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From Revolver Magazine
By Tom Beaujor

The Basement Tapes

From the "Critical Graffiti" column in Revolver mag:

Thanks to Kelsey for transcribing!!!

(Robert Pollard Delivers a Four-Disc Set of Unreleased
Rarities)

Guided by Voices, "Suitcase: Failed Experiments &
Trashed Aircraft"

Four of Five Stars

For those just tuning into the Guided by Voices story,
it goes a little something like this: While leading
an otherwise sensible life, a Dayton, OH fourth-grade
teacher by the name of Robert Pollard indulges his
rock and roll dreams on weekends and snow days by
repairing to the basement and recording raw,
beer-soaked anthems with his cronies. During the
eighties, Pollard watched as bands like R.E.M., the
Replacements, and Husker Du spread the gospel of indie
rock, and cheered them on from the obscurity of his
underground laboratory of sound. Because of (or maybe
despite) Pollard's belief that no one beyond a
close-knit circle of drinking buddies would ever hear
his work, he soldiered on with his wrecked crew,
recording album after album of lo-fidelity,
high-octane power pop. With his growth unhindered by
studio budgets, label interference, or the pressure of
delivering hit singles, the part-time rocker's
songwriting skills eventually blossomed, and grew to
rival (to say surpass would be blasphemy) the
transcendental melodicism of his childhood idols, like
the Beatles and the Who.

And then in 1994, an album by Guided by Voices named
"Bee Thousand" let the genius out of the bottle.
Embraced by the indie-rock world as a post-punk answer
to the Beatles' "Revolver", the album inspired music
critics far and wide to anoint Pollard the king of the
lo-fi underground. Still reeling from the sudden
torrent of accolades, he finally got to quit his day
job. Six years later, the uber-hipsters may have
moved on to newer pastures (witness their current
obsession with Belle & Sebastian), but the
ever-prolific Pollard continues his quest to write the
perfect pop song undeterred and a legion of devoted
followers continue to devour his massive output of
material (in addition to four "official" GbV albums,
the singer has also released countless singles and
solo albums).

It is primarily for these harcore fans that "Suitcase:
Failed Experiments & Trashed Aircraft" (released on
Pollard's own label) was compiled. Weighing in at
four discs and 100 songs, the box set is a massive
anthology of previously unreleased material from
Pollard's archives. Admittedly, this sprawling set
would not be the ideal introduction to Guided by
Voices ("Bee Thousand", "Under the Bushes Under the
Stars", or the Pollard solo excursion "Not In My
Airforce" would be much wiser choices for the
uninitiated), but "Suitcase" does provide a
fascinating chronicle of one man's lifelong love
affair with songwriting. Alternately sublime and
absurd, "Suitcase" is a wildly varied affair. Raw,
throw-away snippets like "Chain Wallet Bitch" slam
head-on into hypnotic ditties like "Little Head," and
the listener who flips through the set at random is as
likely to stumble upon the beautiful piano ballad
"Wondering Boy Poet" as the mindless cow-punk of "Big
Trouble."

To make matters even more confusing (or entertaining,
depending on your state of mind), while the collection
contains material that dates as far back as Pollard's
high school salad days in the early seventies, it is
sequenced with no concessions made to the actual
chronology of the tracks, and all of the songs have
been credited to fictional bands such as Styles We
Paid For, Turned Up Turner, Antler, Doctor Formula,
and the unforgettable Homosexual Flypaper.

Why would sane listeners subject themselves to this
rocky chaos? For one thing, there is the voyeuristic
pleasure of listening ot music that was written
largely without any consideration for how it would be
received; for the lion's share of his recording
career--or anti-career--Pollard has had no audience to
speak of and no fans to offend. Then there is his
stunning voice. Equal parts Lennon and Daltrey,
Pollard is convincing whether he's strumming an
acoustic guitar and whispering half-chewed lyrics into
a cassette recorder or hollering drunkenly over a
protean hard-rock jam. This timeless delivery ensures
that even in its most demented moments, "Suitcase"
achieves what the warbling and sighs of so many
indie-rock coulda-been-a-contenders cannot: it rocks.
------------------------------------------------------

Following this there was a Q&A with Bob.

------------------------------------------------------
"Unmarketed Product" A Q&A With Robert Pollard

Revolver: Let's start with the obvious: Was there an
actual suitcase that you kept all of the material on
this box set in?

Robert Pollard: I had all the stuff from cassettes
that we'd made and what we'd recorded on four-track
jammed into this big fuckin' suitcase. After a while
it was just bulging to the point of exploding.
To be honest, most of the shit in there was not
worth putting on a record, which is why it ended up
there in the first place. Maybe a quarter of the
stuff on "Suitcase" is recorded well enough for regular
people to listen to and enjoy. The rest of it is just
crazy shit for our fans. Recently, there was a flood
in my basement, and all of the tapes that hadn't been
selected for "Suitcase" were destroyed. I think it
was some higher power saying, "OK, Bob, you get to put
this shit out, but that's it!"

R: Almost every song on "Suitcase" is credited to a
different imaginary band, like Bus of Trojan Hope or
Grabbit. How the hell did you come up with all these
names? Most bands have enough trouble just coming up
with one.

BP: You know those books that are full of names for
your baby? Well, I was going to do the same thing
with band names. I came up with something like 700,
and then I realized that it was going to take forever
to fill up a book, so I gave up and used the names for
the "Suitcase" instead. I don't have enough patience
for shit like that.

R: How is work on a new, full-blown Guided by Voices
album proceeding?

BP: The record's going to be called "Broadcaster
House". I think it's going to be a double album, but
I've threatened that before and not made good. It's
definitely going to be sadder, darker, and heavier
than our last album, "Do the Collapse".