The Very Last of Guided By Voices

My good friend over at Things I'd Rather Be Doing had the idea first: write something about every one of the 1,100-some songs recorded by the late great Guided By Voices. A wildly ambitious task -- one I'd probably never set my own self to doing though I gotta admire any kind of lunatic who actually would. There's a separate blog he's created for this mighty effort called My Impression Now (named, naturally, after a GBV song.)

I'm not sure if he's looking to divide up the work a little... or if he is truly intent on going this alone and getting it done, someday... but in any case, I have a little essay about the GBV song "Huffman Prairie Flying Field" and hell, since this is MY blog the least I can do is borrow Kenyon's cool idea and write forthwith:

I should actually start by THANKING Kenyon profusely for pretty much introducing me to the band and its voluminous work. I HAD seen GBV once while living in L.A. before but it was on a bad night for me... I did make it through Matthew Sweet's set, and then, being pretty clueless about the band and feeling depressed and down I decided to head home. I DID stay for a couple songs, watching Robert Pollard jumping around like a jackass, all pissed off on beer, aggressive, foul-tempered and in-your-face with that put-on British accent. All of which today I've grown to love and admire, though for whatever reason at the time it just put me off...

Then back in Iowa on a longish drive to see a show (not GBV) at Grinnell College, Kenyon spun me through a range of selections from the GBV catalog and I was sold.. and the price was certainly right for the $8 GBV 32-track "best of" compilation released around that time, Human Amusements At Hourly Rates.

From then I too was a fan... but then I got hooked. I bought the very last GBV album, Half Smiles of the Decomposed, and per habit popped it in the Chrysler's CD player at the start of the 45-minute commute one sunny morning to Muscatine. The very last track, a sweet and heavy power pop song called "Huffman Prairie Flying Field" was playing as I rolled into a hillside parking spot a couple blocks from work and set the emergency brake.

What first grabbed me about the song -- a sort of arena rock thing -- was how purely evocative it was. It sounded a LOT to me like that .38 Special (or was it Cheap Trick?) song as I always remembered it -- the one that was blasting out over Weed Park pool one summer, about the time I really started noticing girls, especially the ones laying out tanning by the pool. It was THAT cut-to-the-heart for me, when I heard this song, it was like some lost track from 70s. I'm pretty sure it made me tear up at least a little, it was that powerful.

But I was so astonished, mesmerized by that song that I must've jabbed the repeat button and listened just once more at least six times in a row, maybe seven or eight, as I sat there in my car delaying the walk to my office. The pure weight of the song just hit me like a storm.... I mean, this is Robert Pollard almost signing off, in a way, and this is how the swan song goes... all muscular, hook-laden guitar crunch and soaring melody: I've come to start up my head / Been closed and locked up / for far too long...

And the line for far too long is drawn out and repeated like a clarion call (which actually breaks down, to my ears, along the lines of the old three-toned "NBC" signature audio thing, but slightly different... a little more minor than major in key, I guess.) It's one of those simple but timeless melodies you wonder why you hadn't heard until now. The line is repeated and the song begins to fade, but not before Uncle Bob gets a final "yeah yeah" out... ending the band's recording career on the most triumphant of notes.

I guess it's kinda funny that I didn't really "get" Guided By Voices until their last song just slayed me... though I'm glad I got in when I did (I saw the band play two more times before the 2004 breakup and wouldn't have left the club early if my shirttails were on fire.) And I always liked how the Onion's Keith Phipps stated things in his review of the song when the record came out in 2004, so I'll just quote:

"Named for a stretch of Dayton land where the Wright Brothers tested their airplanes, 'Huffman' ends the album, and the band, with a majestic melody and some typically cryptic Pollard lines about comebacks, pregnant skies, and something lasting 'far too long.' The song connects Pollard to a tradition of backroom tinkering with unexpectedly far-reaching results, and provides a fine bookend to the career of a group that had its share of crashes over the years, but somehow always found a way to fly."

Pollard grew up in Dayton and still lives there. Beautiful.

L