What's Right With Music
by VinceDaliessio
I am currently writing an article on "What's Wrong With Music" - needless to say, it's beginning to look like a LOOOONG article. But there are some things right with music too, though you'd be hard-pressed to hear about it on the radio. For instance, Sonic Youth's new record, Sonic Nurse. Or Wilco's new record. Brian Wilson finally put together enough lucid days in the studio to finish his Smile, a 30-year-plus undertaking, and he is even taking it on the road. Over on the R&B side, Outkast had the record of the decade with "Hey Ya", and bands like The Roots keep bucking the trend toward derivativeness by making their own kind of funky music.
One of the best bands on the rock/pop scene over the last 10 years has been Guided By Voices. Started in the early 80's by Ohio elementary-school teacher Robert Pollard, GBV have been exceeding expectations with each release and each raucousperformance they put on during an average nearly 100 shows per year (in some pretty big rooms). Their records released during this time include such future classics as "Bee Thousand", "Alien Lanes", "Mag Earwhig!", and "Isolation Drills", records that range from buzzy, self-produced shards of stunning melody and lyrical oddness to polished, hard rock.
Pollard has decided to go outat thetop of his game, announcing in April that the current record, "Half-Smiles of The Decomposed" will be the group's last. The final tour, which kicked off in August at Pier 54 in NYC, is visiting 23 cities, capped off by three shows at Irving Plaza, NYCin December (third show goes on sale Friday), and theirfinal shows on December 30-31st in Chicago.
Several associates of the band are taking the opportunity to make a little extra money on the event. Robert Griffin of Scat Records is releasing "Bee Thousand - The Director's Cut", a painstaking re-creation of several iterations that GBV's "breakthrough" album went through prior to its release in 1993. Some enterprising fans are selling tickets to the band's final shows at healthy mark-ups. Several former members of the band are selling off some of their excess memorabilia. Even Pollard himself has gotten into the act, selling one of his personal copies of the individually hand-decorated 1992 release "Propeller" on eBay. Former GBV member Don Thrasher wrote an article for Sponic about the sale;
€œToby (former GBV member Tobin Sprout) sold one for like $1,300 and that blew my mind,€ (Pollard)said. €œWhen I put mine up and it got up to $1,200 I went, €˜Wow, alright!€™ I secretly kind of wanted to break Toby€™s record. The very next morning we got up and played a show in Nashville and Toby was opening for us. He said, €˜You€™re going to have to sit down for this.€™ He goes, €˜It€™s seven €€™ and I thought he was going to say €˜$1,700€™ and I was going to go €˜Wow!€™ He goes, €˜It€™s $7,600.€™ I go, €˜You gotta be shitting me!€™€
The bid turned out to be bogus, but the record eventually sold for $6200.
Anyway,Guided By Voicesare great, and you should go see them before they aregone.
