Guided By Voices

There seems to be a fair bit of excitement (read, slight hysteria) building up around these forthcoming Pavement shows on the internet at the moment. It's fair enough I suppose, I enjoy most of their stuff myself and I'd probably go and see them given the chance, but I found myself thinking about who else I'd like to see reform and realised that I'd much much rather see Guided By Voices (with Tobin Sprout, of course) then I'd ever want to see Pavement. It's unlikely to happen, though Robert Pollard has never ruled it out, but one can dream.

Then I got to thinking that there's probably still a lot of people who've never heard GBV before, and so I decided to try to put together a little Guided By Voices 101. It's not easy, for a start they did a lot of records (how many other bands have a top 100 songs, dedicated solely to them?) and the first thing a lot of people find out with GBV is that even on the best of their records there can be a fair bit of filler. That said most of their records are over 20 songs long and there are a lot of them, so even if only half of the songs on every album are great that's still be a pretty big hit ratio, lucky it turns out to be more than that. All I'm trying to get over from that sentence really is that it can be hard for the uninitiated to know where to start with the band; it's like dipping your hand into a newly opened box of Cadbury's Roses having never had any before. Everyone tells you they are lovely, but you end up getting a chocolate one for your first try. It'd be enough to put you off for life.

I could do a whole potted history of the band, but it would take up too much space, I'd miss things, I'd get things wrong, so I'm keeping it simple. The bands website will tell you all you need to know anyway. It includes mp3's, setlists and chords too (if you are musically inclined in that way). It's here

So I thought I'd try and help along by making a spotify playlist of some of their best stuff. It's a thankless task in all honesty. Being a band with so many songs, there's always going to be disagreement on what deserves inclusion and what doesn't. There's also stuff that isn't on Spotify, like 'Bee Thousand'. In fact go and find a copy of 'Gold Star For Robot Boy' off that record now, and hear the strength of things that couldn't be included. There's more too.

If you want to buy GBV records though, the best place to start is definitely 'Human Amusements At Hourly Rates'. It's a collection put together by Robert Pollard himself. There's not really a bad song out of the 32, so it's well worth a listen. It's on Spotify too, which probably makes things easier. As are a whole bunch of other albums.

Or if you want a DVD then 'Guided By Voices, The Electrifying Conclusion' is for you. Capturing them at their last ever show, all 4 hours of it.

Anyway I've written more than I'd planned to so without further ado, here's the playlist link

P.s if you like the whole spotify playlist thing, then check out indiefy, they do this kind of thing, but better.