The Stub Project: Guided By Voices – Whisky A Go-Go – 5.9.1996

Some bands are best appreciated under the influence of alcohol. Despite the trippy name, Guided By Voices are such a band. To not be drunk at their show is to not honor the spirit of the music.

As a native of Ohio, I feel like I should love Guided By Voices much more than I do. Oh sure, I dig their albums of the mid 1990s, particularly Bee Thousand and Alien Lanes, but for me, frustratingly, the whole of GBV is decidedly less than the sum of its parts. While the Dayton rockers are famous for their quick songs – if you don’t like this one, another is about to start up –  after awhile they get monotonous. The problem is that while that next song may be better (but not that much different)  than the last one, ultimately, via proximity, the not-so great songs begin to diminish their brilliant brethren.

Still, GBV certainly has enough truly great pop nuggets to string together an epic show. Despite being self-sabotaging, they are magnificent in all their paradoxical glory – how do you make such polished gems yet be so messy? It’s quite a combination and occasionally transcendent.

Unfortunately, that night they were playing the Whisky. It was a perfect storm: GBV requires the addition of alcohol and the best way to enjoy (or better yet, endure) The Whisky is to drink a bottle of the same. Foolishly, we failed to heed the call. Had we been wasted, perhaps it would have sounded great. But at best, the sound was tinny and flat, which is no surprise since the unnecessarily famous venue is essentially a very large beer can. The place traditionally sounds awful and if the crowd’s protestations in the video from the next night is any indication (posted below: the sound is actually pretty good, because it’s a soundboard, not what the audience heard), no matter how much they screwed with the speakers, it still came out fucked. Meanwhile, Pollard couldn’t hear himself:  (27:04 minutes in): “Where’s the monitor man in this fucking place? … I’m a nice guy, but I’d like to have some fucking monitors …I’ve been begging for monitors for 48 hours now. What do I have to do, suck somebody’s fucking dick?” There’s a reason only headbanging bands were generally booked at The Whisky – the sound is a joke and heavy metal fans and their bands are too stupid and addled to know it. Apparently, they think because Axl Rose played there and because of its bitchin name, The Whisky must be cool. Not so.

I went with my buddy J. and we were pretty excited about this show, but about half way through we were bored and ready to go. So we did. Maybe if we’d been drunk, it would have been a different story. Since we weren’t exactly on the band’s wavelength, we deserve some of the blame. Clearly, we should have been there for the opener, Spoon, but we weren’t. Incidentally, the same thing happened to us the one time we went to a strip club. We weren’t drunk at all. We over-intellectualized everything, felt sorry for the girls and left the club feeling dirty. Our night at the Whisky was a lot like that.

The second show of their two night stand can be viewed in its entirety here. It’s rather incredible: