Airport 5: Life Starts Here

Airport 5: Life Starts Here

2002

Fading Captain Series

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

Guided by Voices/Airport 5: Selective Service

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

Airport 5: Tower in the Fountain of Sparks

Airport 5: Tower in the Fountain of Sparks

2001

Fading Captain Series

Format I Own it on: Vinyl

Track Listing: 1. Burns Carpenter, Man of Science  2. Total Exposure  3. Subatomic Rain  4. One More  5. Mission Experiences  6.The Cost of Shipping Cattle  7. Circle of Trim  8. War & Wedding  9. Stifled Man Casino  10. Up the Nails  11. Tomorrow You May Rise  12. Feathering Clueless (The Exotic Freebird)  13. Mansfield on the Sky  14. White Car Creek  15. Remain Lodging (at Airport 5)



Fading Captain Series #13. We left off on FCS # 6 (which was the "Suitcase" box-set). I don't own #'s 7-12, which are: #7 "Briefcase" (an abridged version of "Suitcase"),  #8 "Big Trouble" by the Hazzard Hotrods (Pollard doing live, generic bar-rock which I'm not especially interested in), #9 "Speedtraps for the Bee Kingdom" mini-album by  Howling Wolf Orchestra (which I've never seen nor heard),  #10 GBV"s "Daredevil Stamp Collector EP (which is basically the "Hold One Hope" Ep with a couple of tracks swapped out (CURSE YOU FOR NOT PUTTING "PERFECT THIS TIME" ON "HOLD ON HOPE"!!), #11 Airport 5's "Total Exposure" single (which we'll cover when we get to the "Selective Service" album) #12 

I've actually covered this one before, back in the early days of this blog, when I used to do one (utterly useless) post a day rather than one post every 6 months. Since this is the next album in the Robert Pollard chronology, I figured I'd take the coward's way out and just touch up the old entry a bit and repost it. There. I can hibernate until next winter:

Airport 5 was a "record-by-mail" project (there's going to be a few of these coming up) between Pollard and former band-mate Tobin Sprout, which was a pretty big deal for us GBV fanatics at the time. I remember running to the record store and buying this the day it came out, practically salivating at the thought of the Beatles-y, Who-sy, Big Star-ish power-pop that must lie within...

Except in a few select cases that isn't exactly what I got. Most of the record is odd, abstract and brooding. Robert Pollard is at his most oblique, and Tobin Sprout is at his moodiest.  I can't quite say I was disappointed with it, because by this point, I fully realized that Robert Pollard albums do usually take a bit of time to fully reveal their charms. I did eventually get used to it and I ended up enjoying this quite a bit.

Really, only two songs jumped out at me on those first couple of listens. In particular, "Stifled Man Casino," which sports a Pollard chorus so potent, that I had no choice but to buy the 100 albums that followed. It's just a pure, uncut shot of that old classic-lineup GBV that I didn't realize I was missing until I heard it again. Shaky, unsteady, triumphant. The acoustic "Total Exposure" comes pretty close to recapturing the greatness too, with a memorably slippery bassline and a sticky campfire chorus. 

And that's about it for the big pop songs. The rest of the record is emotionally diffuse, dark post-rock...Kind of an update of Wire's "154."  I mean, listen to those nervy vocals on "Subatomic Rain." Bizarre. And check out those lyrics on "The Cost of Shipping Cattle:"

"The thorn removed itself, and grew into a stake, impaled itself into a tree,which became flesh and lurched toward the moon... Did he or did he not, use shocking equipment to make you happy?? "

Fucking bizarre! The record actually has a strong second half with "War & Wedding" and "Circle of Trim" which would come this close to being fine pop if they weren't so goddamn askew. "Mansfield in the Sky" is a slow-motion beauty, with its wide swaths of echoed guitar and Pollard sounding especially stunned and awed.It really is evocative of a snowy day in a  desolate midwestern locale. I'm sorry I moved to Arizona before I heard this, because I would have loved to listen to this driving around in a Michigan snowstorm. 

Ultimately, "Tower in the Fountain of Sparks" isn't my favorite Pollard or Sprout release by a long shot but I have to admit it's 100% successful in what it's aiming for. The duo aren't trying to recapture the kaleidoscopic hook-scape of "Bee Thousand" or "Alien Lanes." They're just trying to creep us out and make our blood freeze. It just so happens I value hooks over surreal eeriness. So sue me...

Here are the updated rankings. I'm actually going to rank "Tower in the Fountain of Sparks" pretty low. I actually really enjoy its dreary atmospherics, but to be brutally honest I'd probably bop along to the sunny, perfect pop of "Sandbox" than this. But when the right mood hits and it's a cold, drizzy night and I'm walking the empty streets with my headphones on, it probably ranks somewhere around  #16 (Mag Earwhig!). So I put it at number 22 but it does sometimes appear as a phantom #16. Sheesh. These rankings are getting weird...

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. Tobin Sprout: Let's Welcome the Circus People

18. Guided by Voices: King Shit and the Golden Boys

19. Guided by Voices: Self-Inflicted Aerial Nostalgia

20. Guided by Voices: Vampire on Titus

21. Guided by Voices: Sandbox

22. Airport 5: Tower in the Fountain of Sparks

23. Guided by Voices: Forever Since Breakfast

24. Guided by Voices: Devil Between My Toes 
25. Nightwalker: In Shop We Build Electric Chairs: Professional Music by Nightwalker

Airport 5: Life Starts Here

Airport 5: Life Starts Here

2002

Fading Captain Series

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 

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, where Bob delivers a riveting vocal.

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"

Airport 5: Tower in the Fountain of Sparks

Airport 5: Tower in the Fountain of Sparks

2001

Fading Captain Series

Format I Own it on: Vinyl

Track Listing: 1. Burns Carpenter, Man of Science  2. Total Exposure  3. Subatomic Rain  4. One More  5. Mission Experiences  6.The Cost of Shipping Cattle  7. Circle of Trim  8. War & Wedding  9. Stifled Man Casino  10. Up the Nails  11. Tomorrow You May Rise  12. Feathering Clueless (The Exotic Freebird)  13. Mansfield on the Sky  14. White Car Creek  15. Remain Lodging (at Airport 5)

This is a collaboration between Guided By Voices front-man Robert Pollard and ex-Guided by Voices sideman Tobin Sprout. Tobin sprout was part of the classic GBV line-up which broke up somewhere in the mid-90's, so when they did  this "record-by-mail" project in 2001, it was a pretty big deal at the time for us GBV fanatics...

I ran to the record store and bought this the day it came out, practically salivating at the thought of the Beatles-y, Who-sy power pop that must lie within...

Except in a few select cases that isn't exactly what I got. Most of the record is odd, abstract and brooding. Robert Pollard is at his most oblique, and Tobin Sprout is at his moodiest.  I can't quite say I was disappointed at first, because Robert Pollard albums do usually take a bit of time to fully reveal their awesomeness to me. I did eventually get used to it and I ended up enjoying this quite a bit.

It has to be said, every album Pollard makes has at least one song that I consider to be the best in Rock N' Roll history.  I'm dead serious. I think this guy has written more great songs than anybody. This is mostly due to the fact that he's written more songs than everybody. But I swear to God, that the best of his best stands up tall right next to the greatest songs ever written. I would stack "Over the Neptune/Mesh Gear Fox" or "Game of Pricks" against any Beatles song. I believe that if those tracks weren't recorded on a 4-track tape machine and were credited as being written by REM or the Beatles, everybody on planet Earth would be agreeing with me.

The greatest song ever written on this album is....

 drum roll, please...

 "Stifled Man Casino." This song so thoroughly kicks my ass! That chorus, man! THAT CHORUS!! Glorious! I  bow to you for this one, Mr.  Pollard. "Total Exposure" comes pretty close too. It's an acoustic rocker with a slippery bassline but it's just as sticky.

And that's about it for the big pop songs, the rest of it is emotionally diffuse, dark post-rock...Kind of an update of Wire's "154."  I mean, listen to those nervy vocals on "Subatomic Rain." Bizarre. And check out those lyrics on "The Cost of Shipping Cattle:"

"The thorn removed itself,
and grew into a stake,
impaled itself into a tree,
which became flesh and lurched toward the moon...
Did he or did he not,
use shocking equipment to make you happy?? "

 Bizarre! Bizarre! The record actually has a strong second half. "War & Wedding" and "Circle of Trim" are near-pop. "Mansfield in the Sky" is a slow-motion anthem,  beatutiful with its wide swaths of echoed guitar and understated vocals. It really is evocative of a snowy day in a  desolate modwestern locale. I'm sorry I moved to Arizona before I heard this, because I would have loved to listen to this driving around in a Michigan snowstorm.

If you're a Guided By Voices novice, I probably wouldn't start here, but if you have  a taste for some of Pollard's more far-out material then this one should be right up your alley...

There were a couple of singles released from this album, but we'll discuss those later when I get to the Guided by Voices section, since they're included in the Guided by Voices release "Selective Service."

If you haven't heard it yet, check out "Stifled Man Casino." Posted below for your convenience.