I have a lot of random Iron Maiden stuff lying around my house. Here's a pile of it...Oh yea...That Trooper beer is pretty legit...Tastes like Newcastle Brown Ale or something (my palate might be a little off since all I drink is Bud Light mixed with Red Bull)... The Maiden GPK is still sort of mind-bending since my two of my biggest childhood hobbies were staring at Garbage Pail Kids and staring at Iron Maiden album covers (same goes for the M.U.S.C.L.E figures...Shameless nostalgia mash-up, God bless 'em)...
The record is the "Stranger in a Strange Land" picture disc. I'm a big fan of galloping, so this is a pretty good record...The title track is a hi-tech horse rider with that "Somewhere in Time" soft synth-y sheen they had going on at the time. The two B-Sides are cover songs(?!) that are utterly unfamiliar to me but apparently they're from some band featuring an ex-Samson memer (Bruce Dickinson's band prior to Maiden (who were pretty effin' dope too)). I have to give credit to Maiden for finding such gallop-y songs to cover). They're a little odd, just because musically, they sound just like you'd expect, but the lyrics are so straight-forward: "That Girl" appears to be a straight-forward...gulp...love song and Juanita appears to be about going down on some dank puss...Hardly, Maiden-worthy pursuits but an entertaining peek at some alternate universe were the Irons were less interested in WW2 airplanes and Alexander the Great and shit like that...
Let's listen to "That Girl" goddammit...Happy Labour Day to all y'all...
Track Listing: 1. Intro 2. We're in the Business 3. Yellow Wife No. 5 4. Wrong Drama Addiction(...and Life Starts Here) 5. However Young They Are 6. The Dawntrust Guarantee 7. Forever Since 8. Impressions of a Leg 9. How Brown? 10. Natives Approach our Plane 11. I Can't Freeze 12. Out in the World
Having a blog means never having to say you're sorry about the endless space of time between posts: Yea, I've been averaging about a post a month at this point (and this one is recycled!). I guess I'm going to officially call it: I'm semi-retired at blogging. And by semi-retired, I mean putting in endless hours at work and busy with my band again. Oh, and watching a lot of TV. But I haven't given up on the Friday Night Record Party. No, sir. I can't let shit go! But the once or twice a month thing will be the new normal. But there's a vast backlog of posts if'n you ever get bored (just don't go too far. The early posts are nigh unreadable and boring as fuck)...My love of records is undiminished though! In fact, I just hit up the record store last weekend and walked away with an armload of treasures. Maybe I'll start doing more stuff like that, rather than the straight alphabetical shit...Toss in some more spontaneous haul posts...Who knows...
But enough about my existential crises...Let's listen to some Airport 5... This one is possibly as weird as "Tower in the Fountain of Sparks," but comes off as less so because it's so consistently strange. The previous album had a couple of obvious pop songs that threw the flow of the album off, but it was hard to complain because the pop songs were so damn good... Pretty much no pop tunes here, but that's not to say this isn't memorable. There are bizarre chants in the form of "Native Approach Our Plane" and "Wrong Drama Addiction," and a fistful of bleary slow tunes, the best of which "How Brown?" is oddly stirring when Robert Pollard earnestly sings "And we must be adventurers! Partners in Shit-heeled Glory!" How those lyrics can come across as touching, I'll never know, but take my word for it, they are. I also love the moment on "Out in the World" when those mighty power chords crash in and Pollard belts out "Move onto it! Unshakable! It's a cinch!" Just a fine, fine moment.
My only real complaint would be the 3 minutes of droning noise at the end of the fourth track. It sounds like a refrigerator humming and kills any momentum the record had built up to that point. Otherwise, "Wrong Drama Addiction (...and Life Starts Here)" is a cool suspenseful song, with a riveting Bob vocal...Y'know that tightened screw style he busted out on "#2 in the "Model Home Series" back on "Vampire on Titus"... This is the last Airport 5 record to date, and they go out with a pretty solid outing It is hard to believe Robert Pollard and Tobin Sprout worked on a record together that isn't brimming with killer hooks, but I don't think that was the point of Airport 5. I think they were mining for something deeper and darker here...Again, recommended for fans of Pollard's more esoteric work, who should definitely get a kick out of this... And let's check out "Yellow Wife No. 5"
This is a tough one to rank. It doesn't have the initial excitement that the first Airport 5 had and it doesn't have any big-tent songs, yet in a way it feels a little more cohesive than the debut. I possibly like it more than "Tower in the Fountain of Sparks," yet I don't listen to it as much. I'm putting it right next to its partner...Too close to call...
1. Guided by Voices: Alien Lanes
2. Guided by Voices: Isolation Drills
3. Robert Pollard With Doug Gillard:Speak Kindly of Your Volunteer Fire Department
4. Guided by Voices: Bee Thousand
5.Guided by Voices: Under the Bushes, Under the Stars
6. Guided by Voices: Propeller
7. Tobin Sprout: Moonflower Plastic (Welcome to My Wigwam)
8. Robert Pollard: Waved Out
9. Tobin Sprout: Carnival Boy
10. Guided by Voices: Do the Collapse
11. Guided by Voices: Same Place the Fly Got Smashed
12. Robert Pollard: Kid Marine
13. Guided by Voices: Tonics and Twisted Chasers
14 Guided by Voices: Sunfish Holy Breakfast
15. Robert Pollard: Not In My Airforce
16. Guided by Voices: Mag Earwhig!
17.Robert Pollard and His Soft Rock Renegades: Choreographed Man of War
18. Tobin Sprout: Let's Welcome the Circus People
19. Go Back Snowball: Calling Zero
20. Guided by Voices: King Shit and the Golden Boys
21. Guided by Voices: Self-Inflicted Aerial Nostalgia
22. Guided by Voices: Vampire on Titus
23. Guided by Voices: Sandbox
24. Airport 5: Tower in the Fountain of Sparks
25. Airport 5: Life Starts Here
26. Guided by Voices: Forever Since Breakfast
27. Guided by Voices: Devil Between My Toes 28. Nightwalker: In Shop We Build Electric Chairs: Professional Music by Nightwalker
Track Listing: 1. Radical Girl 2. Calling Zero 3. Never Forget Where You Get Them 4. Red Hot Halos 5. Again the Waterloo 6. Climb 7. Go Gold 8. Lifetime for the Mavericks 9. Throat of Throats 10. Ironrose Worm 11. It is Divine 12. Dumb Luck Systems Stormfront
Fading Captain Series #17. This is a collaboration between Robert Pollard (who provides the vocals) and Mac McCaughan (who supplies the music). Mac is definitely in his bedroom/indie Portastatic mode (lots of processed guitar effects, vintage-sounding keyboards and plush atmosphere) as opposed to his more rollickng Superchunk mode, which is a slight shame, since the idea of Bob fronting Superchunk is too tantalizing an indie-rock dream team to pass up. Still the results are super decent and I forget how much I enjoy this one until I pull it out and give it another spin.
Favorites: Two big 'uns here that I love love love...First up, "Go Gold," which on the surface doesn't look like much. Just a stridently strummed acoustic guitar and some buzzy atmosphere but Pollard sells the shit out of a triumphant vocal melody, turning it into an unexpected fist-raiser. The second big 'un would have to be "It Is Divine," which has the same immediately recognizable sense of bittersweet nostalgia that you find in some of Bob's past masterpieces like "Dayton, Ohio" or "Official Ironmen Rally." On the surface it appears to be complete and utter nonsense but suddenly you'll find your mind wandering back to magical childhood summers and long-lost friends. And all this from a song advising us to "Piss on the hot street/Like Transistor Sun Man..." This is why I'm a GBV fan.
Runner ups: I really like the horns on "Radical Girl," which I believe is a first on a Pollard album. Can't recall many horns on "Vampire on Titus" or "Choreographed Man of War." The song is also notable in that it appears to be a clear-headed character-sketch and not of the surreal "Ha Ha Man" quality. "Ironrose Worm" has an intriguing feel that's exists somewhere between a playground and a funeral. Very far outside of Bob's usual wheelhouse but intriguingly so, which is why this Go Back Snowball collaboration/album is so memorable. It suddenly strikes me , that his two best postal-rock projects (Go Back Snowball and the later Keene Brothers project with Tommy Keene) find Bob in two completely different poles: The Keene Brothers found Bob paired with such a like-minded collaborator that they were able to carve out their own little piece of heaven and Go Back Snowball finds Bob in a lot of territories he hadn't traveled before and fascinated by the pillowy, bedroom flora and the dangerous indie rock fauna, if that makes sense (spoiler alert: It doesn't.).
Not everything 100% works, for example, when the opening line of "Never Forget Where You Get Them" kicks in you're absolutely convinced that it's going to be the most perfect, kick-ass bit of rock n' roll ever recorded but then it sort of just spins endlessly around and around. "Lifetime For the Mavericks" is another one that starts out sounding cooler than it ends up being, with a raw, paint-peeling guitar riff but the song ends up in a sort of cow-punk shuffle...And it feels like Bob has no idea what to do with the human beatbox drum-machine and zoopy guitars of "Again the Waterloo" so he just sort of stumbles around the odd furniture. But the mistakes and stumbles are at least interesting and really that's just the price you pay for plumbing unfamiliar depths...
So yea...If you're into either Bob's solo material or Mac's Portastatic stuff, then you'll like this. It might not knock you out or anything but it might put a couple of new melodies floating around your head...It took me a few listens to process it all, but about the third spin it was all very easygoing and found it to be one of the more interesting of the collaboration albums to come out of the Fading Captain series...
Here are the updated rankings...I'm putting it at number 19. It's solid, surprising and engaging but probably not the undisputed triumph that it could have been considering the two greats involved. Which really isn't a knock. It doesn't feel like it was created to be the greatest album of all time or anything. It feels like a couple of guys just having some low-stakes fun, knocking out bizarre little ditties at home...
1. Guided by Voices: Alien Lanes
2. Guided by Voices: Isolation Drills
3. Robert Pollard With Doug Gillard:Speak Kindly of Your Volunteer Fire Department
4. Guided by Voices: Bee Thousand
5.Guided by Voices: Under the Bushes, Under the Stars
6. Guided by Voices: Propeller
7. Tobin Sprout: Moonflower Plastic (Welcome to My Wigwam)
8. Robert Pollard: Waved Out
9. Tobin Sprout: Carnival Boy
10. Guided by Voices: Do the Collapse
11. Guided by Voices: Same Place the Fly Got Smashed
12. Robert Pollard: Kid Marine
13. Guided by Voices: Tonics and Twisted Chasers
14 Guided by Voices: Sunfish Holy Breakfast
15. Robert Pollard: Not In My Airforce
16. Guided by Voices: Mag Earwhig!
17.Robert Pollard and His Soft Rock Renegades: Choreographed Man of War
18. Tobin Sprout: Let's Welcome the Circus People
19. Go Back Snowball: Calling Zero
20. Guided by Voices: King Shit and the Golden Boys
21. Guided by Voices: Self-Inflicted Aerial Nostalgia
22. Guided by Voices: Vampire on Titus
23. Guided by Voices: Sandbox
24. Airport 5: Tower in the Fountain of Sparks
25. Guided by Voices: Forever Since Breakfast
26. Guided by Voices: Devil Between My Toes 27. Nightwalker: In Shop We Build Electric Chairs: Professional Music by Nightwalker
Guided by Voices/Airport 5: Selective Service 2001 Fading Captain Series/Luna Records Format I Own it on: Compact Disc Track Listing: 1. Dayton, Ohio - Nineteen Something and Five 2. Travels 3. No Welcome Wagons 4. Selective Service 5. Total Exposure 6. Cold War Water Sports 7. The Wheel Hits the Path (Quite Soon) 8. Stifled Man Casino 9. Peroxide 10. Eskimo Clockwork 11. In the Brain This is Fading Captain Series #16. Number #15 was "Ringworm Interiors" by The Circus Devils. I actually don't have any of Bob's Circus Devils material. I had originally watched one of their videos and had a visceral "dislike" reaction towards it. The song I heard sounded like Industrial Rock or something, which is a genre I really can't take anymore (still having traumatic Gravity Kills flashbacks from the 90's) so I just never checked it out again. I have actually been digging into the Circus Devils a bit online recently and have slightly warmed up to it, so I might give it another shot one of these days...A lot spookier than Bob's normal material and it definitely has its fans...It's just that I'm not one of them...
Alright, onto the "Selective Service" mini-album/compilation/whatever. This release collects FCS #5 (The GBV "Dayton Ohio" single) FCS # 11 (The Airport 5 "Total Exposure" single) and FCS #12 (The Airport 5 "Stifled Man Casino" single), so you can already start to see the Fading Captain Series start to feed on itself. This release was much appreciated though, since I generally don't follow the singles too closely...
The "Dayton, Ohio - Nineteen Something and Five" single was the big draw here...The A-Side is an excellent, well-recorded live version of one my favorite GBV songs. I like the live version every bit as much as the 4-Track version. What it loses in poignancy, it makes up for in sheer rocking-ness. And Bob's intro, where he calls the song "Dayton, Ohio - Nineteen Something Circa and Fve" always gives me a chuckle. Whenever I'm in the mood to hear the song I usually end up playing both versions back to back because I can't decide which one I want to hear... The "Dayton, Ohio" B-sides are really interesting. Sort of a close relative of the acoustic tracks that close out "Not in My Airforce," except much more despondent. Bob claims that "Isolation Drills" is a red herring and these are the songs that dealt with his then-recent divorce. And they are especially divorce-y, with "No Welcome Wagons" being especially brutal, since it finds Bob coming home from tour to face the fallout of an on-the-road affair:
"Pandemonium ensues, Sure enough fire and the dog barks, Let's get acquainted again, Been so many days or should I say'So long'... Double up your fists for the undercut, Pandemonium subsides, Rest assured, No welcome wagons will be there when I get home."
Fun stuff. That they're essentially tuneless feels beside the point this time...
The Airport 5 stuff: A couple of pointless repeats, since "Total Exposure" and "Stifled Man Casino" are the same versions that are on the "Tower in the Fountain of Sparks" album. I forgive their inclusion since they're such great songs (and the album costs so little)... The non-album tracks basically fall right in line w/ "Tower"'s icy tone...Cold, distant post-punk type vamps. Highlights: "The Wheel Hits the Path (Quite Soon)" is sorta catchy (although it seems to fade out way prematurely as you can still hear plenty of awesomeness during its long fadeout) and "Cold War Watersports" has a fine nose-whistle in it (and an awkward guitar figure that somehow lodges in your brain)...The bluesy "Peroxide" sounds like an update of "Alien Lanes" (the song, not the album)..."In the Brain" is the sort of queasy, bizarrely sung slow jam that typifies the Airport 5 project as a whole...It's all decent stuff if you have the stomach for Airport 5... Definitely not an essential GBV release by any stretch, but GBV fans will still want it, since it has that killer version of "Dayton Ohio" on it...All right, let's listen to some music...Here's "The Wheel Hits the Path (Quite Soon)" by Airport 5...Enjoy...
Ranking Time: This is being ranked using the "20 Minute-ish EP's"category even though it's about a half hour...Hell, it's probably longer than "Choreographed Man of War" but It just doesn't feel like it should be ranked among the full-length albums...Too slight and if you remove the repeats (Stifled Man Casino and Total Exposure) it falls right into the 20-minute range.. Anyway, here's the updated 20-minute-ish EP ranking:
1. Guided by Voices: Sunfish Holy Breakfast 2. Guided by Voices:Hold On Hope EP 3. Guided by Voices:Forever Since Breakfast 4. Guided by Voices/Airport 5: Selective Service
Robert Pollard and His Soft Rock Renegades: Choreographed Man of War 2001 Fading Captain Series/Luna Records Format I Own it on: Compact Disc Track Listing: 1. I Drove a Tank 2. She Saw the Shadow 3. Edison's Memos 4. 7th Level Shutdown 5. 40 Yards to the Burning Bush 6. Aerial 7. Citizen Fighter 8. Kickboxer Lightning 9. Bally Hoo 10. Instrument Beetle
Ahh, vacation. Kicking back in Cancun on one of their dazzling white sugar sand beaches...
Nah, just kidding. It's a stay-cation. I'm eating cold pizza and watching Diff'rent Strokes. Hopefully this week will give me an opportunity to become acquainted with my long-neglected blog...
And what's a better way to start off than with "Choreographed Man of War." This is Fading Captain Series #14. This sees Bob ably backed by GBV alumni Greg Demos and Jimmy Mac and kicking out some basic, rocking material (with just a hint of sorrowful prog). When I first got this album it felt sorta slight. Maybe I wasn't yet used to a Pollard album having only 10 songs on it. Maybe it was the extended instrumental fucking around (the looong guitar intro on the lovely ballad "Aerial" or "Instrument Beetle"'s endless jamming). But time has been kind to "Choreographed Man of War" and now I look back at it as a minor triumph. An early indication that this Fading Captain thing just might work. That Bob's creativity might just carry the overly-ambitious release schedule through and result in some interesting music and some solid, beer-hoisting rock. This album was a good digression from Bob's recent work. More raw and ass-kicking than "Isolation Drills" but not as abstract as "Tower in the Fountain of Sparks." In fact, it's just right. A good baseline Pollard album.
The big highlights for me are definitely the first four tracks. "I Drove a Tank" is as big and rocking as the title suggests (maybe a spiritual cousin to The Stranglers' album-opening "Tank" from their "Black & White" album?) and whenever Pollard busts this song out at shows it's always a pleasure. "She Saw the Shadow" is my personal favorite. Mist-covered, tongue-twisting, and above-all properly rocking prog-pop. "Edison's Memos" is another huge song for me. It's just perfect GBV. Loud guitars set somewhere between "crunch" and jangle" A huge, soaring vocal melody. Lyrics that alternate between "WTF?" and "F Yea!" "Edison's Memos" and the more laid-back "7th Level Shutdown " both remind me of the type of thing you'd find on "Speak Kindly of Your Volunteer Fire Department" (minus the intricate guitar riffs). It's got that same unassuming demeanor where you can't tell if it's carefully crafted or if it's just tossed-offed, tuneful brilliance.
The remainder of the album isn't bad at all, it's just that the first half is so strong. "Kickboxer Lightning" and "Citizen Fighter" are perfectly serviceable rockers that get the job done. "Aeriel" is a pretty cool ballad once it gets going, "40 Yards to the Burning Bush" is nice and tense, To be honest, I usually kinda space out the last two songs on the album: "Bally Hoo" would have made a decent closer, since it reprises the "Citizen Fighter" riff and eventually morphs back into the opening "I Drove a Tank." It's big and plodding and as a second-to-last song, just doesn't quite work. And the actual closer, "Instrument Beetle" gets fairly tedious after the first couple minutes. It peaks somewhere around the "Sit down, sit down..." section and then rumbles on aimlessly for the last 4 minutes...The dude pining over some chick on his answering machine is pretty damn funny, though.
Solid record. Mostly rock with a handful of ambitious weirdness. Long songs. No snippets. Lots of guitar fucking around. A good representation of the Fading Captain era (P.S. I feel that I should have somehow worked the phrase "impeccable arrangements into this post, but I couldn't quite find the proper place.) Now let's listen to some music.... Here's "Edison's Memos" by Robert Pollard...Enjoy...
Here are the updated rankings. I'm putting this at number 17. Just a notch below "Mag Earwhig!" which surprises even me...Really solid.
1. Guided by Voices: Alien Lanes
2. Guided by Voices: Isolation Drills
3. Robert Pollard With Doug Gillard:Speak Kindly of Your Volunteer Fire Department
4. Guided by Voices: Bee Thousand
5.Guided by Voices: Under the Bushes, Under the Stars
6. Guided by Voices: Propeller
7. Tobin Sprout: Moonflower Plastic (Welcome to My Wigwam)
8. Robert Pollard: Waved Out
9. Tobin Sprout: Carnival Boy
10. Guided by Voices: Do the Collapse
11. Guided by Voices: Same Place the Fly Got Smashed
12. Robert Pollard: Kid Marine
13. Guided by Voices: Tonics and Twisted Chasers
14 Guided by Voices: Sunfish Holy Breakfast
15. Robert Pollard: Not In My Airforce
16. Guided by Voices: Mag Earwhig!
17.Robert Pollard and His Soft Rock Renegades: Choreographed Man of War
18. Tobin Sprout: Let's Welcome the Circus People
19. Guided by Voices: King Shit and the Golden Boys
20. Guided by Voices: Self-Inflicted Aerial Nostalgia
21. Guided by Voices: Vampire on Titus
22. Guided by Voices: Sandbox
23. Airport 5: Tower in the Fountain of Sparks
24. Guided by Voices: Forever Since Breakfast
25. Guided by Voices: Devil Between My Toes 26. Nightwalker: In Shop We Build Electric Chairs: Professional Music by Nightwalker
