2004-09-24 - 2:30 a.m.

I cannot get 14 Cheerleader Coldfront by GBV out of my head. It�s just stuck there. The song is probably 10-15 years old, I personally have owned recorded versions of the song for quite some time--I�ve heard it many a time and prior to now have been able to escape unscathed.

But I�ve been scathed. GBV songs have a way of doing that--sneaking up from behind and applying a choke hold.

And the song�s stuck in my head--but it clocks in at a minute and a half, with two verses and one chorus--not a very long song, so over and over and over and over and I love this song more than anything else in the world, but like anything else in the world that I love, there�s only so much I can take.

Imagine making a mix cd for yourself, but putting just one song on it, that you like, and then putting it in your brain, and you can�t get it out and turning shuffle off doesn�t help.

I love Ohio and I love GBV. I love feeling like there�s no computers yet and it�s almost always cold and everyone has shaggy hair and dresses comfortably and has a good record collection to listen to on huge headphones while drinking beer at night, and the rich people we know have polaroid cameras and maybe VCRs--even listening to their most recent albums, I can still feel that way--like I�m living in a world I can enjoy at my leisure, where I don�t have to constantly catch up to stay competitive, where things are far more straightforward and a girl with a cute haircut and lots of tattoos and piercings has no chance of going home to listen to crappy pop music and read cosmo. I live in a world where that doesn�t happen anymore, but I can�t live in a world where it never did.

But I�m running out of GBV songs. I don�t think Pollard will stop writing songs, but with GBV done, it�s kind of an end to that era. It�s proof. I mean, the guy�s getting on in years--him and Hitchcock--I mean, listen to them now versus back in the day. Don�t get me wrong--an album either of them put out on life support is going to be far, far better than anything else I can pay $12.99 for at Newbury Comics, but it�s sad. And you�re catching me on a weird moment--normally I�d defend to my death my right to say that Hitchcock�s last few albums are just as good as anything he�s ever done, however self-delusional that might be. In fact, I�m now ready to argue the opposite of what I just said--that you can�t keep doing the same thing over and over again and expect it to still work for you, and if you can you�re a hack like Steven King or the Rolling Stones.

But that�s fodder for a later entry I�ll forget to write.

Listen: Last GBV show--at the Paradise, so now I probably have no reason to go there ever again, which is sad because the place in and of itself is a pleasant place to drink a few beers at reasonable (show) prices--they just book crappy bands. I lived in Allston for a couple of years and passed by the place nightly--while they had tons of bands that I recognized on the marquee, there wasn�t one I�d go to see had I won free tickets off the radio (which, speak of it, actually just happened to me last week, but I didn�t go because I had to work, which should lend a huge amount of validity to my previous statement about the bands booked at the Paradise).

Last GBV show, ever, and Pollard sings his astonishingly limp wristed (for him) window of my world song, which was probably a good wrap-up song that he probably wrote about his GBV career, but who knows (I�ve only heard it twice, both live, so I can�t say--from what I�ve heard it�s actually one of his most direct songs, that is, outside of what's on Isolation Drills--his best album). So after he sang a song he probably considered far more soft and sentimental and precious than Hold on Hope, which he later regretted even putting on Do the Collapse, he said this (and I paraphrase, but pretty accurately):

So that was spretty fuckin� CREAMY. We do it CREAMY at Guided by Voices. We do it that way, we do. If there�s one thing we do, it�s that we do... we do punk rock. We do prog rock! We do SSHHHHHITTY rock! And we do CREAMY rock.

I just loved him for that. Here�s a man wearing down-to-up crappy sneakers, flannel checkered tapered pants, some forgettable shirt (I think it was button-down), and a big poof of grey-ish hair, rocking out a crowd of half college kids and the other half people he�s rocked out over the years, and I�m happy to put myself in the latter category.

I mean, the guy probably wears white tube socks, and he�s got a crowd of pretty hip people amped by telling them to refer to him as Uncle Bob (I�ve never heard him use that, but I�ve been calling him that for years, in honor of Robyn Hitchcock referring to Bob Dylan the same way, but I digress).

(The one thing that kind of irked me but which didn't lessen my love for Pollard and in fact made perfect sense, was that when I saw him in NYC, he announced to the audience that the band was going to do a never-before-performed-live-song, and then when I saw him at the Paradise in Boston, he announced that the band was going to do a never-before-performed-live-song, well, it was the same song both times. Whatever. It bothered me at the time, but I laughed it off, but then it bothered me later, but then I laughed it off. But now it kinda bothers me. I'm like a little kid around baseball players when it comes to music--I don't mind if my hero strikes out four times because I love him, but if I learn he doesn't care, my heart gets broken.)



But that didn't actually happen, at least as far as I'm concerned. The man is a genius--an absolute genius, and I�ll punch your teeth in if you disagree with me because there�s no use trying to explain it, but the fact that anyone outside of Ohio has a GBV album--that would NEVER happen today. Maybe in five years--I�m hopeful for that, and in fact, I know it will start happening five years from now, once everyone has access to computer recording software and not just people who can afford it. But today?

I feel bad for people of smoldering talent that never cleared the waivers Pollard slowly breezed through.

But the thing that always gets me when I start thinking that way, is that if Half Jap had a show at the Roxy, it�d be sold out in a day.

But then again, what if it was X-ray Specs?

I dunno.

I�m rambling and I should have ended back when it was good.

All I know is that I�m streaming some Choo-Choo into my head right now and hopefully I can knock 14 Cheerleader Coldfront the fuck off it�s throne by tomorrow.

Oh, tomorrow. Day off from work, but a bad day off--things are crazy and I want to be there in case there are any big decisions and I can�t put my two cents in. (Isn�t that annoying?)

But a good day off. The Roommate and I Fenway bound to see the Sox/Yankees game.

That�s the great thing about your team. The lineup changes over and over, there�s good years and bad years, but (unless you�re a hockey fan), you know it�s never going away.