Listen to Bee Thousand again, it is very much the best starting point.

Is Bee Thousand their only great album or something? They seem to have put out a fair few albums in their time. I thought Bee Thousand was okay, nothing too great but definitely not bad.

I always just end up listening to 'I am a Scientist' over and over again...

Alien Lanes is very highly regarded too, but a bit harder to get into. Did I Am A Scientist not wow you sufficently?

My favorite is blimps go 90 off Alien Lanes

Bee Thousand has remained my favorite album for nearly a year now. I remember secluding myself in my room and listening to it over and over and when I checked my iPod I listened to the album 36 times in one weekend hahaha

The Guided by Voices tribute album is officially looking AWESOME. Tracklist so far:

The Flaming Lips - “Smothered in Hugs”
Western Civ - “Goldheart Mountaintop Queen Directory” and “My Valuable Hunting Knife”
Cymbals Eat Guitars - “Gleemer”
Sorry About Dresden - “Echos Myron”
Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit - “Everywhere With Helicopter”
Crooked Fingers - “Tractor Rape Chain”
Elf Power - “Man Called Aerodynamics”
I Was Totally Destroying It - “I Am Produced”
The Pneurotics - I Am a Tree”
La Sera (Katy Goodman of Vivian Girls) - “Watch Me Jumpstart”
Kelley Deal with Buffalo Killers - “Scalding Creek”
Blitzen Trapper - “Hot Freaks”
Superdrag - “A Salty Salute”
David Kilgour (The Clean) - “How Loft Am I”
Thurston Moore - “Stabbing A Star,”
James Husband (Of Montreal) - “Buzzards and Dreadful Crows”
Twin Tigers - track unknown

I mean; Thurston Moore, Blitzen Trapper, Flaming Lips, The Breeders, Cymbals Eat Guitars... that's pretty damn cool, isn't it?

Love Bee Thousand. I ordered the "director's cut" off of their label, and while it's nice to have, the original album is perfection on its own.

Will have to check out that tribute album when it comes out.

Did anyone attend Matador at 21, or any of the other Guided By Voices reunions?

I love the classic lineup of all the incarnations. PRobably followed closely by the Mag Earwhig version of the band - when it was Bob and Cobra Verde.

Check it out. GBV- Live in LA 1996! Two hours! 43 songs! classic lin eup.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cnyEJ36rmDc



Guided By Voices - LIVE May 10, 1996 @ Whisky A Go Go - L.A. (ENTIRE SHOW - VHS)

Guided By Voices
 

This may be a shot in the dark, but is anybody into or has anybody listened to Guided by Voices? Robert Pollard is the founder and is, in my opinion, a very unique songwriter.

youtube... .com/watch?v=5MTzCxFlT8g

(can't post links yet, just registered :wave: )

He writes a lot of different styles of music, so if you don't like one album, then check out another album. His collection of written songs is mind-blowing. He has his fair share of ear-bleeding songs, but the good songs make up for it. One hell of an underrated musician through my eyes.

I need to get more sleep, on first glance i thought that post said something about written songs and blowjobs.

But Guided By Voices are deffff. a fantastic Indie/Noise Rock group, extremely catchy but really raw. I could definitely see where all the jangly feedbacky Indie Pop of today stems from. Also, they're pretty hot live, with their Bee Thousand lineup performing (what i'm familiar with now); great energy and sound.

Btw, can anyone see the Indie rock aesthetic GBV were going for being rooted in something like Captain Beefheart on "Troutmaskreplica (misspelling)"? I've been contemplating this for awhile.

i have most of their essentials

but i'm like, so over them, by now

i really ought to revisit the albums that I have

i like MOST of their songs, others i think are crap..
But they have TOO MANY songs..

ive noticed many ppl have said 'i am scientists' is one of their fav but i never liked that song lol

i prefer 'The Best of Jill hives' over it, never paid much attention to the lyrics until recently but they're great



When i first heard GBV i thought "That singer has an amazing voice"
And i still think so..

also, is it just me but in this song do they sound like Interpol? lol

Wiki says they have 25 full length studio records. Over the past little while, around three months or so, I’ve been on a steady diet of one Guided by Voices record every two or three days. I just counted up the number of records I’ve listened to and it’s 35. According to wiki Pollard is a major contributor to 100 records now and has 2000 songs registered with Broadcast Music, Inc. It's my sincere intention to listen to everything he’s ever recorded because there is no one in the history of pop music with anywhere close to quantity of very very high quality songs. It’s insane. On those 35 Guided by Voices records it's machine gun fire great hooks and great melodies. He (and to a degree they) rip them out, and they have so many they’ve started the next one before you even know they threw the last one out.

Going through the discography is a must because it’s the magnitude of it that forces you to gape in awe of the beauty. It’s like hiking in the Grand Canyon. There’s gems of beauty around every corner but the astonishing thing is to look over the edge and let the incredible enormity of the thing wash over you. Guided by Voices is the Grand Canyon of rock’n’roll bands.

The lo-fi apparently unfinished approach isn’t rebellious, by the time of Alien Lanes, 20 years since the Sex Pistols there’s nothing to rebel against. They’re not commenting on earlier approaches they’re presenting the same product in musical shorthand. It works so well because we know the influences so well. They present you with the crucial emotional moments of Tommy or Revolver without all the fanfare but not because the fanfare is pompous. They understand the fanfare is great. They’re actually using all the production and buildup and bridges built by The Who and the Beatles to take us to the GBV moments of glory. It doesn’t need to be recreated because Tommy and Revolver are already imprinted in our DNA. Those hooks wouldn’t work if their predecessors hadn’t already guided us there.

No one else has done anything like this. It’s an extension of classic rock that seems like indie but it’s really classic rock because it can only be understood completely if your mind can fill in what’s not there. And you have to be very well versed in the music it’s built on to do that. You have to hear what isn’t there and it’s not there because you don’t need to hear it again. You got it.

Nah man Pollard is a goat

Post-punk X-Man parked his fork-lift
Like a billion stars flickering from the grinder's wheel
Lower hybrid clad in metal
In subgroup tools
Excused from schools
To fathom hell

Gbv got the quality and the quantity

Tbh I only really listen to alien lanes and bee thousand these days so I feel you

I’m speaking to the genius of 35 unassailable masterpieces.

That’s why I took the time to write up my thoughts like that. Nobody is going to keep the entire discography on rotation but it’s a journey I recommend taking at least once.

https://travel.usnews.com/static-tra...kojihirano.jpg

Absolutely, it was a good write up. One of those bands I wish I could hear for the first time again.

I can’t. I mean I won’t spend that much time away from other music.

The Fall are so much harder to wrap your head around.

I think that touches on something you can take or leave. He’s not Mark E Smith.

But you’re doing yourself a disservice comparing GBV to the Fall and I ****ing know that’s exactly what you did. You thought well Mark E Smith made a million records and reinvented himself a million times and still stayed true to who he is and yes man you’re right but you don’t have to be God to be a god.

Pollard is ****ing supernatural. When you see a ghost you don’t say I know this other ghost blah blah. You say **** this ghost mother****er has a one in a billion power to transcend reality because that mother****er can haunt you.

Once they’re in the web of unassailability they can’t be surpassed even by a greater power. The laws of nature no longer apply.

Church

Good work lads it appears we have come to an agreement.

Color me impressed

Not near enough GBV love going on so I'm reviving this thread. Mostly because I listened to "From a compound eye" today which is maybe the only GBV side project, in this case a Pollard solo album, that rivals the best of GBV. I defy you to give it a listen and not recognize the greatness.

I didn't even know there was a GBV thread. I love these guys. Bee Thousand is one of the greatest indie albums ever and albums like Alien Lanes, Mag Earwhig!, Do the Collapse, and Isolation Drills aren't so bad either.

The producers of Scrubs must have liked them too because they used this song on one of their TV shows (my favorite GBV song by the way)

What a great song. Never caught that on scrubs. I love when shows have music producers with taste.:love:

Bee Thousand one of my favs