Shocker in Gloomtown

It seems improbable now, but I first heard "Shocker in Gloomtown" on a Breeders EP. That disc, Head to Toe, featured a new Breeders track and two covers whose inclusion guaranteed my purchase -- Sebadoh's "Freed Pig" and Guided by Voices' "Shocker in Gloomtown." I was marginally interested in the Breeders at that point, but very interested in their takes on songs from two favorite bands. It was early 1994, and GBV wasn't the ubiquitous presence it would soon become. A new GBV song -- be it by the band itself or a cover -- was worth seeking out.

The Breeders version was good, but of course GBV's was better. Scat reissued its source, The Grand Hour, on CD later in 1994, giving those of us who missed out on this pre- Vampire on Titus single a chance to catch up.

"Shocker in Gloomtown" is the EP's standout, a poppy blast built on a manic riff (from the school of "Postal Blowfish") and Pollard's great lyric. I haven't really paid attention to the lyric in its entirety before, instead picking out a line here or there. It's a funny tale, the kind that Pollard seems to have in limitless supply, of someone baring his ass in a grocery store. Shocker in Gloomtown indeed.

I'll Get Over It

"I'll Get Over It" feels like the (demo for an) opening track to a grand concept album, a rock opera if you will. It starts with some thumps on a floor tom followed by an over-mic'd acoustic guitar strum. Then Pollard sings:

"During the initiation
Please refrain from conversation
Leave your opinions at home
Put your cigarettes out
I've been thinking a lot
I might have difficulty
I've lost my insensity
But I'll get over it."

But of course, there is no rock opera, but a hodge podge EP full of songs that entice and vex, that blend painful amateurism and engagingly sloppy perfection. It's gone in 39 second, ushering in "Shocker in Gloomtown."

The song seems to have been part of the massive batch at one time considered for the Bee Thousand album, as it appears on the 3-LP reissue from Scat Records, leading off side F, whose first six songs recreate The Grand Hour EP in total.

Off the Floor

At the time The Grand Hour EP was released in 1993, most people (read: record store clerks and obsessive collectors) were still likely trying to figure out what exactly Guided by Voices was. Sure, it was a band from Dayton, but was it a pop band, an indie rock band or an experimental psych band? Anyone lucky enough to get the 7" single upon its release did so before Vampire on Titus -- and the CD issue with Propeller tacked on -- was issued (the EP was Scat 28 to VOT's Scat 31 for you matrix number freaks). For them, it was probably the first taste of GBV. For those who jumped aboard for the long and twisting ride that followed, it soon became clear that GBV was a little of all of the above and more, but judging from these six songs, it would have been hard to tell.

"Shocker in Gloomtown" was the "hit" from the EP, but "Off the Floor" is the better indicator of what GBV was and how it operated. The song is slight, just 53 seconds long, but it reveals much about the way GBV approached recording in the days before it broke nationally. It begins with a 10-second snippet from the intro to "Hot Freaks," a song that wouldn't surface until a year later on the Bee Thousand album. That abruptly cuts out and is replaced by what sounds like a distorted portion of the song that precedes it on the EP, "Alien Lanes" (oddly enough, the EP includes both that song and the song "Bee Thousand," two tracks that lent their names to subsequent LPs but which appear on neither). It's all fuzzed-out wah wah guitar punctuated by Robert Pollard's shouted vocals. Suddenly, an acoustic guitar strum comes in over top, and guitarst Tobin Sprout begins to sing. All the while, the Pollard track plays underneath. It sounds like Sprout used a cassette tape that had previously been used to record another song, and that either the previous song is still playing on a separate track or the old song is bleeding through onto his new recording.

Either way, the effect is disorienting and strangely appealing. It takes a simple song -- one that sounds like a less-successful early run for Sprout's later "Esther's Day" without the hook -- and turns it into a sound collage of the type that Pollard would create often throughout his career. It's an indication that the band was willing to let happy accidents stand and use the limitations of the four-track recorder to its advantage. It can also be seen as a dividing line of sorts: If it's unintended cacophony appeals, you'll probably forgive Pollard and Co. just about anything. If it grates, you probably will never be more than a casual fan.