Archives for May 2016

Certain Songs #552: Guided by Voices – “Gold Star For Robot Boy”

May 31, 2016 by Jim Connelly

Album: Bee Thousand
Year: 1994

What does it mean to be friends with someone strictly over social media? I’ve been doing it for much of my life, and the process by which I end up deciding that words on a screen or a voice through a speaker means I’d probably enjoy hanging out with that person in real life (and vice versa) is still a bit of a mystery.

That said, because I’ve met so many amazing people this way, I’ve learned to trust in that mystery, because with very few exceptions, meeting those people face to face has turned out to be a delight.

When Rox & I went to Minneapolis-St. Paul & Chicago back in 2014, we hung out with people I’d met on Twitter in or while playing Fantasy Baseball or back in the day on Prodigy or event the CB radio. Scott & Larry & Kevin & Joey & Ranjit & Ann & Ira & Myra & Pat & Meg. That’s nearly 40 years of people who I otherwise would have never met.

Every single one of those people helped make that trip especially memorable. Oh, and The Replacements, as well. Who I got to meet in 1985 thanks to the social media known as College Radio.

Certain Songs #551: Guided by Voices – “Tractor Rape Chain”

May 29, 2016 by Jim Connelly

Album: Bee Thousand
Year: 1994

It starts out with just an acoustic guitar being ramdomly strummed in the corner of a room, as if Robert Pollard hasn’t quite worked out the song that the rest of the band — who are filing into the room and grabbing their instruments — are going to play next.

Suddenly, he finds a riff, and “Tractor Rape Chain” explodes into full-blown technicolor glory, guitars perfectly interlocked, drums right on the spot, and everything right with the world. Maybe this is low-fi, but it sure isn’t a song that was accidentally recorded.

Certain Songs #550: Guided by Voices – “Hardcore UFOs”

May 28, 2016 by Jim Connelly

Album: Bee Thousand
Year: 1994

I’m pretty sure the first time I heard of Guided by Voices was by reading about them in SPIN, whose Senior Editor, Jim Greer, had just written a biography of R.E.M. I liked called Behind The Mask.

I don’t remember exactly what he wrote about GBV, I just remember there was a Jim Greer piece in SPIN that really made me want to hear them. Because that’s how we still discovered music in 1994: we found writers whose opinions we trusted, and triangulated their recommendations with our individual tastes.

Certain Songs #549: Guided by Voices – “Weedking”

May 27, 2016 by Jim Connelly

Album: Propeller
Year: 1992

Like so many people, Bee Thousand was where I first heard Guided by Voices, and because of the beyond-indie nature of their back catalog, I’m not sure when I heard Propeller.

My guess is that I found it at Amoeba as part of the Vampire on Titus CD, which helpfully appended Propeller, but which also meant that the superior Propeller material showed up halfway through, and it took me a long time to figure out what was what.

Certain Songs #548: Guided by Voices – “Over The Neptune / Mesh Gear Fox”

May 26, 2016 by Jim Connelly

Album: Propeller
Year: 1992

“Alright, rock ‘n’ roll!
G!B!V!
G!B!V!
G!B!V!
G!B!V!”

This is where the legend begins. Sure, Guided by Voices were a band prior to Propeller, but this is still where the legend begins.

The big rock. The prog rock. The lo-fi. The pop hooks. It’s all here on nearly six minutes of poorly-recorded yet still transcendent bliss. “Over The Neptune / Mesh Gear Fox” might not be the longest song ever recorded by GBV, but it’s the longest of the 229 Guided By Voices songs that are in my iTunes.

Certain Songs #547: The Greg Kihn Band – “The Breakup Song (They Don’t Write ‘Em)”

May 25, 2016 by Jim Connelly

Album: Rockihnroll
Year: 1981

Because I actually kept records for a short period of time, I can report that I saw The Greg Kihn Band six times between March ’81 & October ’82.

Why? For one reason, neither Bruce Springsteen or Tom Petty were playing Fresno during that time period, and while seeing The Greg Kihn Band wasn’t even close to seeing Bruce or Tom — both of whom Tim & I road-tripped to see late in the summer of ’81 — it was a reasonable enough simulacrum, especially considering the amount of effort it took to get to the Star Palace, where he played a lot of those shows.

Certain Songs #546: Green on Red – “That’s What Dreams”

May 24, 2016 by Jim Connelly

Album: Gas Food Lodging
Year: 1985

Here’s the thing about the so-called “Paisley Underground,” the loose collective of bands that produced some of the greatest alt-rock of the 1980s: a lot of them ended up being proto-Americana bands.

I’m thinking primarily of The Long Ryders, The Dream Syndicate and Green on Red, the key members of which of course fueled Danny & Dusty’s still eternal The Lost Weekend.

I mean, after all, The Long Ryders were never all that psychedelic in the first place, The Dream Syndicate mostly on the basis of Karl Precoda’s guitar, and Green on Red primarily because their early sound was dominated by Chris Cacavas’s swirling organ.

Certain Songs #545: Green Day – “Are We The Waiting”

May 23, 2016 by Jim Connelly

Album: American Idiot
Year: 2004

Like the rest of Western Civilization, I overrated Green Day’s American Idiot when it came out in 2004, and have spent the subsequent decade underrating it.

On one hand, it’s easily their best — or at least, most consistent — studio album. On the other hand, it’s pretty much overwhelmed the rest of their career, and that past decade has seen Billie Joe Armstrong either embracing it — the Broadway musical or the 21st Century Breakdown album — or trying to figure out how to make people forget it, as in the Uno!, Dos! & Tre! records.

Certain Songs #544: Green Day – “Warning”

May 22, 2016 by Jim Connelly

Album: Warning
Year: 2000

Once the mega-ballad “Good Riddance (Time of Your Life)” confirmed to Billie Joe Armstrong that he didn’t have to play by the loud fast rules anymore, Green Day followed it up with the Warning album, which featured three of best singles this stellar singles band have ever recorded: the wistful “Waiting,” the angry “Minority,” and my favorite of all, the Kinksy “Warning.”

Ray Davies got so much mileage from stealing riffs, it was fine by me for Billie Joe to acknowledge what was no doubt a key influence by stealing one of his.

Certain Songs #543: Green Day – “Longview”

May 21, 2016 by Jim Connelly

Album: Dookie
Year: 1994

Dookie is where being a punk rocker became a valid career choice.

This sounds a bit like an insult, I know, but as I wrote after seeing them at Lollapalooza in 1994 is that the mid-1990s success of Dookie and its fellow third (or fourth) (or fifth) generation punk rock brethren meant that — like metal before it — punk rock had achieved perpetual motion.