The GBV Project — Week 6: Propeller

The GBV Project


The Release: Propeller (LP—Rockathon, 1992)

Big. It had to open big. After all, this was going to be the opening of the final Guided by Voices album: a first chance to make a last impression. Bob Pollard leaned over Tobin Sprout’s Tascam Portastatic 4-track, and with a little bit of sonic manipulation, conjured a rousing crowd that he added to a crude six-year-old recording from a sparsely attended live show by a pre-GBV band lineup known as The Needmores. The now-rapturous throngs demanded rock, but not just from any gang of local ne’er do wells. They chanted, intensely and insistently, “GBV! GBV!”

This was all quite ridiculous, of course—opening the fifth and final Guided by Voices LP with this no-budget studio trickery. In no uncertain terms, GBV had been a failed endeavor: incapable of drawing any attention as a performing band; managing only faint praise (at best) from the local Dayton press; leaving its founder in thousands of dollars of debt, with a basement of nearly-full boxes of unsold records; and—most significantly—contributing in no small part to a flailing marriage. In a way, all that this manufactured auditory fanfare was capable of doing was adding further insult to injury.

But even while operating on a budget charitably described as meager, Pollard had never shied away from showmanship. In fact, from the very outset of the Guided by Voices project, he had placed a premium on things that could have been interpreted as wholly superfluous to the actual music: photo shoots, vinyl pressings, and homemade (but far-from-hackneyed) record sleeves. If you’re gonna sell the steak, might as well create a sizzle while you’re at it, right?

Now, however, the writing was on the wall for all to see. Even some of Pollard’s longest-serving collaborators had departed for potentially greener pastures; most notably, Mitch Mitchell and Kevin Fennell, who left to form a new group, Fathom Theory, that even managed to score some gigs in New York City. A few hangers-on and well-wishers stuck around—Tobin Sprout, Greg Demos, Dan Toohey, Don Thrasher, and Pollard’s ever-loyal younger brother Jimmy—but how long would they stay with the captain aboard his obviously-sinking ship? The time to bail was rapidly approaching; besides, one might want to get out before things became embarrassing (more so).

And Pollard knew better than to try to convince his friends to help him keep Guided by Voices alive. He was nearly thirty-five now, and over a decade into a teaching career—a career that he had compromised for his art far too many times. His marriage had been reconciled, before the divorce initiated by his wife, Kim, was finalized. He had every intention of remaining a present father for his two young children. He also hoped to repair a strained relationship with his own father, who had frequently implored his son to “give up that stupid shit.”* Yes, it was time to become a grown up, and to finally put the teenage dream of rock stardom to bed.

But truthfully, everybody knew that the album intro that Pollard had crafted was meant as a tongue-in-cheek gesture—a tacit admission of defeat. By affixing it to the front end of this record, he was metaphorically waving a white flag, all while cracking a joke at his own expense. Even the album’s title, Propeller, was laughingly conceived as a mocking way of saying that it would ‘propel’ the band to the top. Yep, this was the end; but what a wild ride Guided by Voices had been—both for everybody intimately involved, and for those inadvertently caught in its wake.

But there was a silver lining to be found here. With this album having been conceived as the last word on GBV, Pollard was now free to put all of his best musical ideas forward on one single release. After all, there was no sense in holding anything back for future follow-up records. For Propeller‘s sixteen song track list, Pollard had free license to reach back to the best of fifteen years worth of ideas. There were so many of these ideas, in fact, that one track was an auditory collage, composed of brief snippets from eight different, fully-formed songs—each of which would have made for worthy additions to the program.

Elsewhere, Propeller ran the gamut: Who-like rockers, Beatle-esque pop, a stoner rock dirge, sludgy proto-punk, bruised lo-fi folk, and a two-part glam/prog rock epic that followed hot on the heels of Pollard’s cleverly crafted introduction. Each of these songs felt like they could be possible guideposts for future albums—however, albums that had no more hope of becoming real than the imaginary ones that Pollard had ‘created’ before he had ever even formed a band.

Speaking of those imaginary albums: as always, Pollard aimed to present his newest set of songs in a visually interesting manner. However, with this being the last hurrah for Guided by Voices, he wanted to make Propeller‘s cover something particularly special, and perhaps even personal. The idea that he came up with was both absurd and wholly appropriate: every single one of Propeller‘s five-hundred vinyl copies would have its own unique record sleeve—each of which were to be handcrafted by Pollard, his bandmates, and their inner circle of friends and confidants.

The group made it through less than a hundred of these individualized sleeves before the ambition of their collective art project became overwhelming. After the first several batches, their efforts dwindled significantly: some ideas were repeated with only slight ‘human element’ variances; some covers were slapped together in a relatively-haphazard manner (one merely had a flattened Natural Light six-pack glued to it); and—flagrantly flaunting American child labor regulations—Pollard even farmed some of the work out to his fourth grade students.

In the end, Robert Pollard decided that he didn’t want boxes of Propellers taking up space in his basement. He divvied up the five-hundred copies between his bandmates, friends, and acquaintances—keeping only a small handful for himself. Many of these copies were claimed by GBV’s “manager for life,” Pete Jamison, who sent several out to critics, fanzines, and record shops. But the possibility that anyone outside of Dayton would think twice about this weird little homemade record were remote. After all, the band’s previous LPs had been similarly sent out for public consumption, but to little—if any—notice.

And besides, even if anyone took notice of Propeller, it wouldn’t have mattered anyway. For all intents and purposes, Guided by Voices was dead.

Long live Guided by Voices.

Rating: 9.3

Bob-ism of the Week: “The worst offense is intelligence / The best defense is belligerence / How we stalemate our predicament / Governed by tissue and filament” (“Quality of Armor”)

Next Week: Robert Pollard responds to GBV’s newfound attention by doing the same thing he always does: writing a fuck-ton of songs.

*This quote—and other anecdotes shared here—appear in Matthew Cutter’s 2018 Robert Pollard biography, Closer You Are.

**CORRECTION: The original version of this piece erroneously referred to the Pollards’ divorce as having been finalized by the time of Propeller‘s recording.**

Author

  • Matt Ryan founded Strange Currencies Music in January 2020, and remains the site's editor-in-chief. The creator of the "A Century of Song" project and co-host of the "Strange Currencies Podcast," Matt enjoys a wide variety of genres, but has a particular affinity for 60s pop, 90s indie rock, and post-bop jazz. He is an avid collector of vinyl, and a multi-instrumentalist who has played/recorded with several different bands and projects.

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