By: Robert Pollard with Doug Gillard Appears on: Speak Kindly Of Your Volunteer Fire Department As I mentioned in the post for “Avalanche Aminos,” another song that was co-written by Robert Pollard and Doug Gillard is “Pop Zeus” from Speak Kindly Of Your Volunteer Fire Department. Just as in that song, Gillard wrote the music […]
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Unfun Glitz
By: Guided By Voices Appears on: Sweating The Plague “Unfun Glitz” features a guitar technique frequently used by Robert Pollard that involves taking an entire chord shape and shifting it either up or down a string. In this case, he’s taking a simple “power chord” shape (consisting of the root note, the fifth note, and […]
Immortals
By: Guided By Voices Appears on: Sweating The Plague “Immortals” from Sweating The Plague is fairly simple to play on guitar. There are only a few chords and a quick riff to learn. According to Doug Gillard’s “Track By Track breakdown” of Sweating The Plague on Consequence Of Sound, the riff was sung by Robert […]
Downer
By: Guided By Voices Appears on: Sweating The Plague “Downer,” the opening track from Sweating The Plague, seemed to throw a few curveballs at us fans. It sounds unlike other Guided By Voices songs, with its backwards cymbal effects, guitar harmonics, and a Robert Pollard guitar technique I’m calling “Barre Four.” You need to be […]
Heavy Like The World
By: Guided By Voices Appears on: Sweating The Plague “Heavy Like The World” is one of two revamped Suitcase tracks on Sweating The Plague, along with “Your Cricket Is Rather Unique” (the original “Heavy Like The World” was titled “I’d Choose You” and appears on Suitcase 2: American Superdream Wow). Another trait they share is […]
Ego Central High
By: Guided By Voices Appears on: Sweating The Plague There’s certainly no shortage of riff-heavy rockers on Sweating The Plague; and while “Ego Central High” lands precisely into that category, it also has an anthemic quality both in music and lyrics. When Robert Pollard sings, “Here’s a fight song for everyone,” I just imagine a […]
Street Party
By: Guided By Voices Appears on: Sweating The Plague “Street Party” was one of the original working titles of the album Sweating The Plague, so it’s kind of nice to be able to hear the song that inspired that idea. The song “Street Party” opens with an acoustic guitar strumming an A major chord, but […]
Strictly Comedy
By: Robert Pollard Appears on: Kid Marine According to its entry on GBVDB, “Strictly Comedy” from Kid Marine was only ever played live four times. Fortunately for us, there’s video footage of the band rehearsing for one of those performances on the excellent The Who Went Home And Cried documentary (which is available in its […]
Jam Warsong
By: Guided By Voices Appears on: Zeppelin Over China “Jam Warsong” is a fairly simple song to play. For most of the song, you’ll play a “boogie woogie” style blues guitar lick in the key of G. You may have noticed some similarities between this song and “Come Together” by The Beatles—both feature that style […]
Boxing About
By: Robert Pollard Appears on: Normal Happiness I’ve mentioned before on this site that it’s always easier for me to learn Robert Pollard’s songs when I can listen to either a recording of him playing it alone, usually either as a Suitcase track or a demo, or a live version. In attempting to transcribe “Boxing […]
