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
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Page 1
... turns around and walks down the road in his pointed cap and patchwork coat , leaving you with a pang of longing but also oddly pleased , cooing like a baby fed on the selfless sweetand - sour milk of a true mother . Here's what you ...
... turns around and walks down the road in his pointed cap and patchwork coat , leaving you with a pang of longing but also oddly pleased , cooing like a baby fed on the selfless sweetand - sour milk of a true mother . Here's what you ...
Page 3
... turn into my favorite things about the album . Listener Response # 3 : Rachel R. I NEVER had a problem with the 30 - second songwriting . I always took it as pop song concentrate . To me , every song on Bee Thousand is like a canister ...
... turn into my favorite things about the album . Listener Response # 3 : Rachel R. I NEVER had a problem with the 30 - second songwriting . I always took it as pop song concentrate . To me , every song on Bee Thousand is like a canister ...
Page 6
... turn the 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 ...
... turn the 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 ...
Page 7
... turn when labor and compulsion are rewarded with buzz and love and listeners . Given that all of the plot - points above are true enough , it would be easy to translate this version of the facts into a pretty story with Bee Thousand as ...
... turn when labor and compulsion are rewarded with buzz and love and listeners . Given that all of the plot - points above are true enough , it would be easy to translate this version of the facts into a pretty story with Bee Thousand as ...
Page 9
... turns out , weren't an escape from the commodity culture of our youths as much as they were a cleverly disguised set of products intimately if secretly related to everything we sought to escape by listening to them . Is that why ...
... turns out , weren't an escape from the commodity culture of our youths as much as they were a cleverly disguised set of products intimately if secretly related to everything we sought to escape by listening to them . Is that why ...
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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