Currently viewing the category: "Robert Pollard"

Love is stronger than witchcraft

On May 29, 2011 · 2 Comments · In Robert Pollard, rock video, The Devil Went Home and Puked

[Editor's Note: Something from the archives for your Sunday viewing pleasure.]

I believe that to be true. I also believe it to be the title of one of Robert Pollard’s best songs ever, certainly of his solo output, maybe even just… ever. So what I did, a few years back when it came out… I [...]

[Editor's Note: Something from the archives for your Sunday viewing pleasure.]

I believe that to be true. I also believe it to be the title of one of Robert Pollard’s best songs ever, certainly of his solo output, maybe even just… ever. So what I did, a few years back when it came out… I made a video for it. The footage is a combination of shaky camcorder video from: Guided by Voices’ Last Show Ever in Chicago on New Year’s Eve 2004; a couple of nights’ worth of drinking in and around Dayton before Bob and I went on a very short book tour to promote Guided By Voices: A Brief History in Fall 2006. And some random HD camera tests I did around Los Angeles in preparation for a short film I was planning to make (and in fact made, but we’ll get to that some other time).

My editor — the supremely talented Stacy Goldate — and I decided that the footage could be structured into a generalized song-related theme that meant we would have to feature Bob’s then-girlfriend and now wife, Sarah. I was a little apprehensive about doing this because not everyone enjoys seeing himself in a rock video. But I guess Sarah, who is one of the nicest human beings on earth, either didn’t mind or got over it because I believe parts of this one as well as another one I cut together for “Bughouse” (from the Albini sessions for the aborted Power of Suck project) are both included on the upcoming The Devil Went Home and Puked DVD. I’m not entirely sure because I haven’t actually watched it yet, or maybe I did and my memory is very bad, but I think I remember Bob telling me he was going to put them on there. Of course, the quality of the video on the DVD versus what I have posted here is much better, meaning that you should buy the DVD, because in addition to my clumsy cinematographic efforts it also contains a lot of actually entertaining stuff.

Trivia: the cover of Bob’s second “comedy” album, Meet The King: Asshole 2 is taken from this video.

Oh, and if anyone’s interested, the opening credit sequence is just a close-up of a blue lava-lamp. And Fiat Lux is a pseudonym, which will be familiar to anyone who read Artificial Light. I use it sometimes because I’m usually more than a little embarrassed to see my name in public. Whatever.

Love Is Stronger Than Witchcraft from James Greer on Vimeo.

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Finnegans Wake

On April 4, 2011 · 2 Comments · In finnegans wake, james joyce, Robert Pollard, unlikely connections

 I know many people—deeply serious, scholarly people—have never managed to make it through James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake. Perfectly reasonable. Life is short, art is long, and FW is impenetrable. Howsomever: I recently discovered an online resource that might make it less task-y and more joy-y. It’s the entire [...]

 I know many people—deeply serious, scholarly people—have never managed to make it through James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake. Perfectly reasonable. Life is short, art is long, and FW is impenetrable. Howsomever: I recently discovered an online resource that might make it less task-y and more joy-y. It’s the entire text of the book with glosses for every sentence, sometimes those given by Joyce himself, so you know it’s not some grad student in a carrel somewhere in the womb of Alderman Library making stuff up in a notebook.

Try it on for size here.

For a long time I didn’t have my own copy, because I had given it to Robert Pollard from the band Guided By Voices, of which you may have heard. He plunders it on occasion for song titles and lyrics. For instance.