Guided By Voices and the Fractured American Dream of Rock ‘n’ Roll
A love letter to Robert Pollard, Guided By Voices, rising above expectations, and the creative life
Hello, hello. Digging deep into the archives for this one so it may not be for everybody. But for fans of indie rock, music more generally, creativity, and the eternal struggle to “make it,” I thought it might have some resonances. Originally written in 2020, I’m brushing this off and souping it up a little for Getting Spooked publication. Links to songs and the relevant documentary in the footnotes and elsewhere. I hope you enjoy.
The servants are making a promise / We’ll all rise above this depression / The angels are making new circles / A gift to every naked fat baby – Robert Pollard, “People are Leaving”
i. Introduction: A Salty Salute
Guided By Voices, a lo-fi indie rock project led by frontman Robert Pollard, were far from the mainstream cultural consciousness until 1994 with their cult hit album, Bee Thousand. Pollard was a Dayton elementary school teacher and former star athlete. He was 36 years old when the album released, a highly unusual age for a rock star to have their breakout. In the decade earlier, he tried and failed to get the band some notoriety, securing small loans from banks to finance the first five albums of GBV’s existence. Now, blessed with a record deal from Scat, a subsidiary of Matador Records, the pieces seemed to be falling into place. However, as Woodworth notes, “there’s nothing formulaic about Guided By Voices’ music or their move from invisibility to relevance.”1 It is an understatement to say that GBV did not fit the mold of the typical 1990s indie rock group, they were a different breed of creative workers altogether. This love letter of sorts examines GBV as an oddity within the indie rock scene and the musical economy altogether, balancing between the band’s mythos as a rags-to-rock-riches parable and a tale of immense luck in an uninviting creative landscape.
Through Matt Stahl’s work on 1990s indie rockumentaries, GBV’s unconventional rise and fall from popularity will be better contextualized. Stahl sees the rockumentary as a medium that “engages and produces narratives that interweave discourses of popular music and political and economic autonomy with themes of musical professionalization, self-actualization, and the achievement of social mobility.”2 Further, GBV actually had a rockumentary made about them, Banks Tarver’s Guided By Voices: Watch Me Jumpstart, which does not quite fit the mold that Stahl outlines while still giving a window into GBV’s journey to recognition. The band could certainly be considered a group representative of the upward mobility rock ‘n’ roll story but I hope to complicate this matter by exploring GBV’s career, lyrics, and rockumentary as a departure from the bands that Stahl writes of.
To these ends, affect theory, particularly Lauren Berlant’s writings on “cruel optimism,” will provide further methods for analyzing GBV’s personal history and songwriting. Affect theory is not a totally novel way to examine GBV; Woodworth noted the affective power of Bee Thousand in particular, describing it as a record that encompassed “so many human states and emotional realities that no single story could define it or give it a calming, false name.”3 The affect among the many I wish to elucidate from GBV’s history and work is that of desperation, disillusionment and working-class depression—particularly in relation to Lauren Berlant’s concept of “cruel optimism.” English academic Hua Hsu gives helpful insight on Berlant’s notion of this term:
We like to imagine that our life follows some kind of trajectory, like the plot of a novel, and that by recognizing its arc we might, in turn, become its author. But often what we feel instead is a sense of precariousness—a gut-level suspicion that hard work, thrift, and following the rules won’t give us control over the story, much less guarantee a happy ending. For all that, we keep on hoping, and that persuades us to keep on living.4
In the case of Guided By Voices, cruel optimism pervaded their early days: Time, money, and intense creative work did not blossom into a success story. When the band reached moderate success, it was largely through luck. Even later, when the band was able to achieve a major record deal, Pollard’s disillusionment of an industry that took away creative control was equally dissatisfactory. Cruel optimism and disillusionment are illustrated through their songs and business decisions, as Pollard attempted to salvage his artistic vision in an unwelcoming local and national music industry.
ii. Dayton, Ohio circa 19 Something and 5: The Early Days
Guided By Voices was always an artistic project of cruel optimism. As Cullen writes: “Making is affected by the artists relationship to material. The material the artist can afford or that they can find, material they know how to process or the kind of scale they are able to work on due to space and resources.”5 The scale of resources is severely skewed in creative industries, unable to meet the standards needed of the “good life fantasy,” though the optimism still remains. GBV’s materials of creative production were simple: After borrowing money for an early EP (Forever Since Breakfast) that sounds like R.E.M., Pollard ditched the polished college rock aesthetic in favor of a gritty, lo-fi sound. All the band needed was a four-track recorder and a basement or garage. Even after the vinyl was pressed for the band’s fifth album, Propeller, Pollard and the band made album covers out of whatever they could find around—hand decorated with stencils, bargain bin album covers, even beer cases.
The aesthetic qualities that may have arisen out of budget limitations eventually became the easiest way for Pollard to record music—the patchwork, lo-fi sound was the perfect canvas for the terse, powerful pop songs that were in his head. Yet music theorist Marianne Tatom notes that “Pollard suggests that the lo-fi traits prized by early fans had little to do with his own vision of the band’s sound,” further illustrating the connection of GBV’s music to available materials.6 Despite this limitation, the lo-fi aesthetic was a huge draw during the burgeoning lo-fi scene of the 1990s. Novara and Henry note that the band was “known for intelligent songs that pushed the limits of the lo-fi subgenre.” They found this especially true in the case of Bee Thousand: “With abundant tape hiss, amplifier buzz, feedback, and underproduced instruments, the recording process creates a sonic design equal in importance to the actual songwriting.”7 What was initially a product of convenience and necessity became a desired aesthetic. The subject matter of their lyrics, combined with this undoubtedly down-to-earth aesthetic, transformed their music into a workingman’s rock ‘n’ roll. “This is the sound of transforming everyday realities,” Woodworth writes of Bee Thousand. “Sticking gold stars on fourth-graders’ papers, shuttling the kids to practice, paying the interminable mortgage, friction with the folks—while always keeping those realities before us, however transformed they become in the process.”8
GBV is also often associated with their hometown of Dayton, Ohio—a location that Pollard has a love-hate relationship with. Biographer Matthew Cutter notes that it took decades for Pollard’s band to gain any traction or positive publicity in Dayton. Yet Pollard has always lived in his hometown, a location that could be an impediment, as important as it eventually became GBV’s reputation. Harper writes that “their geographical isolation (…) was seen as a major cause of their authenticity. One writer compared them to a ‘tribe that had no previous contact with civilization.’”9 Even Pollard hides his “hick” Dayton accent in a false British vocal intonation because he learned to sing from Beatles records.10 The gritty bleakness of the industrial Midwest was equally affecting for Pollard—GBV’s fourth album, Same Place the Fly Got Smashed, was a loose concept album about an alcoholic, presumably from Dayton, whose crutch eventually lands him in jail. The album is perhaps the best representative in GBV’s oeuvre of Midwest depression and desperation. From the track “Drinker’s Peace,” a love ballad to alcohol:
My life was dirt, but you seemed to make it cleaner / Reduced my felony to a misdemeanor / When I feel sick, you’re an antibiotic / Organized my world when it was pointless and chaotic / I get a contact buzz / Can’t remember what the problem was / I find it hard to even care / Life was too real until you got there.11
Just like Dayton, the band has a love-hate relationship with alcohol. GBV’s live shows have historically been the site of amazing feats of drinking on the band’s part, but Same Place the Fly Got Smashed reveals alcohol as a complex topic within the band’s mythology. It clouds out the miserable world around them and seems to spark creativity, but “Drinker’s Peace” reveals the tonic to be more of salve for the situation the band finds themselves in, unable to escape the place that is both home and prison. Berlant writes:
What’s cruel about these attachments, and not merely inconvenient or tragic, is that the subjects who have x in their lives might not well endure the loss of their object/scene of desire, even though its presence threatens their well-being, because whatever the content of the attachment is, the continuity of its form provides something of the continuity of the subject’s sense of what it means to keep on living on and to look forward to being in the world.12
Such a description of the cruel attachment concept represents GBV’s relationship to alcohol and to Dayton well. On Same Place the Fly Got Smashed, the affect toward alcohol ranges from a needed release from monotony (and welcome addition to the music-making process) to a powerful force of self-destruction.
Dayton itself would serve as inspiration on future releases. The song “Dayton, Ohio—19 Something and 5” appeared on the 1996 fanclub-only release, Tonics and Twisted Chasers. The song is a reference to the 1972 Randy Newman piano ballad, “Dayton, Ohio 1903,” which reminisces upon an idyllic Dayton of the early 1900s. Pollard and Sprout’s version evokes a contemporary Dayton in a manner equally idyllic, but somberly tongue-in-cheek:
Isn’t it great to exist at this point in time? / Where the produce is rotten but no one’s forgotten / On strawberry Philadelphia Drive / Children in the sprinkler, junkies on the corner, / The smell of fried foods and pure hot tar / Man, you needn’t travel far to feel completely alive.13
Pollard ended a 2000 live recording of the song by exclaiming, “that’s kind of a sad song (…), huh?” The listener is cued in on how desperate the band is to escape the bleak everyday life of Dayton, while still appreciating it as their home. This topic is regular fodder for GBV, especially in Pollard’s minimalist power ballads. From “If We Wait”:
There’s some food upon the table boys / and if you have ever seen me flying / then you know that I am weak / and you are free to take me downstairs / away from cares. / I’ll be with you in the morning, boys / ‘cause you know that if we wait / for our time / we’ll all be dead.14
Pollard wails out the final lines, croaking them out as if in pain, and the listener gets a clear sense of desperation from Pollard with regard to his desire for success in the musical economy. Further tracks like “He’s the Uncle” see Pollard further worrying about running out of time before making the creative mark he wanted to (“and I am getting old aren’t I?”).15 Even immediately after the band’s signing with the semipro Scat Records, other songs seem to display a cynicism at the prospect of the record deal’s longevity. On “Wandering Boy Poet” from Vampire on Titus:
Dream on child of change / throw your javelin through the sun / pierce the heart of everyone / though we push to slave the days / this is not reality / this is just formality / the cup is only being filled / for the chance to have it spilled / flowing just like the day / sailing just like the days.16
“Wandering Boy Poet” presents several affective facets of GBV’s music in less than a minute of runtime. There is a sense of the aforementioned Midwestern desperation in the vocalist’s plea to keep dreaming despite the “child of change” slaving the days away. Yet this desperation is matched by dread, anxiety, and a wariness of good fortune lasting. As often as GBV puts on a bombastic swagger, their music is not without its tender moments. Pollard is emotionally in tune with everyday life in his hometown, pummeled with criticisms that the band could never “make it,” because they were too old and too weird for the 90s indie rock audiences. While responding to these criticisms with stubborn defiance on albums like Propeller (“And hey, let’s throw the great party / Today for the rest of our lives”), Pollard also seems aware that the band could never make it (“You see it falling and now it’s crumbling / To the cold, unforgivable ground / You had a hand in it”).17 At the same time, tracks on Propeller imply that there is the ability to live out the rock star dream, even if it is in music recorded on a 4-track in a friend’s basement. From “Metal Mothers”:
Tune in rock star, / there’s no dark spot / running around your face / You find time to get laid, / you find ways to get paid. / You don’t see no / busted rain clouds / watering up your days / And so set in your ways / and so fixed in your gaze.18
Propeller was the metaphorical American dream of indie rock records. Pollard intended it to be a final record, a farewell party with his music buddies, with no expectations of higher reward. These intentions were exceeded beyond belief when Pete Jamison, a friend of the band, marketed the album for him, eventually getting the attention of Robert Griffin, an executive at a Matador Records subsidiary. With this shift to minor industry recognition, GBV’s toe was dipped into the larger American music economy.
iii. Interlude: “I Write Music for Soundtracks Now”
Banks Tarver’s Guided By Voices: Watch Me Jumpstart was filmed from 1994 to 1995—the period immediately after the band’s success with Bee Thousand, then in the period prior to and after the release of the follow-up Alien Lanes. The film, as in GBV’s constant style, is unconventional, bursting with creativity, and short. It does not “construct (…) a life in which work is the authentic expression of a self autonomously aligned with global entertainment capital,” as Matt Stahl writes, because GBV were barely beginning their brush with stardom.19 This was a stage in the band’s career when the musical economy was absent from their minds. Tarver’s film instead views its subject more like outsider artists—normal middle-aged Midwesterners who have an eccentric hobby. While most of the footage is done in a black-and-white cinema verité style, it is cut and interspliced with homemade music videos, interviews in color, and experimental footage combined with sound bites of Pollard’s lyrics—editing not dissimilar from early GBV albums. Concert footage is not at the forefront, no record executives make an appearance, and the majority of the film is dedicated to observing Pollard and GBV’s creative process as they write lyrics, creates album covers, and record tracks in various basements and garages across Dayton. The documentary has an intense focus on the Ohioan city, with countless shots focused on the snow-covered industrial Midwest landscape. Drummer Kevin Fennell remarks that it was easier to be creative in Dayton “because anything you do is new.”20 Tarver also makes a point of highlighting a drive-thru beer vendor, further associating GBV’s legend with Dayton and alcohol.
Watch Me Jumpstart makes a concentrated effort to illustrate GBV as separate from the overall music industry. This separation is highlighted by a brief scene in which GBV fight with the band Picasso Trigger after a dispute regarding top billing. After GBV gets kicked out for booing Picasso Trigger, a manager of the venue remarks that “shitty people like that give industry people a bad name,” to which Pollard’s brother Jim responds “see ya later sideburns!” before the van drives off. This moment is played for humor, with GBV packed in one small van like a high school garage band who got booted from an appearance at prom. Combined with Tarver’s other footage, showing recording and production done by the band themselves, Tarver represents GBV as a non-industry entity, willfully independent and anti-establishment. The documentary ends with Pollard asserting that it has never been about the money, he is just making what he thinks sounds good. These motivations seemed to shift somewhat in the years that followed, but Pollard fought to regain control of his creative work wholeheartedly. As Stahl writes, “most working people—no matter how innovative, no matter how autonomous—still have nothing to sell but their skins.”21
iii. I Am Produced / An Unmarketed Product: The TVT Deal
Berlant writes that optimism is a multifaceted and varied concept: “Because optimism is ambitious, at any moment it might feel like anything, including nothing: dread, anxiety, hunger, curiosity, the whole gamut from the sly neutrality of browsing the aisles to excitement at the prospect of ‘the change that’s gonna come.’”22 Pollard and GBV were always in a perpetual state of cruel optimism, as Berlant envisions it, even when they had resorted to making music only for themselves. These moments of cruel optimism stem from a mixture of desperation in their conventional working-class lives in Dayton and confidence in their own creative output. On their initial “last hurrah,” Propeller, Pollard fuses the “sly neutrality” of driving a car with bombastic, if unwarranted, optimism in “Quality of Armor”: “Oh, yeah, I’m going to drive my car / Oh, yeah, I’m going to go real far / Beyond the shadow of a doubt / Beyond the power of your clout / Beyond the secret bogus world.”23 The swagger in “Quality of Armor” appears almost tongue-in-cheek for a musical project that was coming to an end. An optimism against all odds is also reflected in the opening moment of Propeller where participants in an imitation crowd chant “GBV! GBV!” as if the band were a fixture of rock ‘n’ roll. Early GBV is an almost perfect representation of Berlant’s concept, mixing the dread, anxiety, and monotony of everyday life in a nameless Midwestern city with the whimsical curiosity of a creative mind wanting more.
Even after GBV’s record deal with Scat/Matador, Pollard’s lyrics express this combination of affects. The opening lines of “Bright Paper Werewolves” are a sonic word scramble, a perhaps meaningless poetry: “Come on, polluted eyeballs / Stop scouting out the field / Jump up, bright paper werewolves / And everybody everywhere.” After a tonal shift, the closing lines are pervaded with a sense of anxiety, rejecting traditional optimism for an apprehension about the band’s security in the musical economy: “They want to get out of here / but they can’t find the exits / They cling to the cinema / and they can’t find security / Then they finally got recognized / So they left in obscurity and misery.”24 Berlant warns that optimism can equally be put forth toward “the change that is not going to come.”25 Pollard seems knowledgeable of this possibility in “Bright Paper Werewolves,” but nevertheless pushed forward with his ambitions in the musical economy.
After Alien Lanes, GBV’s first record with Scat’s parent company, Matador, the band’s fortunes seemed to only go up. Despite a milder response to their records after Bee Thousand and Alien Lanes, GBV was eventually signed to a major label, TVT (a subsidiary of Sony Records), and released their most divisive album in 1999’s Do the Collapse. Pollard, while also wanting to find success in the music industry, illustrated anxieties about the prospect in earlier releases. On Mag Earwhig!, the Matador album that preceded Do the Collapse, Pollard included the trudging art rock piece, “I Am Produced”—a song more reminiscent of Genesis’ “The Grand Parade of Lifeless Packaging” than other indie rock. The lyrics of both songs describe human beings packaged like vulgar commodities on a production line: “I am pressed, printed, stomped, and strategically removed / I am everybody / Insane without innocence, I am trapped, tricked, packaged / And shipped out / I am produced.”26 An economic view of musicmaking was expressly anathema to Pollard.
Even on Do the Collapse, Pollard’s songs seem to indicate a dissatisfaction or wariness of the music industry he had become a part of—as if he was already regretting the deal while writing the album. From the closing track, “An Unmarketed Product”: “Well, I can give you credit / Suitable and custom-tailored / And if you have any luck / You’ll get ahead, before you’re dead.”27 Pollard’s reservation while within the music industry echo his anxieties outside of it. The line “you’ll get ahead, before you’re dead,” (which seems to mimic the promises of music executives) is eerily reminiscent of Pollard’s earlier exclamation that if the band waited for their “time,” they would “all be dead.”
Furthermore, Pollard never truly exiled himself from the indie rock scene, illustrating a reservation to make a full dive into stardom with TVT. The same year that Do the Collapse was released, GBV fans saw the beginning of Pollard’s Fading Captain Series, a record label of self-released albums and EPs that Pollard had complete creative control over. Among the releases were his third solo album Kid Marine, a collection of experimental early tracks by a fictional called Nightwalker, and a 100-song boxset of outtakes and demos titled Suitcase: Failed Experiments & Trashed Aircraft. The latter was the first of 4 boxsets in a series and included fictional band names for each track. Releases in The Fading Captain Series were the first stirrings of the push for creative autonomy to come: The label was started by Pollard and a friend, there were no music executives who could tell him what to do. Pollard was releasing copious amounts of music away from the TVT deal, indicative of an unwillingness to put total trust in the national music industry and a desire to continue his active creative output on his own terms. Indeed, Pollard soon regretted jumping on the TVT roster: “I love Matador. I should have stayed there. I fucked up.”28
Do the Collapse was produced by former frontman of The Cars, Ric Ocasek, and had the glossy production of indie rock he was famous for (evident in albums such as Weezer’s debut, Nada Surf’s High/Low, and No Doubt’s Rock Steady). Of the singles released, Pollard holds the most animosity for the pseudo-country ballad “Hold on Hope”: “Pollard likened the song to R.E.M.’s ‘Everybody Hurts’ or The Cars’ ‘Drive’—a syrupy sentimental ditty that just happened to have hit potential. He wanted no part of that action.”29 After a feud regarding a remix of the song meant for single release that Pollard saw as “something you hear in a skating rink,” he began to see the money-hungry side of the music industry—the side that threw artistic integrity out the metaphorical window. “When the record company took his song and altered it so fundamentally,” Cutter writes, “Bob realized things were spiraling further from his control than he’d prefer.”30 Again, Pollard’s stumbling journey through the music industry smacks of cruel optimism: “When something you desire is actually an obstacle to your own flourishing.”31 Pollard wanted a record out that he was proud of, which generally meant one that he had complete creative control over, but his desire for creative control would continually be an obstacle for further financial success. Pollard did not care. GBV re-signed with their old label, Matador, and Pollard’s creative autonomy was regained, albeit revealed incompatible within the mechanism of the larger music industry. As Cutter writes: “He could jump for the record label, and maybe even score some radio hits, but he’d always be a slave to commerce.”32 Moved safely back to an independent label, while still releasing his own side-projects at an astonishing pace, Pollard became increasingly more isolated from the larger musical economy, but this move was the only option in gaining a fuller musical autonomy.
iv. The Littlest League Possible: Regaining Autonomy
After disbanding GBV in 2004 with the farewell album Half Smiles of the Decomposed, Pollard continued his prolific solo career and started several side projects like Boston Spaceships, The Takeovers, and holdovers from the Fading Captain Series such as Circus Devils. While early solo records were released through semi-major label Merge Records, by 2008 almost all of Pollard’s music projects were released through self-started record labels like Happy Jack Rock Records and Guided By Voices, Inc. Pollard had separated himself from the larger music industry entirely, enabling him to release any and all of the vast quantities of music he has created throughout the decades.
The Bee Thousand lineup of Guided By Voices reformed in 2012, but the records were released much like the early days: Through Pollard’s own funds and label. This time, however, he had the dedicated fanbase to support it. The new, sustainable business model is echoed in the lyrics to the 2014 GBV song “The Littlest League Possible”: “The most rudimentary division / of competition / where no worlds collide / to be the biggest fish / in the smallest pond / on the littlest island / where I shall reside / or keep banging it out / in the Texas league.”33 As a triumphant piece of lo-fi arena rock, “The Littlest League Possible” illustrates in some ways the Pollard success story—but also its drawbacks.
After getting Guided By Voices a mainstream audience against all odds, the music industry was not the happy place that its glimmering reputation might imply it to be. It was a cruelly optimistic vision, a reality not met by the dream. It was through this minor brush with fame, however, that Pollard found a small but dedicated cult following that allowed him to release records that sold well in “the littlest league possible,” as opposed to the multimillion dollar music industry. Pollard now has mostly complete creative freedom and can rest assured that his records will at least break even. GBV’s 2016 release, Please Be Honest, was a return to the earliest days in Pollard’s musical career. The album features Pollard on all instruments and vocals and includes some of his most surreal lyrics, a factor that Woodworth notes as a high point on Bee Thousand—“tangled skeins of words.”34 With a new lineup, Pollard returned to the band format that same year—further insisting that GBV was any formation that Pollard deemed as such. The fake collage album covers that he patched together since high school has evolved into artwork and art zines that he sells on an online store. While GBV and Pollard’s music appears on streaming services, Pollard has achieved the bulk of his economic freedom from selling physical merchandise through GBV’s online store and on tour. Limited edition vinyl records—like the comic country 7” She Laughed I Left by Pollard’s alternate persona Cash Rivers—regularly sell out. Pollard has, in some ways, achieved a separate musical economy through his own singular vision.
Woodworth writes that “it’s tempting to make a myth out of the Guided By Voices story, to turn the reality (…) into a by-the-numbers rise-to-glory narrative.”35 My aim in this love letter has been, in fact, to do the opposite. Pollard and GBV were lucky to succeed in the environment that they succeeded in. The record that got a contract with a label, Propeller, was a last ditch effort for the band—Pollard was giving up on his dream job, resigned to becoming a good working-class citizen. The DIY lo-fi aesthetic was adopted and well-utilized by Pollard, but what alternative did the band have? They were pursuing this goal through small loans from a local bank—eventually the credit would run out. Parents, wives, and friends implored them to quit. Even their songs, as catchy and innovative as they may be, were “too weird” for Dayton and would have been too weird for nearly any other era of the music industry. They pushed a lo-fi aesthetic before the genre was widely accepted by the majority of the indie rock crowd.
This is all to say that GBV is an oddity, a band that could easily be mythologized as “the American dream of rock ‘n’ roll.” Alternatively, GBV represents the fractured American dream of the music industry; a band that is exemplar of the cruel optimism that pervades the musical economy. Creative autonomy will only get a musician so far. The same is true of any unconventional upbringing in the musical economy, i.e. it will only initially serve as a mark of authenticity or spectacle. Even genuine talent will be compressed and polished into consumable products. Guided By Voices should not be mythologized as a success story, regardless of how successful Pollard wound up being. It is also largely by chance that they were exposed to the larger music community long enough to gain a cult following that could support small-scale endeavors.
Rather, GBV serves as a representative of the fact that rock ‘n’ roll dreams becoming reality are an oddity. The musical “good life” is mostly unattainable—the creativity that is said to be the driving force behind musical careers becomes an impediment at a certain level. GBV’s best records came from the era when cash was low but motivation to make art for its own sake was high. Their plight suggests that total creative autonomy cannot truly exist in a broader musical economy, it is predominantly unwelcome. Although creative autonomy is implied to be the force that stimulates a musician’s mobility within the music industry, “this is not reality, this is just formality,” as Pollard says. Yet the frontman’s disillusionment during his abandoned climb to the top illustrates the cruel optimism of the music industry: The musical “good life” cannot exist without surrendering at least part of the fantasy of the that very “good life.” The musical economy cannot sustain or will not allow the musical “good life” to exist.
But sometimes, in exceedingly rare instances, small blips can get through the static and shock us all. As fellow unsung indie rockers Big Dipper wrote in their tribute song to Pollard: “The minor stars are growing dim / And they fall around him / They’ve sputtered and they’ve faltered / None burn like Robert Pollard.”36 Indeed, Pollard was one of the few to make it out of the industry with enough cred to stay in perpetual motion. The band that penned this homage track, Big Dipper, was a different case altogether—a band that got lost after the 90s came and went. Maybe one day they’ll get a love letter of their own.
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Woodworth, Marc. Bee Thousand. New York & London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2006. Page 7.
Stahl, Matt. Unfree Masters: Recording Artists and the Politics of Work. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2013. Page 85.
Woodworth, Marc. Bee Thousand. New York & London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2006. Page 10.
Hsu, Hua. “Affect Theory and the New Age of Anxiety.” The New Yorker. 18 March 2019. www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/03/25/affect-theory-and-the-new-age-of-anxiety.
Cullen, Charlotte. The Politics of Wanting Things: Manifestations of Cruel Optimism in Artist-Led Curatorial Practice: A Case Study of the U N N A W A Y Exhibition Programme. 2018. University of Huddersfield, PhD dissertation. Page 21-22. https://pure.hud.ac.uk/ws/portalfiles/portal/71820394/Cullen_THESIS.pdf.
Tatom, Marianne. “Mining for ‘Goldheart’: A Sketch Study in Popular Music.” Indiana Theory Review 21. Spring/Fall 2000. Page 151. https://www.jstor.org/stable/24046488.
Novara, Vincent J. and Stephen Henry. “A Guide to Essential American Indie Rock (1980-2005).” Notes 65, no. 4. 2009. Page 826. https://www.jstor.org/stable/27669942.
Woodworth, Marc. Bee Thousand. New York & London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2006. Page 8-9.
Harper, Adam. “’Backwoods’: Rural Distance and Authenticity in Twentieth-Century American Independent Folk and Rock Discourse.” Samples 14. 2015. Page 9. https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:ce7a68ae-590a-4865-a6f6-3ea4168d526d/files/rrb68xc73m.
Berlant, Lauren. Cruel Optimism. Durham & London: Duke University Press, 2011. Page 24.
Guided By Voices. “Dayton, Ohio/19 Something and 5.” Tonics and Twisted Chasers, Rockathon, 1996. Link.
Guided By Voices. “He’s the Uncle.” Under the Bushes Under the Stars (Bonus Tracks), Matador, 1996. Link.
Guided By Voices. “Over the Neptune/Mesh Gear Fox” and “14 Cheerleader Coldfront.” Propeller, Rockathon Records, 1992.
Stahl, Matt. Unfree Masters: Recording Artists and the Politics of Work. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2013. Page 92.
Stahl, Matt. Unfree Masters: Recording Artists and the Politics of Work. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2013. Page 98.
Berlant, Lauren. Cruel Optimism. Durham & London: Duke University Press, 2011. Page 2.
Guided By Voices. “Bright Paper Werewolves.” Under the Bushes Under the Stars, Matador, 1996. Link.
Berlant, Lauren. Cruel Optimism. Durham & London: Duke University Press, 2011. Page 2.
Cutter, Matthew. Closer You Are: The Story of Robert Pollard and Guided By Voices. New York: Da Capo Press, 2018. Page 251.
Ibid., page 260.
Ibid., page 262.
Berlant, Lauren. Cruel Optimism. Durham & London: Duke University Press, 2011. Page 1.
Cutter, Matthew. Closer You Are: The Story of Robert Pollard and Guided By Voices. New York: Da Capo Press, 2018. Page 262.
Guided By Voices. “The Littlest League Possible.” Motivational Jumpsuit, Guided By Voices Inc., 2014. Link.
Woodworth, Marc. Bee Thousand. New York & London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2006. Page 156.
Ibid., page 6.
One day I'll make it through the GBV back catalogue
Nice. I grew up listening to GBV. My oldest brother and a lot of my friends were obsessed with them. I saw them live at Berbati's Pan a while ago, and I've probably listened to Bee Thousand about bee thousand times. That Bob Pollard can drink lol.