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Guided by Voices at the House of Blues
Wednesday, June 20 2001
John is vacillating back and forth on the issue of whether to stay in West LA or move to New York. It's gotten to the point now where I don't want to hear what he is "definitely" doing. It's too stressful and infuriating. We did lunch together at a little Indian restaurant in West LA that purports to serve "Indian fast food." I usually don't like Tandori Chicken, but mine was exceptionally delicious. After John told me about eating in a C-Health-rated restaurant that looked clean, it occurred to me that the cleanest possible restaurant in California would be an A-rated restaurant that looks dirty.
In the evening I was going to see Guided by Voices at the House of Blues in Hollywood with Jennifer, the girl I met at Spaceland last Friday. The plan was to meet her first at her place in North Hollywood. This meant I would have to bring out the Punch Buggy Rust.
After rush hour, I drove through the Sepulveda pass in the Santa Monica Mountains and went down into the Valley, first going the correct way on the 101, then thinking I was going the wrong way and turning around, then having to turn around again. The second time I went east on the 101, I got stuck in the weirdest traffic jam I've ever encountered. Suddenly everyone jammed on their brakes and came to a complete halt in all lanes. The cars sat there still for only about 15 seconds and then the congestion thawed in an instant and everyone was suddenly going 65 mph again. I read somewhere once that traffic congestion moves through the traffic like compression in a spring, and this experience seemed to confirm that model.
Jennifer had picked up some burritos at Baja Fresh, and we ate these while she told me the tricky work she'd done to get us on the Guided by Voices guestlist. Evidently the club management scene in Los Angeles has its own good old boy network of reciprocal back scratching, and all Jennifer had to do was place a series of phone calls. Now I can see how knowing Jennifer can greatly broaden my musical exposure. I'd never even considered the possible existence of a club manager network, but now that I know it exists, I also know about the goods and information that travel on it: free tickets, performance dates for friends, and knowledge of "secret shows" (shows by well-known bands in small clubs). I'll bet you didn't know the Circle Jerks are playing Spaceland on July 3rd.
The House of Blues is on the Sunset Strip in West Hollywood. Parking is scarce in this part of town, and the House of Blues runs a wicked parking racket, charging $10 to valet park each car.
Due to the informal methods used to place us on the guestlist tonight, we had to try two different ticket windows before our names were found. Then we were in.
Jennifer knew lots of people at the show, and made the rounds to talk to them one after the other while I shyly meeked around and bought myself grossly overpriced alcoholic beverages. As dates go, Jennifer is a cheap one: she doesn't drink alcohol and her idea of a nice dinner is Baja Fresh.
The ambiance of the House of Blues tends towards the deliberately absurd. From the outside it looks like a rotting ski lodge, covered with patches of scraped-away paint. Inside, it's a big space with wacky decor. Between performances, the stage is obscured by a massive red patchwork quilted curtain. Up above this curtain is a collection of the religious symbols from all the major world religions and a corny statement about the value of diversity.
At last Guided by Voices took the stage and began to play. Bob Pollard seemed nervous and deliberate at first, immediately grabbing a beer from the coffin-sized cooler on stage and deftly opening it and beginning to drink. His style of drinking was to turn the bottle bottoms-up with a quick movement of his fingers and then rapidly suck down a large fraction of its contents. He also smoked cigarettes on stage, and his smoking was similarly hurried and constant, sending up clouds of smoke so big that a smoke machine was only required once during the show. Before launching into his first tune, Bob verbally sampled an intro from a song on Propeller, "This song does not rock." I'd never heard this tune before, but it actually did rock.
For much of the first part of the show, Guided by Voices played mostly new material, including lots of good stuff from his obscure Fading Captain Series side project. The crowd was unfamiliar with these songs, but they bobbed their heads respectfully and tried not to shout "Glad Girls!" too much.
It might have been possible to miss, but most of the guys in Guided By Voices were wearing a sort of uniform. Everyone save for the drummer and one of the guitarists were wearing matching black button-up shirts not tucked in, and the other two were wearing black tee shirts. Bob looked like he was wearing brown corduroys, the sort you pick when you imagine you'll have a miserable itchy butt day. Perhaps these were extra-resistant to crotch tearing, a real problem for someone who does as many on-stage rockstar high-kicks as Bob does. There's something kind of wrong about a 40-something year old guy acting like he's an adolescent rocker on stage. Don't get me wrong, for a man who drinks and smokes as much as Bob does, the guy looks to be in incredibly good shape. But every time he executed one of those high kicks he looked like he was about to fall over, and every time he twirled that microphone I thought he was going to clock somebody in the teeth with it. In my opinion, Bob Pollard is more convincing as an elder statesman of unrepressed, imaginative youth. I was delighted, for example, when the fanatics in front of the stage started stage diving during the more punk rock interludes and Bob just stood there drinking his beer and smoking his cigarettes with bemused detachment. I've seen mosh pits and I've seen rockstar worship, but I've never been to a rock show before where the fans were quite this excited and energized.
The other members of Guided By Voices all looked to be considerably younger than Bob and seemed to be a tight little outfit of serious musicians. I was particularly struck by the drummer. Traditionally, of course, drumming has never been one of the strong points of Guided by Voices.
I've heard that at shows Bob normally introduces every song, but he wasn't doing that tonight. Mostly it seemed his introductions were for comic effect, since he would usually attribute them to fictitious bands and label them with the wrong title. When Bob finally got around to introducing "Glad Girls," he told every one it was a big international smash hit pop song. The crowd went wild when the lights changed white with that first power chord. I'm so happy that we never got to hear "Bulldog Skin."
Jesus, that Bob Pollard sure knows how to drink. He looked to be averaging about one beer per song, and his songs are short. More importantly, when does he piss? Does he wear DependsTM on stage? His first toilet break came two hours into the show, with the first set of encores.
I was a little surprised by the sort of people who came to the show. There were a few of your usual Silverlake indie rocker types, but most of the people seemed pretty mainstream. There was this slightly-skanky-looking girl in a miniskirt in front of me, and she seemed to go nuts over all my favorite songs, even the relatively obscure ones. I'm talking here about
"Things That I Will Keep" and "Unspirited." ("Unspirited" is the song that Gretchen and I call "our song" and it still brings tears to my eyes.)
The pacing of the show (and it was a long one) was expertly done. People kind of milled around and were bored at the beginning as Bob went through his unknown new material, but once he'd gotten through all of that, he did the stuff off his current album. But at the end he did nothing but old stuff, the stuff the fanatics were dying to hear. I'm talking here about "Tractor Rape Chain," "Game of Pricks," and "I Am A Scientist." Bob kept returning to the concept of "fucked-up lives" in these tunes, singing, (in "I Am A Scientist") "I am a pharmacist, prescriptions I will fill you / potions pills and medicines to ease your fucked up lives." Then, in "Cut Out Witch," he sang, "Do you think she can change your fucked up life?"
Judging from the nestling bird antics of the fans near the stage, I got the feeling that normally, as he performs, Bob hands out beers to members of the audience. But since tonight's was an all-ages show, he felt compelled to check IDs. So there he'd be, checking IDs and handing out beers while the band played away. It was hilarious.
Towards the end I was in a dancing mood, so I danced slowly and whimsically with Jennifer.
Originally the plan had been to come to this show with Farley and John, but when Jennifer entered the picture I decided to go with her. Knowing what it means when a friend is with a girl (and not wanting to be stuck with Farley), John bailed at the last minute.
Jennifer and I came across Farley after the show was over and the lights were on. He'd waited outside the House of Blues for a half hour hoping John would show up, but, as Farley put it, "he'd flaked." (John had actually left a message on Farley's answering machine.)
After we'd been kicked out of the club, Farley, Jennifer and I stood around talking about various things with each other and others who came by. As usual, Farley was full of optimistic wonder. He'd been talking to a woman at the bar who might be able to get him a job taking tickets at the Knitting Factory. "You really want to take tickets?" Jennifer asked. "It's a job," said Farley. I don't think Farley has ever had a real job in his life. Anything to cut the boredom of being a billionaire's son.
The band that had opened for Guided By Voices had been the Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, and as the members loaded up their equipment, Jennifer demanded to know from one of their musicians why they never played at Spaceland anymore. But according to this musician, there's some bad blood between the band that club and it's Spaceland's job to make it up.
Then Jennifer told Farley and me about the time Mitch Mitchell (formerly of Guided by Voices) convinced her to drive him back to his hotel room, and then invited her up. She was a naïve 22 year old at the time and didn't know any better and soon found herself in a room with the entire band, the only girl there! Nothing too weird happened; Mitch Mitchell tried to seduce her but she didn't even pick up on it.
After providing Farley detailed instructions on how to drive back to Orange County, Jennifer and I went back to her place. I spent the night, of course.
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