May 06, 2017 -- Cleveland, OH -- Guided By Voices, Mirrors

Venue:  The Grog Shop

In recent years, my interest in Guided By Voices has been maintained by some of my favorite artists showing their love and appreciation for them.  Eddie Vedder recently brought up Guided By Voices at their Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony.  Ben Gibbard, of Death cab For Cutie, recently played and released a cover of GBV's 'Tractor Rape Chain' that I am proud to own on a cool Record Store Day 9"  record.

Only a few months before seeing this show, I decided to get into them a little more than just the 'Best Of'.  I started with their most popular album 'Bee Thousand' and it is really good.

Lead singer and primary songwriter for GBV, Robert Pollard, is one of the most prolific songwriters in history.  In 2017, he had released his 100th album.  This was actually my third time seeing Robert Pollard.  I saw him open up for Pearl Jam as a solo artist at two shows in 2006, but he played almost all solo songs off his album that was current at that time.

Suffice to say, it can be a bit daunting and even kind of a slog to weed through what to listen to in preparation of a GBV show.  I looked at recent setlists and bought a few albums accordingly.  He only regularly played one song that I had heard at his solo shows in 2006, so my previous experience with Pollard didn't account for much.

The opening band, a Cleveland psych-garage-punk band from the 1970s, called Mirrors, was a fun start to the night.  I mean no disrespect by stating that it is always interesting seeing men in their 60s playing subversive punk rock.  The highlight of their set was either a song that I believe was titled 'God Says Fuck You', or their song about a man falling in love with an amputee.

Guided By Voices set was marred a little by The Grog Shops predictably muddy sound, but they put on a very impassioned show.  The crowd was great, but maybe a little too drunk, and the band was energetic.  It was nice seeing GBV guitarist Doug Gillard again.  I had previously seen him playing guitar for Nada Surf.

I knew about half the songs they played, which isn't too bad considering that they have thousands of songs to pull from.  They pulled heavily from their newest album, which I had luckily done my homework with before the show.  He played songs from some of his obscure side project bands, including 'Boston Spaceships' and 'ESP Ohio'.  It was fun and a kind of amazing watching die-hard fans singing along to some of the most obscure songs.

My personal highlights includeda cover of the Monkee's 'Saturday's Child', and an awesome crowd sing-a-long to 'Tractor Rape Chain'.  I would see them again, and hopefully by the next time I will maybe recognize 75% of the songs?

Interesting fact:  Robert Pollard, at age 59, can do a "rock star" kick up to his head.  Its impressive.