The Release: Crystal Nuns Cathedral (LP—GBVi, 2022)
In the summer of 1998, my friends and I saw Frank Black and The Catholics at a small, since-closed Phoenix club called the Mason Jar. At that show, Frank acknowledged the three of us as “the kids in the cage”—the tiny under-21 section was separated by a chain link fence—before playing “Don’t Ya Rile ‘Em.” I was elated when he waded through the crowd for a scotch on the rocks during a mid-set PA malfunction, and even more so when I literally bumped into him on the way out of the venue.
Four months later—and with an additional friend in tow—we again saw the band at the same venue. The four of us hung out behind the club after the show, talking with the Catholics for several minutes, in hopes that the man himself would appear. When he did, I asked for a picture, which he seemed happy enough to accommodate—I had read on a Frank Black forum that he preferred to be called Charles in personal conversation, so I obliged. I can remember hurriedly heading back up to Flagstaff the day after the show, and rushing to a Walgreens one-hour photo counter to obtain the only physical evidence of our encounter with one of our heroes.
Over the intervening years, I’ve had several similar interactions with other artists whose work I admire: I had a brief elevator conversation with Mark Ibold in Las Vegas, while he was pulling double-duty in Pavement and Sonic Youth at the Matador at Twenty-One festival; I have records and CDs autographed by John Darnielle, Hamilton Leithauser, Josh Ritter, and Camper Van Beethoven; Carrie Brownstein was kind enough to talk to my daughter and pose for a picture after a Sleater-Kinney show; and I can confirm that Mike Watt is every bit as gregarious as legend has it.
All of those encounters were either at or adjacent to live performances, so they’ve come with a tacit understanding that fan interactions for on-the-job performers are par for the course. Still, there’s a certain etiquette that reasonable folks should follow in these situations. However, chance encounters are an entirely different ballgame—one that opens up a host of other ethical questions. And in my own experiences, I’ve always erred on the side of caution.
For example, Phil Elverum personally delivers Microphones/Mount Eerie albums to Portland record stores, and I’ve passed him coming out one such shop, only to give the same ‘acknowledgement nod’ that do for most people that I walk past. I saw Toody Cole in another shop a few weeks back and did the same. And sure, there are certain circumstances that would undoubtedly test my restraint. I have an acquaintance who is actual friends with Stephen Malkmus and Peter Buck, and if we were all in the same room together, it would be tough for me not to introduce myself as a huge fan. And advance apologies to Paul McCartney, but if I ever meet you, I’m going to make an absolute fool of myself—just as I probably would’ve done if I hadn’t been five minutes too late to meet Elvis Costello at a record show next to the Bombed-Out Church in Liverpool.
But other than that, I don’t think I would risk the embarrassment of just randomly walking up to a musical hero of mine, introducing myself, and thus opening myself up to the potential of a negative encounter—especially one that might sour my enjoyment of their work. Besides, in my mid-forties, I’d prefer to believe that I’m way too ‘cool’ for that kind of thing… Well, usually, at least. Loyal readers of The GBV Project, this is where I have a few confessions to make: first, I have met Robert Pollard in a chance encounter; second, it wasn’t exactly a chance encounter; and third, I inadvertently lied to him.
Crossroads Records is one of the more unique record stores in Portland. It’s actually a single shop that houses the inventory of roughly thirty different vendors of (mostly) used records. After Music Millennium—and probably Everyday Music, which barely counts—it has the largest square footage of any record store in town, and it’s precisely the kind of place where crate diggers could easily (and willingly) get lost. In addition to finding some of the most-prized items in my library there—including an original pressing of Alien Lanes—I’ve also spent many a summer afternoon thumbing through the under-rack boxes, looking for cheap records to check off boxes on my ‘catalog completion’ list.
One of the shop’s two proprietors, Eric, is a classic “record guy.” He drives an old hippie van, is always playing music from the sixties and seventies over the shop’s loudspeakers, and seems a little gruff until you get to know him. Over the years, I’ve purchased several Guided by Voices/Robert Pollard records in his store, but he has told me on at least one occasion that he’s never actually listened to GBV. However, given his clear enthusiasm for The Beatles and The Who, I think he would find plenty to love in Pollard’s discography.
At one point, Eric told me that Pollard had mentioned Crossroads as one of his favorite record stores in America, and that he stops in every time that Guided by Voices is in Portland. And so, the last time that GBV played here—in March of 2022, a few weeks after the release of Crystal Nuns Cathedral—I made a point up hitting up Crossroads on the day of the show. And sure enough, as I pulled into the parking lot, there was a large white van with Ohio plates. When I walked in, Bob was at the register talking to Eric. All three of us were wearing masks, but I would’ve immediately recognized that voice without any context. Eric gave me a kind of ‘winking nod,’ and I stood awkwardly in the entry way while Bob finished his transaction; he had a large stack of what mostly appeared to be punk 45s, and as he turned toward the door, I gave a raised-eyebrow look and said, “Bob?”
We talked for less than a minute. He mentioned that Crossroads was “the best record shop.” I told him “yeah, it’s pretty great,” and he reiterated that it was, in fact, “the best.” He asked if I was going to the show that night, to which I replied “of course,” without hesitation. I didn’t have a ticket yet, but I knew that there were still plenty available. He shook my hand—incidentally, he was the first person whose hand I shook in a post-COVID world—and headed back out to the white van with a bag full of records.
I called my daughter immediately, before I even started looking through the record bins, and she asked if I told Pollard about my Catalog Crawl article—which I had published a few months prior. I texted the same two friends that I had first encountered Frank Black with twenty-some years before. One of them asked if I was sure that it was Bob, and not former defense secretary Chuck Hagel. I was also meeting two friends at Crossroads that day. One was already digging through the shelves before I got there, and missed the interaction entirely. The other arrived five minutes later. Eric was able to corroborate my story to both of them when we all checked out.
I didn’t end up going to the show that night. I had hesitated to buy tickets in the run up to it, largely because I was still not super-enthusiastic about going to large public gatherings. I had been to one seated show the previous fall, but the thought of milling about in a standing crowd wasn’t all that appealing—especially as the Omicron wave was still lingering. But after meeting Pollard, my hesitancy had abated. I made a tentative plan with one of the friends that I had met up with at Crossroads, but as the afternoon turned to evening he was unable to commit, and I opted against going alone. After all, I had seen GBV a few times before, and could always catch them on their next tour.
The next time I went to Crossroads, Eric mentioned that Pollard had told him that he was thinking about winding down the touring phase of Guided by Voices. I wasn’t particularly shocked by this. After all, Bob was now in his mid-sixties, and I can’t imagine that traveling cross-country in a van—during the tail end of a global pandemic, no less—would have rejuvenated his enthusiasm for the mental and physical grind of touring. I did figure though that GBV would have to go out with some kind of acknowledged final run of shows, just as they had done with “The Electrifying Conclusion” in 2004.
But that doesn’t appear to have been the plan. Over the past couple of years, Pollard has made increasingly clear remarks indicating that Guided by Voices are no longer a regularly-touring entity. That March 2022 show was the last time that GBV played in Portland, and barring a significant change of heart, it appears that it will remain so. But while I would rather have attended that performance in hindsight, I’m not too broken up about it. I saw GBV live three times—including once with the current lineup—each of which was special for entirely different reasons.
And just because they might be done touring, it doesn’t mean that they’ll never play live again. Rumor has it that they still might do shows close to home, or as part of a larger festival. If that does happen, chances are good that I’d be totally down to travel to see them again. And if it doesn’t happen, who’s to say that I won’t still run into Bob somewhere other than a show? After all, we like shopping at the same places.
Rating: Crystal Nuns Cathedral (6.7)
*Singles are star-rated by their A-side; albums and EPs use the “Russman Reviews” scale.
Bob-ism of the Week: “Give to them your tired, your poor, your huddled masses / Great police who guard the gates, King Richard and the Dragging Asses / Who was our first president, and who will be the last? / Are you yet convincеd when you are sleeping in class?” (“Huddled”)
Next Week: GBV engage with longer song-lengths on their second album of 2022.
