GBV in Pittsburgh, April 27

GBV vocalist Robert Pollard, with drummer Kevin March and guitarist Doug Gillard

 
While waiting to get through the security check point at Mr. Small's on Saturday, my friend Tim and I met a couple of polite gents from Ottawa who had traveled to our fair town to see Guided By Voices. One of them asked how many times we'd seen them. I rolled my eyes and tried to think of an answer, and one of our new friends took that to mean "too many times to get an accurate number." But that wasn't the case. I just couldn't recall how long it's been since I last saw them. 

Checking past blog entries, the only show mentioned is the 2014 appearance, where Death of Samantha opened for them. I know I saw them at least once more before the pandemic. There was the one night I was milling through the crowd, scoop pad in my hand, writing down song titles, and two people asked me, "Are you [Post-Gazette writer] Scott Mervis?" At least they recognized my line of work.

Whenever the last show was, I recall GBV figurehead Robert Pollard seeming really snockered (more so than usual) but being impressed that the set ended after exactly 90 minutes, as he predicted. It was a good night of music, but his rambling between-song patter, coupled with the wall-to-wall GBV bros, made me wonder if I needed to see them again. The last GBV album I bought was....good. But I haven't been compelled to pull it off the shelf for a couple years.

Last Saturday, April 27, peer pressure started to weigh on me. (Though the peers that talked about going are actually much younger than me.) Besides, live shows give you something that you don't get sitting at home, listening while doing something else or nodding off in your easy chair. 

Mr. Pollard and the band delivered too. By the time the houselights and the p.a. music came on, approximately 135 minutes had passed since their set began. Pollard definitely had a few in him before he hit the stage (and speaking of hitting, he also took a drag off a joint that was passed to him by an audience member, after talking about the good old days of doing drugs at shows), but the desire to rock hard overpowered the desire to fall into his cups and perform that way. If you're going to sing for that long, even with breaks, it's important to maintain stamina and pace oneself, and Pollard did.

The set, naturally, cut a wide path through the band's songbook. Several Bee Thousand songs were pulled up, along with a few others from their days on Matador Records. If I was a good journalist, I might have kept count of how many songs they played, but it was hard enough maintain a spot in the crowd, amidst all the dudes raising index fingers and beer cans in the air when recognizing a song. (They'd kill me for saying this, but the way the diehard fans reacted to lyrics reminded me of the time I saw the Indigo Girls and members of the audience were acting out the words to songs.) 

But I shouldn't disparage some guys who were merely having the time of their lives. No one was slamming into innocent bystanders. And, thankfully, no dudes were groping ladies during the set, at least not what I saw. (I heard reports of that at prevous shows.)

Parts of the set took me back to seeing GBV in late 1993 at the CMJ Music Marathon, just prior to the release of Bee Thousand. There was a lot buzz surrounding the band and hoi polloi like Kim Gordon and Thurston Moore were in the audience. Onstage the music made me think of an indie rock take of A Hard Day's Night. Everything was short, concise and amazing. Last week, it was fascinating to hear so many songs all in a row, all sounding tight and well-written, all of them sequenced in the set so they didn't blend together or sound like "just another GBV song." Running order is crucial in these cases, and GBV takes that seriously.

The evening also reminded me of seeing GBV mainstay Doug Gillard's band Gem a few years later at CMJ, but for another reason. That band's set made me rue the choice to forego earplugs, as Gillard and Tim Tobias played some loud guitar with a healthy dose of high end. Gillard was equally loud last Saturday and as the evening wore on, these ears got a little more sensitive to all those power chords, as well as the roars of the crowd. In my defense, it had been a long day that started early that morning, included a full day of work, dinner with Mum and little less caffeine that I would have preferred prior to getting to the show.  

But it was a good time.

Due to the security line, openers the Gotobeds were, quite literally, playing the final chord of their set as I walked in the door. When Eli Kasan, their singer, asked me how that final chord sounded, I couldn't lie: it rocked.