The Releases: Suitcase: Failed Experiments and Trashed Aircraft (Compilation—The Fading Captain Series, 2000) / Briefcase: Suitcase Abridged – Drinks and Deliveries (Compilation—The Fading Captain Series, 2000)
I was but a GBV noob when I first heard of the legendary suitcase. Allegedly, Robert Pollard—a man whose primary creative outlet released records at an absurd pace, and who also headed up a ridiculous number of side projects—kept a suitcase full of tapes in his Dayton, Ohio basement. According to the stories, these tapes were not only full of unreleased material, but they also housed songs that could stand toe-to-toe with many of Guided by Voices’ most beloved recordings. And even though these accounts smacked of suburban legend, what I had learned about Robert Pollard up to that point made it all seem not only entirely plausible, but likely.
By the time that I had gotten into GBV in 2003, the first offerings from Pollard’s suitcase had already made their way out into the world, but of course I still had a seemingly innumerable number of ‘official’ Guided by Voices releases to discover first. It took me years to catch up with those—and in the midst of a mid-2000s era that produced a genuinely overwhelming number of albums that I felt compelled to check out, the importance of digging through Pollard’s outtakes never reached a level of urgency that necessitated tracking down the four-CD Suitcase collection.
Still, the very concept of Suitcase fascinated me. First off, I have a ‘suitcase’ of my own: an Ikea cube storage bin full of cassettes that were largely recorded between my mid-teens and late-twenties, which (mostly) house songs that I never actually got around to finishing, as I simultaneously completed other music projects. Next, there was also the sheer scale of the first Suitcase release: one-hundred songs (and many of which drew from GBV’s most celebrated era). Couple all of this with the fact that Pollard opted to credit each of the one-hundred songs to a different fictitious band—coming up with those names alone represents a titanic effort—and you have a project that sits firmly in my wheelhouse.
But alas, Suitcase lingered in my ‘to-do’ list for years. First off, I don’t ever recall coming across a physical copy in stores during my formative GBV years. And given the pricing structure of 2000s-2010s era download services, buying an mp3 version of the compilation never made economic sense. Once I began using Spotify in 2020—coinciding with the launch of Strange Currencies (BTW, follow us there)—I could finally dabble with Suitcase; and I often did, as I built an all-encompassing GBV playlist that I’d shuffle through. However, I never really sat down to give the thing a true dedicated listen.
Once I began this project, I knew that I would finally need to dive into Suitcase, as well as its three sequels. And this January, I finally stumbled across a used copy of the four-CD set at Laurie’s Planet of Sound, while visiting Chicago to catch Frank Black’s Teenager of the Year 30th anniversary tour. I’ve since also picked up a copy of Briefcase—the vinyl-only companion piece that collects the “best” material from Suitcase—via Discogs. And while my tendency to drift into tangents could lead this into becoming a piece on the aforementioned Frank Black record—one of my absolute favorite albums of all-time—the fact that this material is almost all new-to-me demands a more conventional route.
And I actually want to start with Briefcase. As mentioned, I recently found a copy on Discogs, but as any vinyl-collecting GBV fan probably knows—aside from one of the original 500 handmade copies of Propeller—Briefcase is arguably the ‘holiest grail’ in the band’s catalog. I won’t say how much I paid for it, but it easily eclipsed my previous high for a single-item purchase; and at that price, it’d better be great, huh? I mean, most expensive must mean best, right? At least that’s what we’re often conditioned to believe about things of an economic nature.
But of course that’s not how buying music works. I remember purchasing the “White Album” on CD for $27.99 when I was twenty-years-old. When the after-tax total came out to over thirty dollars, I turned to my friend George and said, “Thirty bucks? This better be the best album ever.” Even though it was said in jest—and yes, he finished the Simpsons reference with the appropriate quote—and even though I had never heard the “White Album” in full, I knew that it was about to become one of the best records that I would ever hear. Therefore, I had little issue with shelling out what amounted to a king’s ransom for a first generation college student. But conversely, the most prized record in my collection is arguably an original pressing of Pet Sounds—in fantastic condition, no less—that my wife found at a church rummage sale in 2003 for twenty-five cents. So yeah, when purchasing music, price does not necessarily correlate to quality.
But as I said, no tangents this week. I’m here to talk about Suitcase/Briefcase. But, as has come up before in this project, the circumstances in which we first hear and acquire music often has an outsized impact on how we end up evaluating said music. And, purely as a weighing of cost vs. benefit, I can definitively say that Briefcase was not the best value music purchase that I have ever made. But that’s also not what I expected it to be either.
What I did expect was that Briefcase would be an excellent gathering of the best material from the first Suitcase volume. And while ‘best’ is certainly subjective, Robert Pollard’s track record in such endeavors tends to be pretty solid—we’ll get to the fantastic GBV compilation Human Amusements at Hourly Rates in a few weeks. However, in that regard, Briefcase left me wanting a bit more. After all, for nearly all of these tracks, this is the only time that they have ever been released on vinyl, and it would be nice to have all of my Suitcase favorites included. Alas, only Robert Pollard has such power, and his choices here are sometimes curious. Take, for example, the inclusion of the kinda tedious “Sabotage,” or the baffling picks of “Hold On to Yesterday” and “Rainbow Billy.” Had these head-scratchers been mere interludes, they might have been in keeping with the spirit of a classic GBV release; but at a combined ten minutes, they feel like a lost opportunity at best, and wasted space at worst. Like I said, Briefcase ultimately left me wanting.
So I’ve decided to devote the rest of this week’s piece to creating Briefcase (Matt’s Version). I’m going to follow the rough parameters of vinyl pressing (about 22 minutes per side, max), to offer up my own take on the best possible presentation of the Suitcase material: at least from the vantage point of someone who has only recently taken the plunge into the entire four-CD set. For the purposes of this exercise, I’m excluding the Briefcase-only ‘bonus track,’ “Sensational Gravity Boy” (which is nothing short of outstanding). There were some tough cuts along the way: “Scissors and the Clay Ox (In)” (adorable, but a little too long); “Cruise” (very cool, but kind of a momentum killer); “Turbo Boy” (it’s solid, but that Greg Demos verse is a bit rough); and “Once In a While” (lovely, but acoustic GBV was already well-represented by my picks).
Anyway, here goes:
SIDE A (22:07)
A1. “The Terrible Two” (1993) — Yeah, Pollard got it right by starting Suitcase off with this Bee Thousand era track, and it’s more than sturdy enough to anchor my version of Briefcase.
A2. “Ha Ha Man” (1993) — Another outtake from the same era, but one with cleaner production and a sharper hook. Like most GBV greats, “Ha Ha Man” has no interest in overstaying its welcome.
A3. “Dorothy’s a Planet” (1991) — A nice acoustic gem from the era between Same Place the Fly Got Smashed and GBV’s breakthrough record, Propeller. Thoroughly charming.
A4. “Bunco Men” (1995) — One of the agreed-upon favorites from Suitcase—I actually left several of those out—this one would eventually be revisited on 2020’s Mirrored Aztec. This version kills it though.
A5. “Pink Drink” (1995) — It could’ve been an anthemic rocker, but this stripped-down arrangement is still readymade for a group sing-along.
A6. “Flesh Ears From June” (1992) — Jeez, Bob. You’re really just gonna toss this heart-melting melody—along with the great “ugly buildings” line—into the scrap heap, like you have such things to spare? Oh, 1992. I see. Carry on…
A7. “Messenger” (1985) — The earliest track that I included here; this one can stand with (most) anything on GBV’s debut EP, Forever Since Breakfast.
A8. “Pantherz” (1995) — This one reminds me of pre-Slanted Pavement; and if there’s one band that I love even more than GBV…
A9. “I’m Cold” (1987) — From the Sandbox era; and probably better than anything on Sandbox (except perhaps for “Long Distance Man”).
A10. “Excellent Things” (1988) — Man, acoustic GBV is great. Excellent even.
SIDE B (22:10)
B1. “Long Way to Run” (1987) — It opens the second half of the Suitcase box, and it fits perfectly here too.
B2. “Taco, Buffalo, Birddog and Jesus” (1989) — Way more evocative (and poetic) than one might expect from the seemingly-tossed-off nature of the title.
B3. “Supermarket to the Moon” (1993) — An almost wholly-unique song in the unfathomably large GBV catalog. I may be a bit off the mark here, but this one sounds vaguely like a Radiohead B-side to me; not something you’d probably expect from a GBV outtake. Either way, it’s lovely.
B4. “The Flying Party” (1995) — Another rather pretty anomaly, this one. It’s less than a minute long—and has just one single (repeated) line—but leaves quite the impression nonetheless.
B5. “Settlement Down” (1989) — And yet another one that occupies its own corner in the GBV catalog. Again, it might be me, but I detect faint hints of Sonic Youth in the instrumental breaks.
B6. “Oh, Blinky” (1989) — A fine closer to both Suitcase and Briefcase; and though its “day is done” refrain makes thematic sense at the end, I prefer it here.
B7. “My Feet’s Trusty Existance” (1992) — The misspelling is Pollard’s, not mine. But so too is that irresistible melody. Damn that guy…
B8. “I Can See It In Your Eyes” (1989) — Bob Pollard’s love of The Who is well-documented; and here, he starts by borrowing heavily from “So Sad About Us,” and turns in a gem from the pre-breakthrough era.
B9. “Wondering Boy Poet” (1993) — Sure, the Vampire on Titus version is excellent; but damn, this is just gorgeous.
B10. “Where I Come From” (1987) — Another one from the Sandbox era that outclasses anything on that record; a genuine GBV classic, casually tucked away toward the end of a 100-song outtakes compilation.
Ratings: Suitcase (8.5) / Briefcase (8.0)*
*Singles are star-rated by their A-side; albums and EPs use the “Russman Reviews” scale.
Bob-ism of the Week: “I’ve seen Taco take a big long drag off his self-whittled pipe, sit back and laugh / And in ten minutes the rednecks are hugging and buying each other beers again / And then Jesus blows the clouds away with one puff, falls back into his cage, and goes to sleep.” (“Taco, Buffalo, Birddog and Jesus”)
Next Week: The (proper) follow-up to Do the Collapse dials back some of the excesses of its predecessor, but does it put GBV back on course?
