Glad Girls
"1, 2, 3, 4, tell the teacher what she wore."
With that sing-song jump-rope rhyme, Robert Pollard kicks off a gleefully drunken rendition of "Glad Girls" during a November 2004 show at the 40 Watt in Athens, Ga., part of Guided by Voices' "Electrifying Conclusion" tour. The song, a ready-made hit if ever there was one, of course wasn't, which was why it was buried 54 songs into a 60 song set at a sweaty club on a farewell tour instead of being sung in front of hordes of screaming fans at an arena show. Their loss.
It's an impossibly catchy song that rocks, has an instantly memorable hook and even includes the always-marketable line "only wanna get you high." And still the masses yawned with disinterest.
Pollard even ensured that the song could have the largest possible audience, writing yet another song about nothing much at all, one that doesn't challenge the listener in any way, one that ultimately appeals to the slacker in all of us. Pollard assures us there will be no coronation, no flowers flowing, no graduation, no trumpets blowing... Essentially, there will be no fanfare, no celebration. He's just a guy that, no matter what you've accomplished, he just wants to get you high. The closest he gets to deep meaning is in the bridge where he urges the listener -- one of the glad girls, one assumes -- to "confess the dreams of good and bad men all around, some are lost and some have found."
Asked in Jim Greer's GBV book to expound upon the song's meaning, Pollard was typically flip:
Greer: "Glad Girls"?
Pollard: "I don't know. They're all right."
With that sing-song jump-rope rhyme, Robert Pollard kicks off a gleefully drunken rendition of "Glad Girls" during a November 2004 show at the 40 Watt in Athens, Ga., part of Guided by Voices' "Electrifying Conclusion" tour. The song, a ready-made hit if ever there was one, of course wasn't, which was why it was buried 54 songs into a 60 song set at a sweaty club on a farewell tour instead of being sung in front of hordes of screaming fans at an arena show. Their loss.
It's an impossibly catchy song that rocks, has an instantly memorable hook and even includes the always-marketable line "only wanna get you high." And still the masses yawned with disinterest.
Pollard even ensured that the song could have the largest possible audience, writing yet another song about nothing much at all, one that doesn't challenge the listener in any way, one that ultimately appeals to the slacker in all of us. Pollard assures us there will be no coronation, no flowers flowing, no graduation, no trumpets blowing... Essentially, there will be no fanfare, no celebration. He's just a guy that, no matter what you've accomplished, he just wants to get you high. The closest he gets to deep meaning is in the bridge where he urges the listener -- one of the glad girls, one assumes -- to "confess the dreams of good and bad men all around, some are lost and some have found."
Asked in Jim Greer's GBV book to expound upon the song's meaning, Pollard was typically flip:
Greer: "Glad Girls"?
Pollard: "I don't know. They're all right."
Labels: Isolation Drills
posted by John at 12:23 PM
2 Comments:
man, i'm a huge pollardite and even i "yawn with disinterest" whenever this one comes up. boring, boring, boring.
happy 100th, though.
"Glad Girls" is a yawner for me, too, my least favorite song on an album that does little for me otherwise. I have friends who actively dislike GBV, though, who LOVE it.
Congrats on a century of GBV love.
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