Towards the back end of the grim 1980s, your reviewer and his compadres could often be located in the same local pub. University days had just begun and the possibilities seemed limitless. The conversations we had were often Pythonesque and surreal and more than once someone suggested we should form a band to get some of these ideas down for posterity. That would lead the talk to a particular tutor we all knew who'd formed a band. Ha! That wouldn't last. I mean, whoever heard of a teacher forming a cool rock'n'roll band? Never in a month of Sundays.
Ironically, at about this time, across the Atlantic in Dayton, Ohio, mild-mannered schoolteacher Bob Pollard was setting up such a cool rock'n'roll band. His charges, GUIDED BY VOICES, would go on to (and continue to) write brilliant rock'n'roll songs - sometimes jangly, sometimes punky - with a slightly cerebral lyrical slant and a vivid imagination. Bob's songs would usually be constructed after copious cases of beer and hours spent having conversations in the pub. Or bar, I guess. Touche, huh?
Since 1986 or so, Bob's released - on average - about four albums per year, with GBV, solo or with outside projects - and his frantic muse gives words like "prolific" the shits, so in that sense the idea of a career retrospective that could possibly be representative in itself sounds unfeasible.
Because, perhaps inevitably, the downside of Pollard's furious creativity is that he's come under fire for the old 'quantity over quality' chestnut and this - combined with the band's original, staunchly lo-fi stance and their fans' anally-retentive tendencies (and I'm in this category, so don't get so hot under the collar) - has probably conspired to his continuing cult status when bands who've clearly copped much from GBV (what? who mentioned The Strokes?) have steamed past commercially.
So, hearteningly, "Human Amusements At Hourly Rates" works on two fronts: it does - as much as is physically possible when choosing from what must potentially be well over a thousand songs - actually sound representative of Bob and co's achievements so far and also presents a pretty well-balanced split between the earlier, lo-fi albums (broadly when the line up included Jim Pollard and Tobin Sprout up to approximately 1995's "Alien Lanes") and the more recent line-up featuring Doug Gillard and co.
Curiously, the oldest track included here ("Captain's Dead" from 1987) sounds unusually well-recorded, but certainly there's a fair representation of the band's revered early albums like "Propellor," "Bee Thousand" and "Alien Lanes." Sure, these albums sound like they were recorded in the Jacks for roughly the price of a bottle of Jim Beam and a bag of cheap speed, but there is an enduring, intuitive rock'n'roll radar up and receiving, ensuring that songs like "Echos Myron", "Hot Freaks", "My Valuable Hunting Knife" (yay!), "A Salty Salute" and the evergreen "Game Of Pricks" (here in its' definitive Ep version - joy!) have grown in stature accordingly.
This writer tends to depart from received wisdom here in that he feels GBV didn't 'sell out' at all when they went on to make the much-maligned "Do The Collapse" album with Mr.Midas, Ric Ocasek of The Cars, because one listen to the tracks included from albums like "Under The Bushes, Under The Stars" and "Mag Earwhig!" such as "The Official Ironmen Rally Song," the Glam-my swagger of "Bulldog Skin" and Doug Gillard's magnificent "I Am A Tree" suggest the band's much-improved songcraft was heading towards something that required better studios and a widescreen production (term used relatively, of course.)
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Besides, the two tracks here from "Do The Collapse" ("Things I Will Keep" and "Surgical Focus" ) are very easily recognisably GBV and definitely benefit from a few of Ocasek's sussed ideas. And his input was obviously positive in the long run as the band have continued to sound superb since that 'experiment.' "Human Amusements..." rightly includes several great tracks from the stupidly-ignored "Isolation Drills" ("Twilight Campfighter" is jangly Bob in excelsis and "Glad Girls" even rivals "Everywhere With Helicopter" as their ultimate catchy pop-punk anthem) and brings us up to date with a smattering from "Universal Truths And Cycles" and recent album "Earthquake Glue"s combination punch singles "My Kind Of Soldier" and "The Best Of Jill Hives". Also, it's somehow appropriate that the collection finishes with the mournfully dignified old favourite "I Am A Scientist," though that's one of those slightly intangible things that just seems right.
Naturally, the track listing will surely bring cries of disgust from the hardened GBV addict (for what it's worth, I'd have loved "Hold On Hope", "Eureka Signs" and "Striped White Jets") but y'know, that's irrelevant. More importantly, if I was compiling a collection of what GBV are capable of, I'd struggle to do better, and in any case - as usual with Bob - you can always get the "Hardcore UFO's" 5CD set for a different tracklisting if you don't feel sated enough. That's big-hearted Bob all over.
Ultimately, it's fitting that the cover features a slightly reluctant Bob draped in a sparkly magician's cape, as - however much an anti-star he may think he is (and it's difficult to imagine someone more thrilled by what he's created onstage) - Guided By Voices have created a phenomenal back catalogue, which could truly be best decribed as "sorcery." If you want the nooks and crannies get digging, but if you're still a novice, this is the best introduction yet.
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