Fading Captain Series, and I've been putting out five or six albums a year. It keeps me happy."
Later this year, Pollard said, he hopes to make available what could be his "craziest shit" yet to see release. "I compiled a compilation that we call Acid Ranch," he explained. "It's my brother Jim (guitar), Mitch Mitchell (guitar) and myself. They were live rambling rants, jams we did in the basement [of Pollard's house]. I think it will be a double LP, just on vinyl. It's almost unlistenable, extremely lo-fi. But it's really interesting if you can get beyond the fidelity. It's all spontaneous, all live.
"These songs weren't recorded for a record," he continued. "They were just recorded for us to just listen to and laugh at ourselves. Some people misconstrue it as self-indulgent. It had to be self-indulgent, 'cause it was for ourselves only. We did it in '83. I finally deemed it necessary to come out. But I want to listen to it myself. I want to sit around with my brother and Mitch and get stoned and listen to it and laugh our asses off. Nobody has to buy it. We put music out to entertain ourselves."
The InsiderOne Daily
Report appears on Monday, Wednesday and Friday at 9 AM PST, except when it doesn't.
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