This weekend, Ohio's greatest rock band makes its last stand.
Guided By Voices is playing its final Ohio concerts this weekend, starting in Columbus last night and continuing tonight in Cincinnati and tomorrow in Cleveland.
Drunken songwriting wizard Robert Pollard announced in April that the band would cease to exist by the end of the year, ending nearly 20 years of prolific recording, lineup changes and marathon 40-song sets.
Although Pollard plans to continue recording and is the only remaining member of the original lineup, retiring the name Guided By Voices is significant. The band has produced several masterful albums and innumerable classic pop-rock songs, a product of Pollard's seemingly tireless muse -he claims to have written more than 1,000 songs.
On stage, he often seems to have downed that many beers. The band, which came to Athens several times in the early 90s, is legendary for its live performances. As he has gotten older, Pollard has toned down his onstage antics -his flying kicks across the stage are no more -but the band continues to impress for more than three hours at every show.
Founded in Dayton in the mid-80s, Guided By Voices began with Pollard and his friends recording fuzzy, quirky tunes in their basements. Pollard, a schoolteacher, Wright State graduate and former high school quarterback, also turned out to be a brilliant songwriter; his melodies and often absurd lyrics managed to shine through the awful production quality characteristic of the band's first decade.
After years of fooling around in Dayton, Guided By Voices perplexingly became an overnight success. Its 1994 album, Bee Thousand
ended up on critics' lists across the country and was honored by Rolling Stone and other popular music publications.
With 1995's fantastic Alien Lanes GBV began a slow progression toward higher fidelity recording, fueled by an influx of funds and Pollard's new desire for mainstream success. The band's rise ultimately led to a major-label record deal. Unfortunately for Pollard -by that time he had fired his original band mates and enlisted Cleveland rockers Cobra Verde to back him -the first Guided By Voices album on TVT Records, Do the Collapse was a commercial and critical failure.
Since then, the band has returned to indie stalwart Matador Records and has been making increasingly good records, though it has never recaptured its mid-90s glory.
I unfortunately was not introduced to Guided By Voices until about two years ago. In that time, I have thoroughly enjoyed exploring the band's back catalogue and have witnessed two ridiculous, beautiful concerts. I probably won't venture to Chicago on New Year's Eve to witness the band's last appearance, but I could think of worse ways to ring in 2005.
All this in mind, I propose a toast: Let's raise our cans of cheap beer to honor the men of Guided By Voices. Pollard and company truly were the best our state has ever seen.
-DeVille wishes he could make it to one of these last shows this weekend. Console him at christopher.t.deville.1@ohiou.edu.
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Chris Deville
