Expecting Brainchild
"Bob, would you and Living Praise Choir lead us in 'To God Be the Glory'?"
So begins one of the great songs on Guided by Voices' Vampire on Titus album, "Expecting Brainchild." I remember thinking the first time I heard this, it being the third GBV song I'd ever heard, that perhaps it was an actual tape of someone asking Robert Pollard to lead the choir. I think I can be forgiven for thinking so. I mean, Guided by Voices is such a Christian rock band-sounding name, isn't it? With only this collection of 33 songs to go on (this was the original Vampire on Titus/Propeller CD on Scat, circa 1993), I had no idea that this Bob was a beer-swilling elementary school teacher who rocked out in his garage with his drinking buddies every weekend. For all I knew, he was a lapsed church choir director who bought a four-track so he could channel (exorcise?) his inner Pete Townshend.
With hindsight, of course, that's ridiculous. That snippet of found sound was simply a great intro to a catchy song. It reminds me of the snippets from the RCA Living Stereo album Sounds in Space I found at a thrift store that I used as the intro to every mix tape I made between 1995 and 1998: "Countdown... 10 seconds to firing. 10, 9, 8..." and so on. Fourteen years on from that first listen to GBV, the real revelation is that Pollard has used snippets like this so infrequently. Sure, found sound pops up now and again in his work, but for a dedicated visual collage maker like Pollard, he has done surprisingly little to explore the aural side of that art.
All of that aside, "Expecting Brainchild," is a great early GBV song that transcends the muddy fidelity of the four track. It has a great riff, a great hook and is yet another example of how Pollard can take one word and make it carry an entire chorus as he repeats the word "time" in the lyric "It's time to draw the line" enough times to propel a multi-note melody.
Lyrically the song has some compelling imagery. It begins with lines about scholars and flunkys, incinerators in blood-red skies and the admonition that if you kill the head then the body will die. Then he drops in this nugget: "I can't tell you that I'm happy, but I can tell you that my clothes are snappy." The second verse is much more direct, Pollard sharing the news that "Superman died tonight, ate a pound of Kryptonite. Drank a quart of brotherly love, fell straight from the sky above." He then seems to get even more specific, singing that "if there's a hell below, Kenneth Ray ain't gonna go. He lost his soul in the Korean War, I lost my concentration when he opened the door." Who is Kenneth Ray? A friend, perhaps, though Pollard isn't old enough to have been the contemporary of someone who fought in Korea. A friend of his dad, maybe? Or just someone from Dayton notably scarred by combat. Then again, Pollard has proven adept at crafting fictional characters for his songs, so Kenneth Ray may simply be a name that fit well in the lyric.
The song has plenty going for it, and would seem to be one that would transfer well to the stage. According to the Guided by Voices database, however, it was only performed four times, including the July 1993 show at CBGBs at the New Music Seminar that helped to launch the band into hipster orbit.
So begins one of the great songs on Guided by Voices' Vampire on Titus album, "Expecting Brainchild." I remember thinking the first time I heard this, it being the third GBV song I'd ever heard, that perhaps it was an actual tape of someone asking Robert Pollard to lead the choir. I think I can be forgiven for thinking so. I mean, Guided by Voices is such a Christian rock band-sounding name, isn't it? With only this collection of 33 songs to go on (this was the original Vampire on Titus/Propeller CD on Scat, circa 1993), I had no idea that this Bob was a beer-swilling elementary school teacher who rocked out in his garage with his drinking buddies every weekend. For all I knew, he was a lapsed church choir director who bought a four-track so he could channel (exorcise?) his inner Pete Townshend.
With hindsight, of course, that's ridiculous. That snippet of found sound was simply a great intro to a catchy song. It reminds me of the snippets from the RCA Living Stereo album Sounds in Space I found at a thrift store that I used as the intro to every mix tape I made between 1995 and 1998: "Countdown... 10 seconds to firing. 10, 9, 8..." and so on. Fourteen years on from that first listen to GBV, the real revelation is that Pollard has used snippets like this so infrequently. Sure, found sound pops up now and again in his work, but for a dedicated visual collage maker like Pollard, he has done surprisingly little to explore the aural side of that art.
All of that aside, "Expecting Brainchild," is a great early GBV song that transcends the muddy fidelity of the four track. It has a great riff, a great hook and is yet another example of how Pollard can take one word and make it carry an entire chorus as he repeats the word "time" in the lyric "It's time to draw the line" enough times to propel a multi-note melody.
Lyrically the song has some compelling imagery. It begins with lines about scholars and flunkys, incinerators in blood-red skies and the admonition that if you kill the head then the body will die. Then he drops in this nugget: "I can't tell you that I'm happy, but I can tell you that my clothes are snappy." The second verse is much more direct, Pollard sharing the news that "Superman died tonight, ate a pound of Kryptonite. Drank a quart of brotherly love, fell straight from the sky above." He then seems to get even more specific, singing that "if there's a hell below, Kenneth Ray ain't gonna go. He lost his soul in the Korean War, I lost my concentration when he opened the door." Who is Kenneth Ray? A friend, perhaps, though Pollard isn't old enough to have been the contemporary of someone who fought in Korea. A friend of his dad, maybe? Or just someone from Dayton notably scarred by combat. Then again, Pollard has proven adept at crafting fictional characters for his songs, so Kenneth Ray may simply be a name that fit well in the lyric.
The song has plenty going for it, and would seem to be one that would transfer well to the stage. According to the Guided by Voices database, however, it was only performed four times, including the July 1993 show at CBGBs at the New Music Seminar that helped to launch the band into hipster orbit.
Labels: Vampire on Titus
posted by John at 6:37 AM
2 Comments:
Good song. I like the posts with some story or background to them. I always thought "Guided by Voices" would make a great name for a boat.
I always took 'Guided by Voices' as a very over-the-top sixties psychedelic
band name.
Coming from a Pentecostal background, the sample in question always sounded very familiar to me. A bit of a puberal joke, with the heavy rock-riff following.
Great song indeed - great album - great album title (perhaps the greatest GBV album title).
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