On with the Show

Robert Pollard has written a surprising number of songs that seem to comment on Guided by Voices' stab at the big time with TVT Records, most all of them negative. This one, coming as the B-side to one of the singles from the band's second and final album with the label, Isolation Drills, hits close to home. Given that it backs one of the band's great pop songs, "Chasing Heather Crazy," a song that went nowhere in the commercial marketplace, it seems fitting.

"Hey why don't we all just dive into statistics river?" Pollard sings. "It sweeps along to where shitheads forget." Punctuating these lines is a chorus of sorts, "come one, yeah, come one, yeah..."

He continues: "And the deal is closed, the celebration served, bank accounts will grow, on with the show."

Easy translation: The band is told it needs to do such and such (slick production, more traditional verse-chorus-verse songs, etc.) to sell a few records, with statistics cited as part of the appeal. Pollard points out that they tried this last time with Do the Collapse to no avail. They agree to disagree, release the album, call it the band's best ever and TVT makes money regardless of whether the band clears anything on the deal.

His argument would be more powerful if the song that carried it was stronger. As it is, it's a clear B-side, decent but fairly generic.