Guided By Voices' Bee ThousandBloomsbury Publishing USA, 2006 M10 2 - 144 pages Marc Woodworth's book covers the album's long and unorthodox period of writing, recording, sequencing, and editing. It includes interviews with members of the band, manager Pete Jamison, web-master and GBV historian Rich Turiel and Robert Griffin of Scat Records. At least sixty-five songs were recorded and considered for the album and five distinct concepts were rejected before the band hit upon the records final form. One late version, very nearly released, contained only a few of Bee Thousand's definitive songs. The rest were left out and nearly ended up in the boxes of cassette out-takes cluttering up Robert Pollard's basement. The story of Guided By Voices transformation from an occasional and revolving group of complete unknowns to indie-rock heroes is very much part of the story behind the making of Bee Thousand. In addition to providing a central account of how the record was made, Woodworth devotes a substantial chapter to the album's lyrics. Robert Pollard's lyrics are described by critics, when they're described at all, as a brand of tossed-off surrealism, as if his verbal sensibility is somehow incidental to the songs themselves. Nothing could be further from the truth. Woodworth offers a sustained discussion of Pollard's work as a writer of often sublime, beautiful, and very human lyrics. The third key section of the book covers aesthetics. Woodworth considers the great appeal of the do-it-yourself nature of Bee Thousand and reflects on the larger importance of the strain of alternative rock for which this record is a touchstone. |
From inside the book
Results 1-5 of 26
Page 5
... reality to something plastic and kempt . In rising from the gutter it becomes a star . It opens up like a clear luminous tent out of the trough of waste that gives it life . It is this process , repeated in different ways through the ...
... reality to something plastic and kempt . In rising from the gutter it becomes a star . It opens up like a clear luminous tent out of the trough of waste that gives it life . It is this process , repeated in different ways through the ...
Page 6
... reality ( like any reality always more messy and vibrant than the tale that recounts it ) into a by - the - numbers rise - to - glory narrative . But that would belie what Guided by Voices was — and , in doing so , betray what makes ...
... reality ( like any reality always more messy and vibrant than the tale that recounts it ) into a by - the - numbers rise - to - glory narrative . But that would belie what Guided by Voices was — and , in doing so , betray what makes ...
Page 8
... reality realized from a lifetime of processing sixties songs and what followed in their wake . This is the sound of transforming everyday realities -- sticking gold stars on fourth - graders ' papers , shuttling the kids to practice ...
... reality realized from a lifetime of processing sixties songs and what followed in their wake . This is the sound of transforming everyday realities -- sticking gold stars on fourth - graders ' papers , shuttling the kids to practice ...
Page 9
... realities before us , however transformed they become in the process . The music we loved in our youth , some of us , insisted on its seamless perfection and its distance from the everyday . We didn't see anything familiar in the mythic ...
... realities before us , however transformed they become in the process . The music we loved in our youth , some of us , insisted on its seamless perfection and its distance from the everyday . We didn't see anything familiar in the mythic ...
Page 10
... reality , unwilling to dismiss what was there in favor of any story about where it came from or who made it , I ... realities that no single story could define it or give it a calming , false name . Guided by Voices did not exist in any ...
... reality , unwilling to dismiss what was there in favor of any story about where it came from or who made it , I ... realities that no single story could define it or give it a calming , false name . Guided by Voices did not exist in any ...
Contents
1 | |
3 | |
4 | |
6 | |
12 | |
13 | |
Listener Response 5 | 36 |
A Correspondence with Lewis Klahr | 37 |
Fauna | 110 |
A SonnetMade from Bee Thousand Fragments Themselves Often Fragments | 111 |
Robert Griffin | 112 |
States Of Being | 117 |
Fiction Man Hardcore Facts Part Four | 118 |
Dan Toohey | 130 |
Listener Response 12 | 132 |
Dayton Ode | 135 |
Fiction Man Hardcore Facts Part Two | 44 |
Listener Response 6 | 54 |
Don Thrasher | 55 |
Fiction Man Hardcore Facts Part Three | 64 |
Desire Its Limits | 70 |
Kevin Fennell | 72 |
Listener Responses 7 8 | 81 |
Spatial Representation 9 of Bee Thousand Action Motives | 84 |
On Robert Pollards Lyrics | 85 |
Listener Responses 911 | 109 |
Listener Response 13 | 137 |
Kicks | 138 |
Greg Demos | 142 |
Generation | 144 |
Tobin Sprouts Tascam Portastudio 1 FourTrack ElectroHarmonix Memory Man | 145 |
Tobin Sprout | 146 |
Listener Responses 1416 | 154 |
Fiction Man Hardcore Facts Part Five | 155 |
Acknowledgments | 159 |
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Common terms and phrases
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