BY JON HOULON Indie rock.  I never understood that.  Independent of what?  Commerce?  I doubt it.  Your Drag City is the Capitol of a state called Filthy Lucre. Songs?  Yea, could be. I heard Tom Russell – one of the finest #OKboomer songwriters still plying his trade – say that the trouble with indie kids is that they don’t write songs but, rather, “soundscapes.” Ever try playing a Pavement ditty around a campfire?  It falls flat.  And, lord knows, don’t sing DCB over roasted marshmallows unless you want your pals propelled into a fiery furnace.

My best guess is that indie rock’s claim to fame is that it’s independent of the “roll.”  Turgid rock, all intellect, no swing.  And that doesn’t mean swing like R&B.  Another kind of swing that involves stance. I’d say Pollard’s the only genuine rock’n’roller to emerge from the 90s scene.  Other plausible candidates:  Cole Alexander from the Black Lips and Anton Newcombe from the Brian Jonestown Massacre.  They’ve got the roll.  Cole adopted the Iggy stance:  cock out, spit in the air, catch and swallow.  Anton his namesake’s:  side-stage facing the band, the audience an afterthought, likewise his bandmates.

Uncle Bob derived his roll from Daltrey: lips pursed, leg kicked out, mic twirled, knees bent in some sort of self-inflicted aerial nostalgia. But here’s the thing:  Pollard also took in Townsend (hold your tongue back and say “Pete Townsend”; you’ll arrive at “bee thousand”).  Lizards and ghouls respectively, Cole and Anton can’t hold Bob’s jock as a songwriter.  And I do mean jock.  The Coney Island Baby said “I wanna play football for the coach.”  Bob really did.  Quite well, actually, although brother Jimmy was the Man.  It’s odd, tho.  Athletics – with its exclusivity and ethos of victory — should be anathema to rock’n’roll, but, somehow, Bob is the deception that proves the fool.

Pollard is consubstantial and that’s why he is a party of one as far as bonafide indie rock ’n’ rollers go. Daltry/Townsend in one.  Et unam sanctum catholicam et apostolicam ecclesiam. James Greer took at a crack at unpacking this consubstantiality in Guided by Voices:  A Brief History, Twenty One Years of Hunting Accidents in the Forests of Rock and Roll.  The problem with Jim is that he actually played in GBV – not quite a hagiographer but too close to the flame.  Still, he pulls some decent quotes from Bob’s associates:  “I just can’t understand how a guy who can make you laugh until it fucking hurts, who talks about nothing but sports and shit when we’re home, just like us, can write songs so beautiful they make you cry.”

Well, crony, it’s called genius.  “Singular genius” as Greer puts it.  Coked out of his mind (atypically, according to the man himself) and behaving badly, Bob’s parents are summoned to his house by wife Kim.  Asked what his problem is:  “I’ll tell you what the fucking problem is.  It’s that I’m a fucking genius and nobody gives me any credit for it.”

Yep.  Never did the hoovering, Uncle B., but I can relate.

SKID ROW

Matt Cutter’s got his fair share of interesting anecdotes but, boy, does he bury the lede.  Or turd as the case may be.

Witness this:  “R.E.M.’s Peter Buck was on hand for the Jabberjaw gig, and came out to the van after the show.   Bob recalls Buck walking up with his wife just as Demos was changing his pants with the van door wide open.  Greg struggled to complete the operation swiftly and hopped out.  ‘Hey,’ Buck said to Bob, ‘that was a great show, man!’  But a stench wafted from the van, and Buck looked over to see Greg’s underwear, lying there like a dead animal.  Bob says they had ‘a thick fucking stripe … visible to them!’  Buck and his wife recoiled visibly.”

This is IT!  Cutter’s editor dropped the ball here.  I mean, do you want to play football for the coach or not???  Get in the game, Matt!

Of course, Buck recoiled … as he did from all that is rock’n’roll when he joined forces with Mike Stipe.  No brown stripe.  Stipe.  Stipulated.  The opposite of roll.  Get it?

I doubt you doo, but Greg Demos with his striped white pants and striped brown underwear gets as close to explaining Pollard’s genius as anything else in Cutter’s claim.  The unlikeliest candidate of all: an attorney.  Lawyers should simply not play music.  Woody hated ‘em.  Their stipulations overcome the soul.  Stay away, counselor.  But Demos, like Bob, is the rejection that pools the poo.

Footnote to Howl:  Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! The world is holy!  The soul is holy!  The skin is holy!  The nose is holy!  The tongue and cock and hand and asshole holy!

BEAUTIFUL VISION

You won’t find it in Greer or Cutter and, lord knows, you won’t find it here.

Buck told Greer that “if it was me, I probably would have kept Guided By Voices.”  Yea, but you’re not Uncle Bob, Pete.

The difference is vision (genius, whatever you want to call “it”).  And when Bob rolls into town on Friday, he’ll have it in spades.  No matter who’s up there with him:  Bobby Bare’s kid, Gillard, whoever.  It’s all about Bob and it always was.

PREVIOUSLY: The Complete 2013 Magnet Interview W/ Robert Pollard

GUIDED BY VOICES @ UNDERGROUND ARTS FRIDAY DECEMBER 6TH

Photo by JONATHAN VALANIA

EDITOR’S NOTE: This interview originally ran September 12th 2012. We present this encore edition to mark the news that Carney has just resigned his White House Press Sec. post, with a lengthy, never-before published exchange about 9/11 wherein Carney speaks at length about being on Air Force One as a reporter for TIME Magazine on that day.

BY JONATHAN VALANIA Back in the spring, MAGNET’s collective jaw dropped when we learned that White House Press Secretary Jay Carney declared, in the middle of a briefing with the Washington press corps, that Guided By Voices was “the greatest rock band of the modern era.” It’s not often that our musical tastes intersect with those of the spokesperson for the most powerful man on the planet, so we dropped Carney a line and asked if he’d be willing to sit for an interview about his love of Bob Pollard and Co. Surprisingly enough, he said yes, and we found ourselves in the East Wing of the White House grilling the President of the United States’ spokesman about the finer points of Bee Thousand and Alien Lanes.

MAGNET: You declared Guided By Voices to be the greatest band of the modern era during a press conference in the White House briefing room. I recently watched it again on YouTube, and I noticed that none of the White House press corps followed up on this very provocative declaration that you made. They all seemed to be more interested in Afghanistan and some place called China, and I really have to question the priorities of the lamestream media, as somebody we know would call it. And then last summer, you somehow interpolated (Senate Minority Leader) Mitch McConnell with Mitch Mitchell, who is the guitarist in Guided By Voices, and then you said, when trying to steer back to the matters at hand, “OK let’s motor on.” Pretty sure you meant “Motor Away” …

JAY CARNEY: I did, I did.

MAGNET: … referring to the song from Alien Lanes. The reason I bring all this up is that nobody in that room got this reference, but we did, sir, and the question is, why doesn’t MAGNET have a permanent seat in that briefing room?

JAY CARNEY: I hereby approve your application for a permanent seat in the briefing room.

MAGNET: Excellent!

JAY CARNEY: I think you’ve earned it by recognizing all of my Guided By Voices references and appreciating them, because I can say, in this job, I get to make my views known in a way I never was able to as a regular reporter for Time magazine, and it’s been especially nice to be extremely declarative about my musical preferences.

MAGNET: My first proper question is a hypothetical: The flying saucers land on the front lawn, and they come down the gang plank and say, “What is this Guided By Voices that the White House press secretary is always talking about?” What is the one song that you would play them to set them straight?

JAY CARNEY: I think “Echos Myron.” Because it might be the perfect pop/rock song. At least since the Beatles broke up, and the reason why I have so much affection for that song is both its perfection and because when I saw GBV at Irving Plaza in ’96 with my GBV buddies, there was a moment in the show—which was the best GBV show I have ever seen—when toward the end they played that, and there was so much extreme happiness there. It was just a perfect moment, a perfect rock ‘n’ roll moment. I just think it’s a fantastic song, and it’s emblematic of the so-called classic lineup’s capacity to take a simple song and make it unforgettable.

MAGNET: I’ve actually had that exact same experience that you’re talking about. It’s a very joyful song. On a related note, another hypothetical: Your house is on fire. God forbid, you only have time to grab one GBV album. Which one do you take with you?

JAY CARNEY: That’s hard. And I won’t cheat by choosing some of the later greatest-hits collections. I would say Bee Thousand.

MAGNET: I would agree with you on that. OK, Tobin Sprout/Mitch Mitchell era or the Doug Gillard era?

JAY CARNEY: Hands down, nothing against the Doug Gillard team, but Tobin and Mitch.

MAGNET: OK, this is a fill-in-the-blank question. The only bad GBV song is …

JAY CARNEY: [Whistles] Here’s the thing: Pollard is so prolific and so good, but being that prolific I think requires that you write some bad songs. And you know, not all of them are great in my opinion. It would be impossible for anyone to achieve that, so I guess if I had to pick … I’m trying to think … I’ll have to think about that a little more …

MAGNET: Well, I’ll help you out here. The judges would have accepted “a song I have never heard and surely hope I never do.” Moving on, has the GBV song “Game Of Pricks” taken on a special resonance given your current vocation?

JAY CARNEY: [Laughs] Well, I hadn’t thought of it before in that context, but I will never think of it otherwise now.

MAGNET: Are you listed in the Goldheart Mountaintop Queen Directory?

JAY CARNEY: Absolutely. If diehard fans are listed in that directory, I’m in there.

MAGNET: Have you ever kicked an elf?

JAY CARNEY: Ha. Never.

MAGNET: Have you ever met a non-dairy creamer explicitly laid out like a fruitcake with a wet spot bigger than a Great Lake?

JAY CARNEY: Not that I remember.

MAGNET: We need to know: How does the president come down on the great Bee Thousand-vs.-Alien Lanes debate?

JAY CARNEY: I confess, I have not discussed it with him. In one of the White House press briefings where it came up, somebody asked me if the president was a fan. I said, “I’m working on him,” but the truth is I haven’t. I haven’t brought that into our relationship. MORE

MAGNET: Last question, this is actually a little bit more serious, You were on board Air Force One with President Bush when 9/11 went down. I’m curious what you remember from that day.

JAY CARNEY: Wow. Well, a lot. I remember in the motorcade, y’know, in the press van, the pool van, we spent the night I guess outside of Jacksonville, Florida where he was scheduled to do an education event that day we woke up in September 11th. Beautiful day. The motorcade arrived at the school and I remember right when we talked in the pool was being ushered into the school and someone in the Bush press office—I can’t remember who it was—it wasn’t Arie Fleischer, it was somebody junior, who said to the pool as we were walking in, “A plane has hit one of the world trade center towers. We think it’s a small, like a Cessna or something, but just so you guys know.” And we got ushered into—y’know which is what, which is normal, and at that time, after the first plane hit, nobody really knew what was happening, and that was the first we heard of it, I heard of it. And then we were ushered into that classroom where the president was then going to read to the kids in that class and the way events like that work—I’m obviously on the other side of it now—y’know, the pool comes in and they’re usually behind a rope line or just sort of y’know, in one corner of the room or something so they can watch whatever the president’s doing; speaking, interacting with people, kids, whatever, and that was the set-up with president Bush and these children and he was reading a book to them, which is standard stuff, and then, and at that point, again, all we knew was that a plain had hit one of the towers and nobody was really talking about terrorism or attacks and things, and then that famous moment when Andy Carly, Chief of Staff for the president came in and whispered in his ear and almost concurrently as I recall everybody’s—back then people still had pagers, but they also had cell phones and everybody had put their stuff on vibrate and you could hear the “bzzzzzzzzzzzzzz” ‘cause everybody’s—well, the second tower had gone down, and as now, famously now, y’know the president continued to read the book and it, it y’know did not seem like an eternity at all. It was a bunch of first graders, I think they were, even, and he finished reading the book and then disappeared and y’know it’s interesting now to be on the other side of this because he would have gone to a room where I was, where I would have been, y’know on the other side of that wall with the president and dealing with the crisis situation like that. Long story short, we went to the cafeteria or gymnasium or wherever he was originally going to speak about education and he said that, y’know “America’s under attack, terrorist attack, I’m going back to Washington.”

And we rushed back into the motorcade and went to wherever Air Force One was, I can’t remember if it was a commercial airport or a military base, and took off like lightening. And back then it was novel, but y’know, you can watch TV on Air Force One, y’know if you’re over land and have a broadcast signal or however they connect it, and so we were watching the towers on TV back in the little press section, and seeing the reports that the president was heading back to Washington, and we, and I remember we were looking out the window and, to see if there were jets, y’know fighter jets, and we couldn’t see anything, but we could, at first we were headed north, we could see the coast and then y’know we could tell when we were banking west, but we didn’t know where we were going and it wasn’t until, it was a long time after, seemed like a long time after we’d had turned left that they were still reporting that the president was coming back to Washington, ‘cause that’s what he said, but—anyway, shortly before we landed in Louisiana, Arie Fleisher came back, my predecessor, and told us what was happening and y’know, it was a dramatic moment, it was incredible thing, and I think that he said, “Everybody can you please leave your cell phones off,” and that’s because at that time they really didn’t know if he was a target, if the plane was a target… We landed at this air base in the middle of the united states and I think there was enough there was so much that was unknown about what was happening and whether or not the president himself or the plane was a target and I remember we landed the plane was surrounded by fully armed combat troops, and we deplaned and went in a little armored motorcade to where they had secure communications for him and that’s where he did, where President Bush did his first statement, which was videotaped because they didn’t have satellite uplink, and it was a small room about the size of this office and the pool was being held there and then the president came in and gave that statement just standing with the backdrop of a flag or something and it was, it was, pretty intense. But long story short, most of us got kicked off, didn’t go to Norad with him, just a handful of the pool went, which was a source of some protest by some of us in the pool, but they sent a plane. I did not make the cut—the pool was normally thirteen people, they cut it down to 5, and I was the magazine pool, and a lot of the president’s staff was also, did not go on to Norad. They sent a plane for us, though, so we actually got back to Washington. It was one of the Vice President’s planes, picked us up and brought us back to Washington. This was the time there was no commercial flights—

MAGNET: Right, everything was grounded.

JAY CARNEY: And I remember landing in, as we were coming into Andrews, you could see the smoke rising from the Pentagon, getting into town and seeing military police on the streets here and my wife was pregnant with my son, eight months pregnant, and she was anchoring, she was doing, she was the news reader for Good Morning America, and since she was pregnant, SO pregnant she couldn’t travel to New York, so she was doing it at a space that ABC had at the Haight Adams [Hey Adams?], across Lafayette Park, with the backdrop of the white house, and as she was news reading, as they were wrapping up the show at 9:00, Charlie Gibson said, “Claire is that smoke?”—they weren’t wrapping up, y’know, the towers had been hit and then they were, Charlie Gibson noticed that behind Claire in a long shot there was smoke behind her, and that was the Pentagon, and that another plane had struck the Pentagon. Anyway, I came looking for my wife at the Haight Adams and it was, like everybody, an unforgettable day.

PREVIOUSLY: EXTRA! EXTRA!: Mr. Phawker Goes To Washington

MAGNET: For reasons unknown, except that it’s the internet, news of Guided By Voices‘ Robert Pollard tossing a no-hitter as a college hurler on May 11, 1978, has gone semi-viral. We noted it in MAGNET’s Top 25 Of 2012 and thought it was relatively common knowledge among diehard GBV fans at the very least. Still, it’s a treat to see Pollard’s mug in the Wright State student newspaper account of his masterpiece. At the time, the no-no was the first in school history. Given the unlikely resurgence of interest in his mound milestone, we asked Pollard to share any memories he might have of his gem 36 years ago. GBV, by the way, is releasing Motivational Jumpsuit (Guided By Voices Inc.) on February 18. It’s really good, so employ whatever positive baseball metaphor you’d like.

MAGNET: Before the no-hitter, how would you classify your stuff in general? What pitches were in your repertoire?

POLLARD: I threw 80 percent fastballs. I threw a lot harder in high school before I injured my arm and developed tennis elbow. I had an imitation slider, which is basically a 3/4-armed curveball that my college coach allowed me to use. I developed a pretty effective curveball in college that I couldn’t control very well, but a lot of hitters would swing at it anyway after seeing predominantly fastballs. I had a decent brushback pitch. MORE

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PREVIOUSLY: In Bob We Trust

SCALPING THE GURU

In the time it takes you to read this Robert Pollard will have written and recorded three brilliant albums and disbanded Guided By Voices again. MAGNET stages a Beer Summit to find out how and why.

BY JONATHAN VALANIA

No light or air or hope gets past the front door of Desmond’s Tavern, a grungy windowless taproom in midtown Manhattan that looks like a VFW hall crashed into a sports bar and smells like a frat house at low tide, and the afternoon crowd seems to like it that way. They like to do their drinking in the same place the fly got smashed. With its tobacco-cured walls, expansive array of Anheuser-Busch products and classic rawk on the jukebox, it’s the closest thing to a Dayton dive this far east of the Buckeye State, which is no doubt why it was selected to host MAGNET’s summit with the clown prince of the menthol trailer park, aka Robert Pollard, the mic-swinging, high-kicking, Bud-swigging past-present-and-possibly-former frontman for Guided By Voices. We must count our blessings, an audience with Pollard is a rare thing these days, he hasn’t granted an interview in three years.

For most MAGNET readers, Pollard needs no introduction and space is in short supply so I will be brief. But if you are new to the Pollard saga, know that he is hands-down the most gifted, beguiling and, by a wide margin, prolific songwriter of the indie-rock era. By his own count he has released upwards of 80 records, including 20 Guided By Voices albums, 19 solo albums and countless LPs, EPs and seven-inch singles from his endless string of one-off collaborations and side projects, among them Boston Space Ships, Airport 5, Circus Devils, Acid Ranch, Lifeguards, The Moping Swans, Lexo & The Leapers, Hazzard Hot Rods and Howling Wolf Orchestra.

The sheer volume and velocity of Pollard’s recorded output continues to amaze and overwhelm even his most devoted disciples. “I think it explains his lack of extreme, worldwide fame,” says director Steven Soderbergh, an avowed Bob Pollard superfan. “I think people don’t trust him. I think they’re just very suspicious of the amount of material. And it’s so unusual that, I don’t know if they find it threatening, or if they’re just bewildered, or they don’t have the stamina to even keep up with it. But all I do is keep listening and marveling at his ability to generate really high quality music. The last couple years — I don’t think he’s ever been bad — but the last couple years in particular he’s been very, very good.”

MAGNET’s interview with Pollard was occasioned by the release of Honey Locust Honky Tonk, his 19th solo record and arguably his best to date. We begin with Pollard dropping the bombshell that he has grown bored with the reunion of the so-called classic line-up of Guided By Voices after four albums and a couple tours and may well pull the plug on it, at least as far as making new albums is concerned. But fear not, my droogs. Even if that happens there will be plenty of Pollard to go around. The Fading Captain is a lifer. He shoots himself with rock n’ roll. The hole he digs is bottomless, but nothing else can set him free.

ROBERT POLLARD: Honey Locust Honky Tonk is basically the songs I wrote for the next Guided By Voices album, but I’m not sure there’s going to be a next Guided By Voices album. I’m not gonna say for sure, but it’s already got a little bit stagnant. To me it’s kind of run its course.

MAGNET: Really?

ROBERT POLLARD: We did a lot within the course of two or three years.

MAGNET: Four albums.

ROBERT POLLARD: Four albums. First, it was a reunion tour and then it was a proper tour, supporting a new album. But now I’m thinking, probably, I’ll relegate [GBV] to the festival circuit, you know? People at festivals don’t want to hear a new album they want to hear the greatest hits. And I’m not that interested in that. I’m more interested in what comes next.

MAGNET: I think the consensus opinion of the post-reunion albums was that you were putting your poppier stuff on your solo records and your more experimental stuff on the GBV records. Is that true?

ROBERT POLLARD: Well, you know, to me, I don’t know if that’s true. What I thought is I was putting my more mature stuff on my solo record because it has a name of a person and some of my less mature stuff with the band name because you can do whatever you want, there is no age limit. Robert Pollard is fifty-five years old, but the singer for Guided By Voices is whatever.

MAGNET: Your rate of releasing new material is just astonishing, and it’s only gone into overdrive in the last five to 10 years.

ROBERT POLLARD: In the time it takes some of my contemporaries to put out two albums, I will have put out 30 albums. That’s pretty ridiculous.

MAGNET: It overwhelms people. People feel like they can’t keep up. ‘I lost track.’ I hear this all the time from people, especially when I mention that I was going to interview you. People were saying that to me back in the early ‘90’s and it’s only gotten worse now that you’ve put out a gajillion records. It’s kinda like trying to swallow the ocean.

ROBERT POLLARD: That’s what I do. I love to write songs, I love to write songs. You can’t turn it off, because you don’t want to turn it off. If you turn it off, maybe you can’t turn it back on.

MAGNET: What do you say to people who tell you you’re oversaturating the market?

ROBERT POLLARD: Well, first of all, I work at a very strong pace. I’ve been putting out much to the chagrin of people — a lot of people say that ‘I dilute my genius’ — genius is their word, not mine, by the way. But I disagree because that’s the way I work and I’m afraid to not do it that way, I’m afraid to turn if off because I’m afraid that I wouldn’t be able to turn it back on, you know?

MAGNET: But what if — just to play the devil’s advocate here — what if you wrote and recorded songs but didn’t put them out as quickly as you do?

ROBERT POLLARD: Well, I’ve done that. You asked me how do you choose, well for the most part, I’ve been doing it for so long, I’ll have a batch of songs and that’s pretty much what they’re gonna be and they all make it. But occasionally, some of them don’t. One time I finished an album and I went to this bar and there was a band playing. And there were all these middle-aged women up there dancing to it. I started kind of just daydreaming and gazing and second-guessing myself about what I just did. I was watching the dancers and I was like, ‘Would they dance to my new record? Would they be dancing like that?’ and the answer was yes. Yeah, they would dance to it. So I got rid of the whole thing.

MAGNET: I read that you 2,000 songs registered to BMI…

ROBERT POLLARD: That’s probably five years ago, that count was probably five years ago.

MAGNET: And you released something like 50 albums, between GBV and side projects and solo records…

ROBERT POLLARD: Actually, it’s closer to 80.

MAGNET: I remember reading somewhere that you said a couple of years ago someone played you a song of yours that you didn’t even recognize. It wasn’t even that old of a song. Like, from 2003 or something.

ROBERT POLLARD: Didn’t even know what it was. The thing is, I got some hardcore fans. And a handful — not a lot — but it’s a handful — about five hundred, a thousand — are hardcore. And they know way more than I do. They’ll say, ‘You know…’ And I don’t know what they’re talking about. I’ll have no idea what they’re talking about. We’ll be sitting in a bar, ‘Sing it out dude. That’s you.’ And I’ll be like ‘It is?’ MORE

BY JONATHAN VALANIA FOR THE INQUIRER Funny how Gen X used to mercilessly mock its predecessors for endlessly revisiting the Woodstockian ecstasies of its youth, as though nostalgia were a generational affliction instead of a universal symptom of aging. Now that the gray-bearding of Gen X has commenced, its members have proved no less immune to the impulse to revisit the pleasures of their gloriously misspent youth. Exhibit A is Guided by Voices’ sold-out “Hallway Of Shatterproof Glass Tour,” which reunites the so-called classic lineup of the Dayton, Ohio, indie darlings for one more beery, fist-pumping, scissors-kicking sing-along of their underground anthems from the mid-1990s. The tour’s stop at the Trocadero on Saturday night had been sold out almost since the moment it was announced months before. MORE