Month: May 2020

Who Was Leslie Knope’s True Best Friend On ‘Parks And Rec?’

Post author By GoneTrending
Post date May 1, 2020

Leslie Knope friends with her whole heart on Parks And Rec, making it her mission to give the best gifts and be there for the people in her life with unflappable dedication and fervor. It’s a lot, but it’s all coming from a place of love so you need to just deal with it and be overpowered by the force of her goodness. The question is, who is Leslie’s best friend? Ben Wyatt, her adorkable husband is, of course, an easy answer, but we’re gonna go ahead and disqualify him for the purposes of this conversation. Instead, we’re looking at two prime, non-soulmate candidates: Ann Perkins and Ron Swanson. To be sure, each has a case to make, and two of our writers are game to try as we both debate the matter and look back on some of the best episodes from both the Leslie-Ann and Leslie-Ron friend odyssey in recognition of Thursday night’s one-off return on NBC.

“The Fight” Season 3, Episode 13

Leslie and Ann have their first major fight thanks to a bottle of Snake Juice and Ann’s refusal to prep for a job interview (that Leslie forced upon her).

Jason Tabrys (Team Ron): I feel like before we can even decide whether Ron or Ann wins the blue ribbon here, we need to discuss Leslie’s penchant for treating her friends like paper dolls, arranging their lives in a way that pleases her. Is Leslie, herself, best friend material with this bad habit?

Jessica Toomer (Team Ann): Leslie certainly suffers from “know-it-all syndrome,” but her heart is always in the right place and I think that’s what makes it forgivable. I also suspect you’re trying to postpone this debate because you’ve chosen the wrong side to argue for and I refuse to let you use Leslie as a scapegoat. You picked the mustachioed meat-eater, make your case, or let’s move on.

Jason: I’m not stalling, but I do want to take a moment to note my respect for booze. This isn’t an appreciation of it, though that could also be warranted. It’s respect, and a little bit of fear. As you see in this episode, booze can be a truth serum, of sorts, nudging people to more easily spill when it comes to the mistakes they think their friends are making (in this case, related to Ben and Leslie’s pacing and Ann’s taste in men). I’m team Ron all the way on all the things, but I’ll acknowledge that it’s a win for your side that Leslie and Ann can find a way to move past a night of copious drinking and truth-telling. Hell, it’s impressive that they survived Snake Juice at all.

“Ron & Tammys” Season 4, Episode 2

Ron’s first ex-wife, Tammy 1, and his mother, Tammy 0, begin exerting their control over his life so Leslie enters a “prairie drink off” to win Ron his freedom from both women.

Jessica: Lots of regret and shame is the official slogan of Snork Juice for a reason, but even more deadly than that vial of rat poison is Ron’s legion of ex-wives: The Tammys. We meet Tammy One first and Leslie is woefully outmatched. What’s worse? She doesn’t even know it. Perhaps, if Ron was more forthcoming about his personal life, this entire fiasco could’ve been avoided.

Jason: I like my friends to try and preserve the mystery and live lives independent of me. Ron doesn’t feel the need to lean too heavily on other people. He’s the perfect friend to sit stoically with, forsaking all touchy feeliness. Still, Leslie is the opposite of that and her heart is so quakingly big that she has to be the savior when people don’t want or can’t convey their need to be saved. Is it as big as her liver after going up against Ron’s mamma in a drink off? Only medical science can know.

Jessica: Isn’t that the rub though? Should Leslie have to literally risk her life just because Ron refuses to share anything of meaning with her. I adore their workplace friendship but at the end of the day, that’s all it really is. If Leslie wasn’t so involved in the Parks and Rec department, would these two even have a relationship?

Jason: You’re dealing in hypotheticals. Leslie’s life is her job. All of her friends are connected to that place, even Ann. She met Ann at a town forum. Got closer to her because of efforts to clean up the lot next to her house and closer still when they started working together. Ann is a work friend and Ron is a work friend. It just so happens that they both have non-work things spill over into their day to day at city hall. That doesn’t mean they’re bad friends, just terrible employees.

“Ann’s Decision” Season 5, Episode 12

Ann decides she’s ready to have a baby but her sperm donor candidates fail to impress Leslie.

Jessica: Harsh, but fair. Still, Ann and Leslie’s friendship feels exponentially more intimate than whatever she has with Ron. Case in point: this episode, which sees both women wade through potential sperm donors when Ann decides she’s ready for motherhood. It’s clear Leslie doesn’t agree with this path, but after she voices her opinion, she still tries to help Ann in her pregnancy quest. I think the mark of a good friendship is understanding that your differences don’t have to be deal-breakers. Of course, that also means sometimes you need to compromise your own views to support the other person. I think Ron Swanson would probably label the term “compromise” the fallacy on which the bureaucratic quagmire that is local government is built, no?

Jason: Ron and Leslie are so opposite that every minute he tolerates the incursion that is her friendship qualifies as a compromise. Still, he lets her get deeper into his life than almost anyone. It’s also worth pointing out that while Ann and Leslie’s friendship is more intimate, attaining an intimate friendship with Ron Swanson is a harder won glory. With that said, I recognize the powerful emotional connection a more immersive friendship delivers… you know, from stories and what other people tell me. So while I see a lot of value in the Ron/Leslie dynamic, I’m starting to cede territory in this fight because there’s no Ron/Leslie moment that compares to the heartache and destruction endured when Leslie and Ann experienced real distance from each other.

“Ann & Chris” Season 6, Episode 13

Leslie throws a going away party for Ann and Chris before they leave Pawnee for good but she runs into problems when her plan to surprise Ann leads them both on a scavenger hunt.

Jessica: I feel like you’re luring me into a false sense of security here, but fine, I’ll go with it and concede a small victory to you in return. Is it unfair that Ann ends up leaving Pawnee, which gave the show an excuse to highlight the entirety of their friendship with this going away episode? Probably. But you’ve got to admit watching them scramble to get Lot 48 opened so they could personally break ground together before Ann took off for Michigan was the perfect tribute to their friendship.

“Ron & Jammy” Season 7, Episode 2

To win a crucial re-zoning vote, Leslie enlists Ron’s help in prying Councilman Jamm from Tammy 2’s evil clutches.

Jason: No Swanson fan would diminish the power of completing a long-in-development project, though they might remark that said project only took so long because it was bogged down by governmental bureaucracy. Permit me, however, to add that while that achievement was a defining triumph for Ann and Leslie, Ron faced his (and any other human person’s) greatest fear in a seductive, magnetic, soul-sucking ex with only Leslie and the confidence earned by his relationship with a total non-Tammy (a relationship partially made possible by Ron’s softened edges and willingness to let people in thanks to his friendship with Leslie) and came out unscathed. Improvement, the rarest of human achievements. Made possible by the rarest of friendships.

Jessica: Dial it back. Was it nice to see the dynamic duo back together again to take on Tammy Two? Sure, but this whole de-radicalization session was instigated by Leslie in an effort to sway Jamm to her side … and away from Ron’s. The only reason she recruited Ron’s help was that Jamm was in too deep, and the only reason Ron gave his aid was because he can’t stand weakness or pathetic imitations of his mustache. Nothing felt solved in this episode, just backburnered and that’s another strike against the friendship between Ron and Leslie. Both are willing to let grudges fester for the sake of their own pride. Ann would never.

“Leslie & Ron” Season 7, Episode 4

The Parks and Rec gang lock a feuding Leslie and Ron in their office in a bid to get them to hash out their differences and resume their friendship.

Jason: I always thought it was a weird tonal shift to go from the de-escalation pact to the heights of antipathy that we see in this episode before the eventual thaw. But I think it’s important to look in awe at a friendship that can mend rifts, even long term ones. It takes a big person to admit their wrong and a big friendship for two people to do that and also be vulnerable. Especially when you consider how big a move that is for Ron. Though, I will acknowledge that it’s something Ann and Leslie also did as well.

Ultimately, our quibbling doesn’t really matter. Both of these characters had amazing TV relationships with Leslie that, honestly, portrayed some of the best parts of friendship. I’m ready to extend the hand of peace and understanding here and say, in the most un-Swanson-y of ways, that perhaps this contest should end in a draw and the declaration that Leslie can, in fact, have two best friends. Will you meet me halfway?

Jessica: How very Ann Perkins of you. But yes, I suppose in the grand scheme of things, Leslie needed both Ron and Ann, her cunning, pliable, chestnut-haired sunfish as her best friends to truly succeed — in her career and in life. And really, they’re both a giant step up from Parker Posey’s Lindsay Carlisle Shay. She once fed waffles from JJ’s Diner to a dog. WAFFLES!

Jason: On this, we can agree. Dogs are amazing. Mine is my true best friend, but that doesn’t mean I’d share my waffles with her… or anyone, to be honest.

‘Parks And Rec’ is available to stream on Netflix.

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Ice Juice, Poop Trains, And Bondage: A Somewhat Helpful Guide To ‘Billions’ In The Form Of A Glossary

Post author By GoneTrending
Post date May 1, 2020

Billions moves fast. Really fast. The Showtime drama about power-hungry hedge fund traders and the power-hungry government officials trying to stop them careens from one storyline to the next at a speed that makes the show deliciously addictive. It also makes it a little tricky to keep up with. I adore the show completely and yet even I, a person who is paid to watch and write about it, sometimes have trouble remembering everything that has happened over its run.

And so, with the fifth season upon us and four seasons of plot in our rearview, a project: A Billions Glossary, with a (somewhat) helpful nugget about the show assigned to each letter of the alphabet. Does it mention Ice Juice? Oh, you know it mentions Ice Juice. Is the entry for P “poop train”? Yup, that’s in here, too. Will there be screencaps of a mostly nude Paul Giamatti strapped into leather contraptions? My friends, you need only wait until the letter B.

Get out your highlighters. We are doing education.

Axe Capital

The hedge fund run by Bobby “Axe” Axelrod, an apex predator masquerading as a blue-eyed human, who is constantly under investigation by someone or under attack from a rival billionaire. Usually both. Everyone who works there is a terrible person. Everyone on the show is a terrible person, actually. That’s what makes it fun.

Bondage

There’s no way around it: if you watch Billions, you’re going to see Chuck Rhoades, the former U.S. Attorney and political candidate and full-time schemer played by Paul Giamatti, shacked into all sorts of leather contraptions. Heck, the whole series opened with him getting humiliated and urinated on by a dominatrix. Like, in the first 90 seconds. It’s part of his personality, exerting dominance and power in his job and seeking submission and pain in his leisure time. In season four, these aspects of his private life were about to be revealed to the public, so he beat everyone to the punch by revealing it all himself in a press conference.

It was kind of like the press conference where Tony Stark reveals that he’s Iron Man, but… different.

Clandestine Meetings

There are so many clandestine meetings on Billions. Just an absolute smorgasbord of them. At the docks, on a roof, in the kitchen of a Michelin-starred restaurant, in a park in the middle of the night, really anywhere that two characters can meet in secret to discuss ruining a third character, which happens at least one per episode and is a blast. Clandestine meetings are fun. We should all be having more of them.

Dollar Bill

A few notes about Dollar Bill Stern:

Morally bankrupt trader who will do almost anything to make money
Has two separate families, which is mentioned very infrequently on the show and is something I would watch an entire episode about
Played by Kelly AuCoin, who also played Pastor Tim on The Americans, which will mean very little to you if you haven’t seen both shows and will be earth-shattering news if you have

He’s a maniac. It’s great.

Eastern District of New York

The office that was headed up by Chuck Rhoades when he was a U.S. Attorney, probably the most famous and important district in the country, and the one largely tasked with tackling corporate and Wall Street malfeasance. You may also recognize it from the Fyre Fest documentary, which referenced Billions, in a snake-eating-its-rail situation unlike any other.

Facial hair

Lots of great facial hair on Billions, starting with Mike “Wags” Wagner, Axe’s number two at the firm, an unapologetic hedonist and the possessor of a truly magnificent mustache that curls into two evil little points at the ends.

It’s not just mustaches, though. Please also note the eyebrows sported by Chuck’s father, Charles Senior, who is becoming more and more hilariously debaucherous each season and might at any point tell his grown son about things he did in a bathhouse 30 years ago.

Giamatti

Yes, the bondage was already mentioned, but Paul Giamatti gets a second entry on this list. It can’t be avoided. The performance he gives on Billions is masterful, the full Giamatti, rage and embarrassment and dancing and all of it. The man is an icon, as this context-free GIF from the show can confirm.

Note the spittle. Always note the spittle.

Heidecker, Craig

The show’s stand-in for Elon Musk, who, in a brief run, seduced Chuck’s wife and then died in a private rocketship explosion that was broadcast on live television. Also, and this is extremely important, he was played by James Wolk, the actor responsible for the roles of Bob Benson on Mad Men and renegade zoologist Jackson Oz on Zoo and for saying the phrase “squid pro quo” on Watchmen. A remarkable career.

Ice Juice

Everything happens so much on Billions, to a degree that it could be easy to overlook the names of the companies the characters are investing in. Don’t do that. Never do that. If you do that, you might miss solid gold like Ice Juice (an all-natural energy drink company that Axe ruins by poisoning its supply and tanking its IPO) and SugarVape (a vape company that… actually, you probably get the gist of this one already). Billions does the big things very well, but it might do the small things even better.

Jeffcoat, Jock

Attorney General, big loud Texan, fan of analogies about bulls and other livestock, thorn in the side of Chuck Rhoades, champion in the field of establishing dominance by putting his feet up on someone else’s desk. Gets cussed out in Italian by Chuck in a rant that you can understand completely without translating a single word. Great villain.

Kleptocracy

The surprising thing isn’t that Billions introduced a mysterious and menacing Russian oligarch played by John Malkovich in a full-on “Teddy KGB from Rounders” accent. The surprising thing is that it took them all the way until season three to introduce a mysterious and menacing oligarch played by John Malkovich in a full-zone Teddy KGB from Rounders” accent. He lost his battle with Axe and retreated to Russia and the possibility of his return at any moment is very exciting.

Liars

Everyone on the show is an unrepentant liar who will smile in your face while picking your pocket. Most lines of dialogue involve a scheme or a plot or an ulterior motive. Everyone is playing an angle, all the time. If this seems like a pretty obvious and straightforward entry for the letter L, that’s because the other option here was “Leather” and I’m not sure this article can sustain that much Bondage Giamatti. So, liars it is.

Monologues

One of the best things about Billions. Often happens at the clandestine meetings. A surprising number of them start with an interesting fact about nature or wildlife and then slowly wind and twist their way to making a point about the events on the show through that illustration. It’s kind of like how supervillains in comic book movies explain their motives with a speech that opens with “When I was a boy…” but instead it gives you a cool fact from National Geographic. It’s awesome. Everyone should talk like this all the time. Like, the next time a waiter asks you if you want an appetizer, start your reply with a long pause and then say “Anteaters, on average, consume over 30,000 ants a day” and keep talking for 90 seconds. Then order the bruschetta.

Non-binary

One of the show’s main characters, Taylor Mason, a brilliant trader and burgeoning rival for Axe, identifies as non-binary, using they/them pronouns instead of he/him or she/her. Taylor is a great character, perhaps the most interesting on the show, and a refreshing addition to the Swaggering Dude Energy you see at Axe Capital (and at most real-life hedge funds). At one point they had a fling with a character played by Mike Birbiglia, because Billions is tremendous at rolling notable guest stars in and out of the series.

Ortolans

A substantial number of scenes in Billions happen during meals, and many of those meals probably cost as much as your lawnmower. It’s borderline food porn in places, with slow-motion shots of truffle-shaving and long lingering looks at primo cuts of steak. The best example of this was the time Axe and Wags got together to eat ortolans, small birds you consume whole in a cult-like ceremony that involves draping a cloth over about 70 percent of your face. If this does not make you hungry (no thanks!), just wait. Wags will shove a cheeseburger into his mouth at some point and get the train back on the track. Speaking of trains…

Poop Train

In season four, as part of a plot to get revenge on Jock Jeffcoat, Chuck Rhoades was able to stall a train near his Texas home, which would not have been a big deal had the train not been filled with human waste from New York construction site Port-a-Pottys that smelled so rancid it cause multiple people in its downwind path to vomit immediately. It was an important plot point. Serious consequences were felt by many. Because of the Poop Train. Your favorite show could never pull this off.

Quants

Quants are the math whizzes who use cold logic and many computers to identify potentially profitable trades. The old school traders like Dollar Bill hate them. Most of them are hopeless nerds, except for this guy, who looks like he’s about to explain The Matrix to you. The movie and the general concept.

Rhoades, Wendy

Quite possibly the most conflicted character on a show filled with conflicted characters. Brilliant psychologist, masterful performance coach, part-time dominatrix, also both married to Chuck and employed by Axe, two cobras who are circling each other at all times unless they are working together. Sometimes seems like the only character on the show with a conscience and then suuuurprise she’ll support a plan that involves seducing a heartsick puppy dog trader or ruining an oncologist who is in the way. Might be the smartest character on the show.

Sacker, Kate

Attorney who once worked for Chuck in the Eastern District, stayed there after he left, and is proving to be incredibly formidable. Does this thing when some guy is saying something dumb where she blinks her eyes long and slow and then, when her eyelids rise back up, reveals two lasers that are slicing that guy into pieces right where he stands. This is a metaphor. Barely.

Trickitude

Billions is chockablock with delightful words and phrases. In a single conversation, the show dropped “financial trickitude” and “trifecta of chicanery” as characters discussed how to bury “a patsy.” At one point, Chuck’s father described his sexual predilections as “childish enthusiasms.” The show can be a real treat for the ears sometimes.

Uncertainty

“I am not uncertain.” This is a phrase that is used frequently around Axe Capital, often by Dollar Bill. What it really means is something along the lines of “I know this for a fact but can’t say that because doing so would be an admission of guilt involving fraud or insider trading or both, so I’ll say this instead to give us the thinnest and flimsiest cover possible in case anyone is ever asked about it under oath by a government official.”

Vests

Nothing on this show is more accurate than the staggering number of fleece Patagonia vests worn by people in the finance industry. Vests galore. Vests as far as the eye can see. Not a sleeve in sight.

Wags

Mentioned yet again because Wags is the best. Sometime the show will have very little for him to do besides yell profanities at his underlings. Other times he’ll get kidnapped by foreign nationals or find himself mustache-deep in a multi-season ruse that involves wearing makeup and a dress to a prestigious event only to find out he’s been fooled by an attorney whose high-status burial plot he swiped using subterfuge. Wags is a terrible man who would leave you penniless in a heartbeat if it earned him a single dollar and yet he is still a joy in every way. It might be the show’s greatest trick.

Xavier

There is, at present, no character named Xavier on the show, although it would be nice if one is introduced soon, both because Xavier is a cool name and because it would help writers who pitch something like “what about a Billions Glossary?” to their editors without considering how tough it will be to find an entry for X.

Yarn Walls

Bryan Connerty is the Charlie Brown of Billions, an attorney who worked for Chuck before becoming hellbent on taking him down, to the degree he created a conspiracy board in his home. You know the ones, with pictures of the conspirators arranged in a triangle and pieces of string or lines of marker connecting them as the plot is uncovered, the kind usually created in mob or cartel investigators and/or by law enforcement types who are getting in way too deep and are slowly becoming unhinged. It feels like Connerty has had Chuck cornered at least three different times, only to watch him wriggle free at the last moment.

The whole series might end with everyone still rich and powerful and blessedly free of lessons learned except for Connerty, who will be penniless and sleeping on a park bench and mumbling about Ice Juice to a group of pigeons he feeds and created names and backstories for. This poor man.

Zero

The number of these people you’d want to know personally, despite them making for beautiful television.

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A Salty Salute: The Oral History Of Guided By Voices’ ’90s Indie Classic ‘Alien Lanes’

Post author By GoneTrending
Post date May 1, 2020

The spring of 1995 was a crowded season in indie-rock history. Pavement dropped their polarizing third album, the willfully messy and frequently brilliant Wowee Zowee. Yo La Tengo continued their hit streak of low-key masterworks with Eletr-O-Pura. Illinois fuzz-rock quartet Hum hit hard with You’d Prefer An Astronaut, and Teenage Fanclub produced one of their finest jangle-pop efforts, Grand Prix. Wilco, Elastica, and Apples In Stereo put out well-regarded debuts. And Red House Painters hit a new high-water mark with Ocean Beach.

But even in an era when classic indie records seemed to come out every week, there was nothing quite like Alien Lanes, the eighth full-length LP by a band from Dayton, Ohio called Guided By Voices.

Released on April 4, 1995, Alien Lanes arrived with baked-in mythology. It had been supposedly recorded for just $10 in various concrete basements around Dayton by a group of blue-collar guys in their mid-30s. GBV (as they were known colloquially) had achieved indie fame a few years earlier after tastemakers in New York City “discovered” a gaggle of bizarre, blurry-sounding psych-pop albums the band released to zero fanfare in the late ’80s and early ’90s. In a pre-internet world, this music was authentically mysterious, more akin to found objects than typical rock ‘n’ roll product. Most fans had never seen them live or even knew what they looked like. But GBV also had a refreshing lack of pretension, marked by an uncomplicated worship of pop history that transcended the era’s usual obscure-for-obscurity’s-sake fetishism. GBV might have been quirky, but they could also rock with surprising directness.

Inspired by ’60s classic rock, ’70s art-punk and prog, and ’80s indie, they were led by Robert Pollard, a hard-drinking fourth-grade school teacher who wrote hundreds upon hundreds of eccentric and irresistibly catchy songs on nights and weekends. The guys in his band had similar everydude resumés – one guitarist made ends meet as an illustrator, and the other guitarist worked in a sandpaper factory. The drummer was employed by a mental health facility. The bass player was a college student who temporally exited the band upon Alien Lanes‘ release to become a lawyer. Together, these musicians (among Pollard’s other collaborators and drinking buddies in Dayton) would gather at Pollard’s behest and record on 4-track machines, never spending more than a handful of minutes on each song. Sometimes, they would improvise entirely new tunes on the spot. Many times, these tracks were no longer than a minute. And they did this while drinking 1,000 beers and smoking 10,000 cigarettes.

These methods would ultimately inform Alien Lanes, their first album released by the venerable indie label Matador, which granted it a much greater promotional push than any previous GBV record. Major music magazines praised them, and they even ended up national TV for the first time. This despite Alien Lanes being the most radical LP that GBV made up to that point — with 28 songs clocking in at just 41 minutes, it was more like a suite than a proper album, overloaded with countless moments of inventive serendipity. Not only did band members frequently trade instruments, they found ways to “play” everything from battered violins to trash can lids. They eschewed “professional” record-making techniques in favor of spontaneous strokes of genius, like when Pollard achieved a tremolo vocal effect by asking his brother to pound on his back as he sang. Or when he created a rhythm track by recording the sound of a friend snoring. Twenty-five years later, there’s still no album quite like it.

To celebrate the 25th anniversary of Alien Lanes — which Matador is commemorating with a special vinyl edition — we talked to the band members, record label executives, critics, and fans to get the story behind this remarkable classic.

Robert Pollard (singer/songwriter for Guided By Voices): I like Dayton. I’m sure some people who wanna knock it — or don’t understand what we do because we don’t have hits — like to say I never “made it” because I didn’t leave and go to someplace like NYC or LA. But I choose to stay here mainly because of my family and people I grew up with and met through sports and 14 years of teaching.

Mitch Mitchell (guitarist for Guided By Voices): I met Bob through sports, and I knew his brother Jim. We all went to school together. Bob, he worked at the school newspaper and he’d do record reviews. I’d go over to his house and I’d listen to music with him. I guess sports and music are the two things that brought us together.

Pollard: I started writing songs when I was very young, as far back as I can remember. I don’t know if you can call it “writing” songs. It’s more like making them up. I made up “Eggs Make Me Sick” when I was maybe 7 or 8 years old. The first song I wrote was, “We Are From the Planet Mars.” I was just inspired to make up songs by what was going on around me: Space flight, The Beatles, The Beach Boys, school.

Mitchell: I was in a band with a couple of other guys and we were trying to find who we could get to sing. I thought, “Well, Bob, he might sing. He knows a lot about music. He probably knows all the songs and maybe he knew some words.”

Pollard: The gig was like three or four days away, so at first I said no. But they were very persistent, I guess, based on hearing me sing in the hallways at school, so I said yes. They gave me confidence. We didn’t have a name at first, but I very quickly came up with Anacrusis. It’s a musical term meaning to start a song on the upbeat. They thought it sounded very heavy metal, so we went with it.

Mitchell: We did UFO songs and we did Blue Oyster Cult, Cheap Trick, more of the popular songs, not real heavy songs. After a while we started putting in a couple of originals. We’d slip them in. “Here’s a cover from Foghat,” and we’d do one of our original songs so nobody would know.

Pollard: I went through various stages of trying to sound like other singers. I’m sure that’s pretty natural, but at some point I liked the way my voice sounded. Especially the slight British affectation. I was in my formative years during the British Invasion, so it seemed natural. At some point during early adulthood, I tried to take on a more American, rootsy style but that didn’t last long because it sounded hokey.

Mitchell: Bob and I were getting off the cover band-type thing and getting into more new wave and punk rock and some of the newer music that we were listening to. Of course the other guys, they weren’t having that. When I cut my hair, they kicked me out. And then Bob said, “Well, if you kick him out, I’m going to quit.” We just figured maybe it’s best we just strike out and do something different. We wanted to put off a little bit of an image. I know at one point in time when we all wore high school jackets while we all smoked cigarettes and drank Colt 45s. That was back when we were called The Needmores.

Pollard: It was our varsity “N” letter jackets. We all lettered in sports at Northridge High School so I decided to go with those jackets because they were already custom made.

Tobin Sprout (singer/songwriter/guitarist for Guided By Voices): I had a band called Fig. 4, and there was a club called the 1001 Club that was getting all these touring bands like Del Fuegos that we were opening up for. One night, we were playing and Bob, Jimmy, and Pete [Jamison, GBV’s former manager] came in. They were in front of the stage the whole night. They had these dusters on, these long jackets. After one of the sets, Pete came over and said Bob wanted to meet me. So I went over and talked to Bob for a little bit and we got to know each other and the next thing I know, we’re hanging out and playing.

Pollard: I told him I was really impressed, and we started up somewhat of a friendship.

Sprout: He didn’t really have Guided By Voices together yet, but eventually he came up with that title and it seemed that was the one that stuck. It had a charm to it. It just seemed right.

Mitchell: You could say the band was “guided by the voices” we were influenced by. I don’t know if it necessarily has a definition. I think it was just more that the words looked cool together.

Pollard: When Fig. 4 broke up, Toby joined Guided By Voices. He briefly went back to Fig. 4, but when things became serious, he came on board again and we started collaborating in a more serious sense.

Greg Demos (bassist for Guided By Voices): Bob and I became friends in 1987. He was finishing recording Sandbox at Steve Wilbur’s garage studio. I was looking to record with my band at the time called The New Creatures and we recorded at the same garage studio on Bob’s recommendation. Bob and Jimmy hung out with us while we recording and Bob sang some backing vocals on the record. When he was ready to record Same Place The Fly Got Smashed, he asked me if I would like to play on it. We recorded the full-band tracks for the album at Wilbur’s garage studio. I played bass and lead guitar on several tracks.

Sprout: I played on Forever Since Breakfast and Devil Between My Toes. I played on “A Portrait Destroyed By Fire” and a couple of other ones. Then I moved to Florida after that and when I came back, they were putting Propeller together, so I rejoined and was in it until Under The Bushes.

Mitchell: We worked hard to get any attention in Dayton. It was kind of frustrating when you played a gig and nobody would show up. After a while, we just said, “You know what? If we can’t play around here, we’ll make some records and maybe we’ll play somewhere else.” We just kept at it. We didn’t want to quit.

Nate Farley (Alien Lanes tour roadie, eventual GBV guitarist): At the time, a lot of music in Dayton had a little more of a hardcore sound, maybe with a metal edge to it. And GBV, especially Forever Since Breakfast, has an R.E.M. influence. From the people that I hung out with, and that whole second wave of punk rockers in Dayton, I think at the time it was not edgy enough or too songwriter-related.

Demos: During this period it was all recording and no live shows. I had also started law school around this time. At some point in the next year or so Bob was ready to record Propeller and asked me to play on the full band songs on the record.

Sprout: We recorded quite a bit in my basement. The garage was below the house, so you’d go into the garage and into the basement that way. It was just a concrete basement. I had a little section set up with the 4-track and then I had a set of drums, and various mics, guitar amps and stuff. A lot of the bass on the early stuff was played on guitar because I didn’t have a bass. So I tuned the guitar tone all the way down to bass. “Echos Myron” was all on the guitar, which is the end of it. I tried to play it on bass. It’s a lot harder on bass than it was on guitar, those runs.

When we were doing “Hot Freaks”, we were having a garage sale. Bob’s screaming “Hot Freaks!” and my wife and all these people at the garage sale were like, “What the hell? What’s that?”

Pollard: A lot of people that I knew — relatives, friends, acquaintances from work and recreational sports —thought I was insane. Like, “Where in the fuck does he get off thinking that he’s some kind of a rock musician?”

Sprout: I can remember we were practicing for Propeller and Bob, after the practice, goes, “Okay, this is it. This is my final album, I’m done. I can’t do this anymore.” So the next morning, I get a call from him about 7:30, eight o’clock. He goes, “I got another song, I got to come over.” So he was there in 15 minutes and we went in the basement and we hooked the 4-track up. Bob sat down and showed me the guitar parts and then he played the drums and I set it up so we could do guitars and drums at the same time. So we recorded that and then he threw the vocal on and threw the lead guitar on. It was “Exit Flagger.” It came together in a matter of 20 minutes.

Propeller, Guided By Voices’ fifth album released in 1992, was the band’s first to gain attention outside of Dayton. One of the first people in New York City to hear it was a musician, PR agent, and man about town named Matt Sweeney.

Matt Sweeney (singer/guitarist for Chavez, hard-core GBV fan, future GBV member): I went to my weed dealer’s house, who was a serious record collector. I went over to buy some weed, and the music that he was playing was so fucking good, and also not like the kind of music that he usually played, because he was definitely over rock music. He was into free jazz and shit like that. Generally, the routine was that I would buy some weed from him, and then we’d hang out and listen to records. We called it the Monday night pot party. He lent me the record, and me and my friend just lost our minds. The record was Propeller.

They sounded like a legit ’60s band. And Mitch Mitchell is on the record? Mitch Mitchell was Jimi Hendrix’s drummer! All of it was so weird. The names didn’t seem like they were real. Tobin Sprout doesn’t seem like a real name.

Sweeney became a John The Baptist-type proselytizer for GBV in New York, playing their music for various musicians, label heads, and journalists as GBV put out another full-length, Vampire On Titus, on Cleveland-based indie Scat Records in early 1993.

Matt Diehl (music critic): The way I discovered GBV was pretty much how any New York rock critic did: Matt Sweeney sat me down and played me every single release of GBV he had. I believe he played me even old demos, basement live recordings, and the like. Everything.

Sweeney: I think I gave a tape to Kurt Cobain. I made tapes for fucking everybody.

Gerard Cosloy (Matador Records co-founder): I think it was either Matt Sweeney or Johan Kugelberg who kept playing the stuff in our office — Propeller and Vampire On Titus anyway. Both of which became fixtures on the stereo, definitely one of those “what the fuck is this?” moments.

Chris Lombardi (Matador co-founder): Those became records that were played all the time at work. They were genius. It was like these beautiful snapshots of a moment in somebody’s mind. They weren’t these rehearsed or overwritten songs that had beginnings, middles, and ends. They were just these raw, melodic emotions, these moments. It was like ear candy to us.

Cosloy: Without the benefit of having seen or met the band — keep in mind we’d not seen any photos or videos or been given a press kit or whatever — there was some immediate mystique. What was the deal here? Was this band old or young? What did they look like?

In the summer of 1993, Guided By Voices played their first NYC show at the historic punk venue CBGB’s.

Lombardi: Maybe Matt Sweeney had reached out to them. I think he had written to Bob, and he encouraged those guys to come to New York and play a show.

Sweeney: I guess I was really the first person, outside of the Scat Records dude from Cleveland [Robert Griffin], to reach out.

Pollard: It was terrifying. We hadn’t performed live in six years. And also knowing who was in the crowd: Sonic Youth, Pavement, Matador. All people who I am now very comfortable around. But at the time I wanted to crawl underground with the mole people rather than face those people at that gig.

Lombardi: We all went to that gig at CBGB’s and it blew our minds. It was incredible.

Sweeney: I think everybody was expecting a much younger, self-aware post-rock vibe, because that was what was going on at the time.

Cosloy: I don’t think we wanted to work with them until we saw them play. As terrific as the records were, the live shows were another animal entirely. For all of the low-fidelity charms of the early Guided By Voices records — without question, the songs are excellent, the recordings super inventive — we were not prepared for their being such a powerhouse live band or Bob being such a compelling front person.

Sweeney: People didn’t even know what to make of them. It was really funny. I loved it. I was so excited. It was really fun, because people just thought that they were going to be like cool or something. They weren’t expecting it to be so completely great and also dead-ass rocking and high-kicking and all that shit.

Lombardi: I don’t think some of those guys had been to New York City ever before. To be there and all of a sudden have whatever the New York tastemakers were all crowded around them, in this legendary club, and going bananas for your music, it must’ve been so intoxicating. Besides the fact that they were already intoxicated.

The following summer, in 1994, GBV released one of their most famous albums, Bee Thousand, which includes popular fan favorites like “I Am A Scientist,” “Tractor Rape Chain,” “The Gold Heart Mountaintop Queen Directory,” and “Echoes Myron.” It finished at No. 8 in the Village Voice‘s annual Pazz & Jop critics poll, ahead of albums by Nine Inch Nails, Beck, Soundgarden, Green Day, and the Beastie Boys. But before Bee Thousand dropped, Pollard was already pondering the followup — a masterwork he initially called Scalping The Guru, before changing the title to Alien Lanes.

Pollard: We were pleasantly surprised with the success of Bee Thousand. It’s funny, because Robert Griffin gave us the heads up that “this was gonna be the one.” We were very excited about where we were going with Alien Lanes, especially with our newly found critical success and the fact that we weren’t finished exploring what we could do creatively with songs on the 4-track. It was a mad flourish of output.

Sprout: Bee Thousand and Alien Lanes are a blur. I mean, there’s the one album and then all of a sudden, Alien Lanes is ready to go.

Pollard: Bee Thousand was an accumulation of ideas leading up for years before we put it together. It’s almost a compilation. All the songs for Alien Lanes were recorded specifically for Alien Lanes. We had developed a great deal of confidence. We had a silly swagger, as the song titles themselves can attest.

Mitchell: I’m even trying to think of where we recorded. I don’t remember where we recorded that particular thing.

Demos: We recorded some at Toby’s, some at Bob’s and some at Kevin’s. [Kevin Fennell was GBV’s drummer at this time.] Lots of beer, lots of cigarettes, lots of fun.

Sprout: I’ve read about Stevie Wonder. He used to work like that. When he would record, he’d have all his buddies in the studio. I figure, yeah, if you add that up, I think you can hear the energy level.

Pollard: I wanted an audience, but I didn’t want a misstep by making what might have appeared to the indie-rock cognoscenti as a sellout move by going immediately out of our element. That’s why we went bombastic with Alien Lanes. You want lo-fi? You want short songs? Otherworldly? Local? Here you go.

Sprout: We recorded on a Tascam 4-track, just a really simple one. Most of Bee Thousand was recorded on that. I did most of the engineering with it. Then, about the time of Alien Lanes, we were using Greg’s. I don’t know if it was his or he borrowed it, but he had an 8-track cassette deck that we used on a lot.

Mitchell: We always had time for goofing around but for the most part, once we got in the studio we were pretty intent on doing what we were there for.

Sprout: A lot of times there was a party going on while we were recording and sometimes there’s people tripping over the mics and knocking over shit. But it all seemed to work. We would get to the point where, “Okay, we got to do vocals now.” And everybody would get quiet and Bob would do the vocals and then the party would start back up. Again, if it got stupid, you dealt with it.

Demos: Some songs were made up on the spot first take. There was no demo tape from Bob, so full-band songs were learned at the session quickly and then recorded. The bass parts that I would end up playing live for these songs were made up after the recording was done.

Sprout: I’d write and record songs as a demo and then Bob would say, “Say, this is good enough. I mean, why do we need to re-record it? I couldn’t do it much better.” So it stayed that way.

Pollard: At the time I wasn’t concerned at all with how a recorded song translated to a live setting. I may be wrong though. I could be contradicting myself with how I felt or what I said at the time. It was long ago. We were just banging songs out in five or ten minutes.

Sprout: We were recording daily. We’d get together and do a session and then pretty much everything was handed over to Bob and Bob would divvy it up on the EPs, albums, and singles or whatever was coming out. A lot of little labels were asking us to do singles and there was just so much material at the time. He would visualize what the albums looked like, and we’d go from there.

Pollard: I thought Alien Lanes was the name of a bowling alley in a town called Wapokeneta, 50 miles north of Dayton. But I went up later and found out it was called Astro Lanes. It’s the birthplace of Neil Armstrong and the bowling alley is right across from the aerospace museum. You can see them both off of I-75. I liked the imagery of a spherical object, like the moon or Earth knocking down pins, and that we were knocking down hit after hit with Alien Lanes.

Rich Turiel (GBV super fan, future web master and tour manager): There’s still, to this day, a lot of mystery surrounding the goings-on in Tobin’s basement, and Bob’s basement, and recording these things. Like, “Where are these from? Are they from the same sessions or where do these come from?”

Pollard: We were still being extremely careful with our image as far as maintaining an air of mystique. Although, really, I’m still doing that.

Part of the mystery of Guided By Voices albums was figuring out who played what on which tracks. That mystery persists for Alien Lanes, even for the musicians themselves. One person who was missing from the photo on the album’s back cover was Greg Demos. In his place was new bassist Jim Greer, a rock journalist who became friendly with GBV after profiling them for Spin magazine. He later wrote a biography about the band.

Spout: It’s kind of a sore spot for him that he’s not on the back cover.

Demos: By the time the record went to pressing I was no longer playing so the band photo did not have me in it. It would have been nice to be on it but that’s the way it worked out.

Pollard: I just thought it was a cool photo of us. You know, we’re down in the basement thinking “what the fuck are we gonna do?” I also thought it was a good time, having signed with Matador, for people to see what we looked like. You can call it the classic lineup if you want. It’s not the original lineup. It’s three-fifths minus 1 of the original lineup.

Sprout: Either Greg played bass or I did, and then the photo on the back is pretty much the touring band. That’s why Greer’s in there, but it was mostly Greg that played on all these songs.

Mitchell: I’m not on all the records. It wasn’t like I was out of the band. It just meant that on that particular record, maybe I wasn’t on it or somebody else wasn’t on it. There was a lot of creative energy going on, and I think sometimes recording sessions just now popped up when the inspiration was there and maybe somebody wasn’t around or whatever. But if we played the stuff live, I was usually a part of that.

Pollard: I wrote “Watch Me Jumpstart” and I thought that, along with “Striped White Jets” and a few other songs, it kicked ass. So, I thought we should make it sound slightly fuller with a more sustained, deeper guitar sound. We decided to record it in my living room on a friend of Greg’s 8-track machine.

Demos: I played bass on “Watch Me Jumpstart,” “Closer You Are,” “Motor Away,” “Striped White Jets,” “Blimps Go 90,” and “Alright.” I also played the lead at the end of “Alright.” I played guitar and Jimmy [Pollard’s brother] played bass. I can’t remember who played bass on “As We Go Up (We Go Down).” I did sing backing on that song.

Pollard: I had my brother pound on my back with his fists to create a tremolo sound for “Chicken Blows.” I could have just done it with my hand on my mouth or used a tremolo effect through an amp, but we thought it was much more amusing the way we did it.

Sprout: There was just so much going on that I can’t remember. I can’t remember who played drums. We had these rotating drummers and I even played drums on a lot of the stuff.

Mitchell: Somebody could be playing guitar on one song and turn around and jump on the drums. We all moved around with different instruments because everybody could play and was pretty good at it.

Pollard: For “My Valuable Hunting Knife,” I played the side of a metal trash can. I hit it with a stick and had Toby put some slapback on it. I remember I was embarrassed by the title. I thought it sounded backwoodsy. But the phrasing is great, and people really liked it. It’s about any seemingly trivial item that’s really important to you for personal reasons. It could be a hunting knife, a shirt, or a record. Whatever. That’s why in the video I’m hurling worthless objects from a child’s wagon. I guess I’m getting rid of childish preoccupations. But it’s fiction. I never really did.

Demos: I played violin on “Blimps Go 90,” although not very well. When we recorded Propeller, I brought a violin to the studio and Bob said, “What the hell, let’s give it a try.” It’s on “Over The Neptune/Mesh Gear Fox” and “Weedking.” It’s low in the mix with tons of effects. So we tried it again on “Blimps” but we didn’t have capabilities for mass effects on it. We also would use trash cans, amp drops, and anything else we could find to utilize as an instrument. I think it shows the unfettered creativity, independence, and disregard for industry norms that we had at that time and you can feel it on the record.

Pollard: “Game Of Pricks” was an old song. I have the original version. It’s slower, bouncier, and goofier. It’s almost become our signature song. Up there with “I Am A Scientist.”

Sprout: I can’t believe how fast I played “A Good Flying Bird.” It’s just two guitars. I was thinking it was a band, because we’d been playing it as a band and it was live. Then I went back and listened to it, and in fact it was just two guitars. But that’s what a lot of these songs are. They’re pretty simple. Throw a couple of instruments on it and then throw vocal on the top.

Pollard: I was out driving around and I thought of “Always Crush Me,” so I went to a friend’s house and recorded it on a boombox. I wanted to do something more interesting to it, so I took it to Toby’s. He put it on his 4-track and added some bizarre staccato effect to the guitar. Then we did a couple of different vocal effects to make it more intense. Especially in the last section with the higher register. Yeah, it is dark, but I don’t know what it means.

Sprout: “Alright,” the last one on there, it was a vocal song and Bob didn’t like it. I took it home and stripped all the vocals out. Then there were harmonies at the end that I left in. I thought that was pretty cool. It was almost thrown away.

One of the most incredible — and for some listeners, alienating — aspects of Guided By Voices is the shortness of many of the band’s best songs. Alien Lanes takes this to the extreme. Several tracks in the middle of the album — like “Cigarette Tricks,” “Pimple Zoo,” and “Big Chief Chinese Restaurant” — come and go in less than a minute. At times, the album feels like a suite in the style of The Beatles’ Abbey Road.

Pollard: I just like short songs, especially back then. I have a short attention span. I liked Pink Flag and I like The Minutemen. Around Alien Lanes, I saw Mike Watt at a festival, and he told me to carry the torch. It’s funny because I like long songs, too. I like Tubular Bells and Thick As A Brick. I wanted Alien Lanes to sound like a late-night radio show without a DJ. I wanted Bee Thousand to sound like a bootleg of Beatles outtakes. For as confused as I was back then, I was actually pretty focused on the confusion I wanted.

Demos: Bob, Jimmy, and I made up on the spot “They’re Not Witches” and “Big Chief Chinese Restaurant.”

Pollard: Abbey Road is my favorite album of all time. Also, the silliness of a lot of the songs is similar to the Abbey Road suite.

Some of the most beloved songs on Alien Lanes — including the classic album-opener “A Salty Salute” as well as “Motor Away,” “King And Caroline” and “Auditorium” — were collaborations between Pollard and Sprout, in which Pollard wrote lyrics and melodies over Sprout’s instrumentals. This method would serve them well for years to come, in GBV as well as their side project, Airport 5.

Pollard: Toby wrote the music to “Motor Away.” I elaborated on the music and wrote the lyrics. I think I came up with the descending guitar thing on, “Oh, why don’t you just drive away.” We recorded on the 8-track at my house. Someone should have had the business acumen to use it in a car commercial.

Sweeney: If I had to play somebody one GBV song, “Motor Away” kind of sums it all up in a way. It’s such a feeling of being totally nowhere but being totally free, and it doesn’t matter, but it’s everything.

Sprout: We didn’t have to worry about getting studio time or worry about time as far as money. We could just go in on a Sunday afternoon, drinking some beers and throwing some songs down. I’d bring something in and we record that, or Bob would bring something.

Cosloy: In any other band on earth Tobin would’ve been the songwriting genius. In this instance, you had a pair of them.

Sprout: For “A Salty Salute,” I definitely remember doing that bass line and I was like, “I like it and I’m not sure what to do with it.” I couldn’t really come up with any vocal over it. Usually, I’d record three tracks and then bounce them down to the fourth. Then that would give you three more tracks, so I had it bounced down, and I think I added another guitar and on that left two tracks open. I played it for Bob and Bob went and got lyrics, like he usually did. He threw that vocal over the top and it was done.

Pollard: The lyric comes from a story my friend Gibby told me about the Northridge American Legion post taking a fishing trip up to Lake Erie. During a storm on the lake, one of them fell overboard. So they fished him out and got him under a makeshift canvas roof. As he was warming up with a cup of coffee, the roof collapsed on him and he was drenched again with the accumulated rain on the canvas. So it’s funny but also sad, like the song. That’s why I said, “The new drunk drivers have hoisted the flag / To carry us to the lake / The club is open.” The club being the American Legion. Not that I condone drinking and driving but these guys were mostly alcoholics and just trying to heal from the time they spent serving their country, and a lot of them had multiple DUI offenses. One guy had 14, I shit you not. To their defense, not that there really is one, it wasn’t as frowned upon back then as greatly as it is now.

Sprout: It just all of a sudden blew up. I mean, it was just there. It was pretty amazing. I don’t think he did more than one take.

Pollard: It was great to work with him. He was a master on the 4-track and the limited resources he had in his basement. His songwriting was a nice compliment to mine and sometimes we worked out things together.

While Sprout had a knack for beautiful melodies that sometimes veered into balladry, Pollard instinctually would add noise to any song that sounded too pretty. Like the Big Star-esque “Ex-Supermodel,” a brief but gorgeous jangler defaced with a loud, obnoxious snoring sound.

Pollard: We just lowered a mic from the ceiling onto the mouth of one my friends who was asleep and snoring. We used it as the rhythm track.

Sprout: Maybe it’s because he grew up in Northridge, which was a rougher area than I grew up in. Maybe he was afraid to show softness to his friends or something. I don’t know. I don’t want to speculate on what he was doing, but I think maybe he didn’t want to get too creamy because Guided By Voices was a rock band. We wanted to keep it a little crude.

After Pollard and his buddies made music for years without any discernible interest from the outside world, Alien Lanes proved to be a hot commodity. Along with intense interest from Matador, the band was also being courted by major labels, like Warner Bros.

Sprout: I mean, it was exciting. We were being flown out to L.A.

Lombardi: I think that was a little bit disheartening to us, because we felt like this was something that was really something perfect for Matador, and that it was kind of a reach for somebody like Warner Bros.

Mitchell: I didn’t really pay that much attention to all that stuff.

Pollard: I met with, I think, the vice president of Warner Bros., and he played me “I Am A Scientist” from Bee Thousand, and said to me, “I’m hip to this lo-fi stuff but is this how this is supposed to sound?” I said yeah, and then he asked me if I would re-record Alien Lanes. I told him no, that it was finished, but we would be willing to go into a studio for the next one.

Cosloy: We’re talking about a rather fucked up era where a lot of terrible bands got signed for way too much money. Conversely, a handful of good bands actually made a living, so it wasn’t all bad.

Sprout: There were this idea of, “We’re going to give you a band” to Bob, where they were making the band into something that they visualized instead of what the band visualized. They were going to take Bob and take his songs and then create whatever they wanted from that.

Pollard: That was the deciding moment for me to go with Matador, even though I kind of knew we were going to anyway.

Alien Lanes was mastered by Bob Ludwig, one of the industry’s most famous mastering engineers, who has worked on scores of classic albums by Bruce Springsteen, Radiohead, Coldplay, and many, many others.

Sprout: Somebody at Matador called and said, “Look, we’re going to have your album mastered tomorrow. Do you want to talk to Bob Ludwig about it?” And I said, “Sure, why not?” So he called or I called him, and I go, “So have you ever done a master from a cassette?” And he said, “Yeah.” Because he did Nebraska by Bruce Springsteen. So it was like, “Oh geez, all right. I guess you can handle it.”

Pollard: With all due respect, I don’t know what the mastering did for it. I guess he evened out the low and high frequencies, whatever that means.

Upon its release, Alien Lanes instantly generated some of the most lavish attention the band would ever receive from the press, including a rapturous and lengthy four-star review in Rolling Stone by Matt Diehl.

Diehl: My review of Alien Lanes in Rolling Stone was and remains the longest ever in the publication’s history. It’s funny – there was less real estate back then for reviews due to the Internet’s nascent existence, but it seemed like more stuff was covered, and from a wider cultural swath.

I wrote it so long really because of the simultaneous release of the Box box set; it was sort of unparalleled to have a “new” band that was blowing people’s minds, but then have this window into their evolution and development in such a granular way. That seemed kind of unprecedented, and interesting to think about. I also thought the music that inspired GBV was important in, say, the way The Stooges were in terms of influencing the Sex Pistols. I both enjoyed and wanted to turn people on to those influences by rigorously unpacking them, and in doing so, I had to explain their significance as well to an extent. It was literally a rock critic Where’s Waldo situation of cultural and musical influences, and I felt my cred rested on my ability to explicate that.

Pollard: I was blown away by the acceptance of the press at the time from Vampire On Titus to Alien Lanes. We really fearlessly stepped up to the plate in a big way and delivered, and they knew it. We were being called all kinds of high praise shit. Indie rock darlings. Kings of Lo-Fi. Pioneers of Lo-Fi. When we were finally signed to Scat and then Matador, we became much, much better. Much more confident. We didn’t choke.

Sprout: We were late in the age for getting started. Maybe they thought we looked too old. I look back and that’s just crazy. We didn’t look old at all.

Demos: During our first MTV interview I joked that the only reason I’m in the band is because I bring the average age down by 10 years.

Turiel: There was that trepidation of, “Okay, Bee Thousand is amazing. How do you follow that up?” Then you’re five songs into the album, and you’ve already heard “Watch Me Jumpstart,” and “As We Go Up, We Go Down,” and “A Salty Salute,” and the big hits are not even going to be showing up for a little while longer. And immediately I knew this album was amazing. I knew that that was it. I’m in forever here. This is just unbelievable how good it is.

Lombardi: I think there was an appreciation for a certain level of almost outsider art. Finding some odd record at a record store that doesn’t look familiar, and taking it home, you don’t recognize the band name or the artwork, or maybe it doesn’t even have any artwork, and putting it on your turntable and hearing something that blows your mind.

Alien Lanes made enough of a splash for the band to get invited on MTV’s The Jon Stewart Show for their first national TV appearance.

Turiel: I think Jon Stewart was four or five days before the album came out.

Sprout: I remember being in the green room and Jon Stewart came down. I thought that was pretty cool move. He seemed like a really nice guy. It was just sort of surreal because when you watch this stuff on TV, it looks different. You know, when you’re onstage you see the cameras and stuff. And the audience is really small. And then you get the idea that this is being broadcast all over the world. I remember thinking I was going to be really nervous, but I wasn’t when I got up there.

Pollard: I was so horrified I couldn’t open my eyes. I knew how many people were watching. But when I watched it, I thought it went pretty well.

Mitchell: You can’t smoke cigarettes on the show. But the first thing I did was fucking light up a cigarette. That’s just the way I did it, man. Like, I can’t hardly play without smoking.

Turiel: Up until that point, they were such a mystery to me. Because their albums had all these names that were associated with contributing to the album. And I was like, “How many people are in this band?” I still have the VHS cassette. It starts to wobble a little bit because I’ve watched it so many times.

The success of GBV’s mid-’90s albums led to touring opportunities far beyond Dayton. Their most high-profile road gig was Lollapalooza in 1994.

Sprout: Lollapalooza was a blast. We were on one of the side stages, but we knew one of the Deal sisters [from The Breeders], so we could get backstage on the big stage and hang out with them.

Farley: I’m pretty sure we were drunk the entire Lollapalooza tour.

Pollard: We came on at 1 in the afternoon, so we had to start getting drunk in the morning.

Mitchell: Oh man, we were the bad boys.

Farley: I think a lot of that was part of the “everything’s brand new and this is exciting” kind of thing. “It’s a celebration, bitches!” every night.

Demos: We were late to one of the shows because we had to find a liquor store and were warned not to be late again or we would be kicked off the tour. I’m pretty sure we were late again but never kicked off the tour.

Pollard: We were told beforehand that we get two warnings for festival infractions, and on the third, you’re out! We received our third warning after our second show. But the crew loved us and before the next show they told us, “Lecture’s later — just get onstage and play.” We overslept that morning and were gonna be late, so we had to stop at a liquor store for whiskey to ensure the appropriate level of inebriation. We got there five minutes before we were scheduled to come on, and as the curtain was rising, I downed about a third of my bottle of Jack, and I attained the appropriate level of inebriation.

Demos: We were also reprimanded because Mitch’s van had a gas leak and was considered to be a safety hazard.

Mitchell: It was all covered with graffiti and duct tape. It’s the van in the “Motor Away” video. We pulled in next to these million dollar tour buses and our van comes in leaking gas and the guys were all, “Get that van out of here! You’re going to blow up the whole fucking place!” They made us park the van way out in the field.

Demos: Also Mitch and I borrowed a golf cart that security would use and we drove all over the festival grounds hammered and would pull up to people and ask them if they seen a Titleist.

Mitchell: We were doing scenes from Caddyshack.

Demos: We thought it was funny. The festival people did not.

There was also an inevitable confrontation with one of the tour’s biggest stars: Billy Corgan of Smashing Pumpkins.

Sprout: He had a basketball net that he took with him on tour and I threw it on top of the bus or something. I guess he was a big player. Bob and Jim were both big basketball players in school so they played him and I think it got a little bit rough at a point. Billy grabbed his net and tore off.

After the release of Alien Lanes, Guided By Voices continued their drunken adventures on the road.

Pollard: I like being on the road with a band. Who wouldn’t? I guess The Beatles or Andy Partridge? I’m old now so I don’t stay out long at all.

Mitchell: The records, it was more of a controlled environment, where it was just all about the songs. But when the live gigs happened, you’ve got all the stimulus from the people and drinking and everything else and it takes it to another level.

Turiel: I saw them on that tour a couple of times. It was the first time I ever met Bob at a show. I met him at a pre-show thing when the For All Good Kids record came out, that bootleg, and they were doing this kind of purposely half-assed in-store thing. They were just in the back room drinking beers, and they would come out into the record store every once in a while, and if you saw them you would get them to sign the record.

Demos: Touring at that time was amazing. The excitement and enthusiasm was off the charts. We were young and not phased by the hardships of the road. We were living the dream. It was an amazing time and I feel fortunate that I was able to be a part of it.

Farley: It was super low budget.

Mitchell: There’s so much shit I don’t remember doing. I don’t remember things. We weren’t posers, we were real. We would drink your ass under the table in a heartbeat.

Sprout: We traveled in Mitch’s utility van. We’d leave Dayton real early in the morning and drive all the way to Philadelphia. I think that’s 10, 11 hours. A lot of time we wouldn’t eat and we’d just sleep on top of the equipment. And then we’d get to Philadelphia and they’d have a party ready for us. So we’d be drinking for 11 hours on the way there. Then we’d be drinking at these parties, and then we go do the show and drink some more. It was just insane. I don’t know how we did it. We’d end up sleeping either in the van or sometimes there was a couch in the back of the club or something.

Mitchell: We were playing a gig somewhere, I think it was Tennessee, and we didn’t have any place to stay. I was walking down an alley and saw a couch laying there and I slept on the couch.

Sprout: It was pretty rough. But you love doing it. I didn’t feel like I was in danger or anything. It was something you just did because that’s the way it was.

But this version of Guided By Voices wasn’t destined to hold together for long. Demos had already left before Alien Lanes came out. Sprout eventually left after 1996’s Under The Bushes, Under The Stars. The rest of the so-called “classic” lineup would be gone by the following year. But Pollard would keep the band going with new lineups and hundreds of new songs for years to come.

Sprout: When we got a record deal for Vampire On Titus, I thought, “That’s it! We’re there! This is all I want! Put this album out and I’ve done it.” Then it just kept snowballing and kept going on and on and on. I mean, you just kind of ride this wave as long as it goes. I would have stayed on it, except my son was born when I was on tour in Vancouver. Then my daughter came along around the time of [Sprout’s 1997 solo album] Moonflower Plastic and I just couldn’t be away from home anymore. I wanted to see my kids grow up and I didn’t want to put the band off where they couldn’t do anything. So I left.

Fans still argue about which GBV album is best. But Alien Lanes inarguably belongs in the top tier of the band’s releases, as well as ’90s indie rock.

Sweeney: When I hear it, it still sounds fucking incredible to me.

Demos: It’s a hell of a record.

Sprout: I think Propeller launched us. Bee Thousand got us a little more recognized. Then this one was the followup. It had to be at least as good and I think it is. Maybe even better.

Diehl: People don’t really cite it enough, but damn, that was an influential record. There would be no Strokes without GBV as a forebear, for example. And I think it holds up just as pretty much anything Robert Pollard is involved with does. Even the most scattered GBV release has astonishing songs on it. Alien Lanes wasn’t scattered though, which makes it defining. The hooks, virtuosity, and sheer spontaneity captured pretty much remain unparalleled.

Farley: Even when I was in the band later, I’ve always been kind of a super fan. So I look at Alien Lanes from a different perspective, like I wasn’t looking at it as a listener. Like, trying to remember all the chords to “Evil Speakers.” It never goes back to the same part twice. Everyone thinks that these are super simple one-minute pop songs. But Bob puts a lot of thought into them. A lot of them are the trickiest songs, especially on Alien Lanes. Because they don’t follow really a formula and there’s like a lot of unpredictability to them.

Cosloy: The songs are what makes it great. Certainly it’s crammed with many of the all-time GBV faves: “Watch Me Jumpstart,” “Game Of Pricks,” “My Valuable Hunting Knife,” “Motor Away,” “Closer You Are,” “King & Caroline. All killer, no filler. If I had to rank the albums, I’d probably put this a close second to Bee Thousand with Under The Bushes, Under The Stars coming in third. But that’s not meant as a diss to the earlier stuff, nor am I in the camp of those who aren’t partial to the post-Matador material, I just wish I had an extra brain to absorb all of it.

Sprout: I think from that point, from Alien Lanes on, things changed quite a bit. I look at that picture on the back and it’s pre-New York City. It’s like the innocence was gone after that.

Mitchell: That is the real Guided by Voices. Like it or not, that’s what it is. We were all in it together, man. We did it. We had a certain chemistry together. We’ve known each other for a long time, you know what I mean?

Pollard: I love Alien Lanes, but there were people saying, “OK, enough lo-fi. Now let’s see what you can do in a big studio.” And then when we started making records with better production there were people saying, “No man, we wanna hear those noisy, short lo-fi songs.” Alien Lanes and the people associated with it gave me the confidence and drive to continue. To keep writing and recording songs and making records. Some people think too many. But that’s not gonna stop me!

Get the Alien Lanes reissue here via Matador Records.

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Top Chef Power Rankings Episode 7: Danny Trejo’s Machete Shark Tank

Post author By GoneTrending
Post date May 1, 2020

Actor-cum-restauranteur Danny Trejo completed his transformation into the vato Paul Newman this week, with an appearance on Top Chef. The grizzled actor, who has a tattoo of your mom on his chest, was there to judge quickfire challenge based on, what else, tacos.

It did cheer me a bit to see that even these wildly experienced white tablecloth microgreen huffers still mostly couldn’t make tortillas worth a damn. That’s relatable content, baby! Don’t try to copy the abuelitas pumping them out one after another with their little tortilla presses, man. If you’re not over 50 and born south of the Rio Grande that shit never works. Only way I’ve ever made decent tortillas is one-by-one is with a straight rolling pin. You can really taste that five minutes of elbow grease. So go ahead and add that lard, those things have to be filling just to replace the calories you burn making them.

Aaaanyway, the twist for this challenge was that the only utensils the chefs were allowed to use was, that’s right, a machete, as an homage to the famous Danny Trejo movie, Machete. Clever, fun, or patronizing? If Paul Newman was alive do you think he’d have to judge an egg-eating challenge or something? Oh yeah, and Karen came back from Last Chance Kitchen after getting eliminated last episode. I guess that means it’s over for Nini and Calamity Jenn. Oh well.

With a blank taco canvas, all but two of the chefs made fish or seafood tacos, which is a little boring, but least most of the fish tacos were fried. You can fuck all the way off with a non-fried fish taco. It would’ve been nice to see some carne asada, some carnitas, some shredded beef, some al pastor, some barbacoa — but most taco fillings take at least six hours to do right and these chefs only had 30 minutes. Not really enough time to steam off a cow’s face underground, even though we all know steamed cow face makes the best tacos.

Instead, as I said, they mostly made fried fish. Though a couple added caviar on top. Really, guys? Caviar? Caviar on a taco is like when people put gold leaf on food. Oh good, $20 more for something that tastes basically the same.

This week’s elimination challenge was build-up for next week’s Restaurant Wars. The challenge? Pitch your restaurant concept to the judges and guest judges, along with a “mood board” and a few sample dishes. Wow, a mood board, so analog. This was like Shark Tank meets freshman dorm room. Sadly there were no eighties bro chefs to pitch Lamborghini Countach Bistro or La Trattoria Kathy Ireland.

POWER RANKINGS

9 (-3) ((Eliminated)) Eric Adjepong

AKA: Ghana. Aka Thesis. Aka Uncle Rico. Aka Kanye West Africa.

Wow, shitty week for Eric. He opened this week’s episode by making a flour tortilla — I like flour tortillas better than corn, there, I said it — but left it underfilled and landed in the bottom three. C’mon, man, everyone knows Danny Trejo likes a thicc taco, just ask your mom.

It didn’t help that Eric made his taco with un-fried fish. For which he compensated by adding chorizo (decent idea) and then ruined anew by adding caviar. Honestly, how the hell are you gonna taste caviar in a taco that has chorizo?

Then in the elimination challenge, Eric once again pitched Middle Passage, his restaurant concept based on the Trans-Atlantic slave trade. Just like last season when he pitched it, he ended up going home at the end of the episode. Now, the producers and judges would have us believe that this was a result of Eric being in the weeds, overcooking his duck, dropping sausages on the floor, and delivering a confusing pitch that called for a restaurant that was, “casual but still formal.”

Or… maybe white people just can’t handle being reminded of slavery. (Not me though, I’m one of the good ones. Please keep this in mind when the revolution comes.) Anyway, I hope Eric makes it through Last Chance Kitchen.

8. (-1) Lee Anne Wong

AKA: Frazzle. Aka Loud Mom. Aka 911. Aka The Teflon Wong.

I know Top Chef likes to fluff the resumes of every guest judge by immediately cutting to interviews with the contestants gushing about that guest judge, but when Danny Trejo came out they cut away to Lee Anne saying “I’m a huge fan, I’ve seen all of his movies.”

I don’t want to be the fan police, but there is just absolutely no way that is true. Did she see Cross 3? Did she see Slayer: The Repentless Killogy? Did she see Acceleration? Black Licorice? Big Kill? Bare Knuckle Brawler? 3 From Hell? Bullets of Justice? Madness in the Method? The Margarita Man? The Outsider? Every 9 Hours? The Short history of the Long Road?

Because those are just the movies Danny Trejo made in 2019. Danny Trejo works more than Eric Roberts. I doubt there’s a person alive who has seen all of Danny Trejo’s movies, even Danny Trejo.

Anyway, Lee Anne’s pandering actually paid off when she landed in the top three with a masa fried rockfish taco. Then she pulled a Lee Anne in the elimination challenge by getting behind, putting up food the judges didn’t like, and somehow still not going home yet again. Her pitch was for “Hanai Mama,” an upscale casual Hawaiian concept — which is not exactly novel, but I’d probably still eat there — with dishes Tom described as “oversalted veg and a bowl of cold pork.”

The Teflon Wong strikes again! Somehow none of her bad food sticks to her. Is it possible that Lee Anne proves me wrong in the end? As they say, revenge is a dish best porked cold.

7. (-2) Stephanie Cmar

AKA: C-Monster. Aka Underdog. Aka C-Truffle.

The last remaining member of Padma’s Angels (note to producers, stop trying to make Padma’s Angels happen), Steph went very un-C-Monster by doing a non-seafood taco. The C-Monster’s ground lamb was a solid choice, the closest you can get to underground steamed lamb face in 30 minutes, and Danny Trejo awarded her both the win, immunity, and his respect.

After Danny jumped her into his gang, Steph pitched Lucy, a “modern elevated comfort food contemporary American cuisine” concept. Which is like a word salad of every restaurant concept of the last 10 years. She pled ignorance to the pitching process on account of working as private chef for most of her career. Wait, but you do eat at restaurants, right?

She went on to get ripped by the judges for a “non-concept concept,” bad schnitzel, and guest judge Kevin Boehm slayed the other judges saying “She should’ve called her restaurant ‘Immunity.’”

“They’re laughing really hard so they must not have liked it,” said Steph, watching the judges. Points for perceptiveness, I guess.

6. (+3) Karen Akunowicz

AKA: Good Witch. Aka Glenda. Aka Aunt Kitty. Aka Rosie The Triveter

The Good Witch conjured up a resurrection spell this week that brought her back from elimination, with a fresh pink stripe on her head to boot. Damn if she isn’t totally pulling that off.

She served up a well-received fried rockfish with kimchi (“I love kimchi,” said Danny Trejo, who must be pretty worldly by now from having traveled the world making 27 movies a year) in the quickfire. Then, in the elimination, she pitched Three Black Crowes — a dim sum concept that the judges lazily described as “not very Chinese.”

Tom said she should’ve leaned into the Italian-Chinese fusion that seemed to be suggested by her focaccia scallion pancake, though I guarantee they would’ve ripped her just as hard for that. The Spaghetti Dragon? Mustache Panda? Three Crows In Speedos? I have lots of name ideas for that concept if she ever gets a do-over. Anyway, Karen hung around the middle of the pack once again.

5. (+3) Brian Malarkey

AKA: Shenanigans. Aka Grandpa Fancy. Aka Squirrely. Aka The Imp. Aka Leprechón.

Big week for Shenanigans, who may be a total spaz but has opened the most restaurants of any of the contestants. This week his experience showed at least as much as his ADD.

Shenanigans is from San Diego, so in the quickfire, he naturally he served up the kind of taco that San Diego is famous for… that’s right, I’m talking about “shrimp tempura with baby Asian mole.”

Unpredictable to the end, that Malarkey. I bet his whole family has PTSD. He then rolled his taco concept into his restaurant pitch — D2, a “Baja Asian Street” concept highlighting Baja California’s Asian community (sure?). It was a restaurant he promised would “entice millennials,” which he illustrated with a mood board that looked like it had a 10x model of his own wrist beads stapled to it.

His dishes included a hamachi aguachile (that’s a crudo by another name, chug your drink) and a braised oxtail with gojujang and date mole. All of which he pitched as being inspired by the “great love story from the movie Shrek, between the donkey and the dragon.”

Hey, it’s not racist if it’s an obscure reference from Shrek. The judges… loved it. Incredible. How does Malarkey do it? My explanation: leprechauns have magical powers. Lotta people forget that.

4. (even) Bryan Voltaggio

AKA: Flatbill Dad. Aka Bry Voltage. Aka Kyle Shanahan. Aka Linkin Clark Griswold. Aka Family Bry

This week was yet another sub-par performance from Family Bry, the only contestant to have also been on Top Chef Masters. You might be wondering why I still have him locked at number four? Well, it’s true, Bry Guy’s stock keeps falling, but who am I supposed to put above him? Steph just had a sub-par week, Lee Anne is always on the bottom, Karen got sent home last week, and Malarkey is… you know… Malarkey.

As much as I love his dad laugh of quiet desperation, Bry Guy probably should’ve gone home for his taco. The man served Danny Trejo a wood-roasted salmon taco with salmon eggs on top. Salmon eggs! I can never get past having used salmon eggs as fish bait, which is maybe a personal problem, but can we at least agree to keep them off tacos? Keep the salmon eggs in your salmon womb, imo.

Bry Voltage then pitched “Thatcher and Rye,” while revealing that his kid is named “Thatcher” which is maybe the whitest thing I’ve ever heard on this show with the possible exception of salmon eggs on tacos. He tried to pitch it as a more casual, more entry-level version of his usual food. Because when I think “Thatcher,” I think working-class salt-of-the-Earth. Needless to say, the judges just weren’t having it. Voltaggios can’t pull off fast-casual, their birthing table had a white tablecloth.

3. (even) Kevin Gillespie

AKA: Hops. Aka Oops All Kevins. Aka Bachelor Fried Rice. Aka Thicc Kev.

My man Thicc Kev keeps bringing the heat. That’s two wins in a row (both shared). Still, I just can’t bring myself to put him ahead of Gregory or Melissa.

Amazingly, Kevin was the only chef to put pork in his taco — delivering a mojo-roasted pork. That didn’t quite get him a top-three finish, but his restaurant pitch, Country Captain, pitching the South as an under-appreciated stop on the world spice trade, was a winner. You gotta respect a dish where the chicken breast actually looks tasty and not like semi-edible drywall filler.

Woke Devil’s Advocate Guy Says: Oh sure, the judges love the plantation south concept better than the slave trade one, what a surprise.

Kevin’s food always looks smart, logical, and well-conceived, but he’s competing against Gregory and Melissa’s wow factor. I know I’m going out on a pretty big limb here when I say this, but I think only time will tell.

2. (even) Melissa King

AKA: Zen Master. Aka Dimples. Aka Shutterstock.

It’s true, Melissa didn’t make the top three with her fried mahi taco and she shared her top finish in the elimination challenge with Gregory, Kevin, and Malarkey. But that corn agnolotti looked incredible (for Sabrina, her modern Asian Californian concept).

If this show was a menu that’s the first thing I’m ordering.

What can you say about Melissa? She’s as calm as a Hindu cow, as put together as a catalog spread, and never seems to make mistakes. She’s hyper-competent and almost boringly likable. It’s hard to imagine how anyone beats her.

1. (even) Gregory Gourdet

AKA: Kravitz. Aka Hepcat. Aka Lids. Aka Pollos Hermanos.

And then there’s Gregory, the male version of Melissa. Gregory had an uncharacteristically off quickfire challenge, struggling with his tortilla (didn’t I tell you them shits are hard?) and turning in a fish taco that was too salty. Damn, you know it’s pretty salty if Danny Trejo comments on it, the man was born with deep facial crevices and a michelada in one hand.

But then, in an extremely Gregory move, he stormed back to win the elimination challenge, with his pitch for Kann, a wood-fired Haitian food concept featuring whole fish, braised oxtail, and ripe plantains. I don’t think I’ve ever had whole fried fish that tasted as good as it looked, but Gregory’s was roasted in the wood-fired oven so it only looked fried. Nicely done. And ripe plantains? Yes please, just put them directly in my butt.

I don’t know that I’ve seen someone who looked like such a wire-to-wire favorite on this show since… well, since Gregory’s original season, which he somehow didn’t win. Does he find redemption this season or become Top Chef‘s Buffalo Bills?

Vince Mancini is on Twitter. Read more of his cooking commentary and mom jokes in UPROXX’s Cooking Battles. For past Top Chef Power Rankings, go here.