Guided By Voices: A Brief History – Twenty-one Years of Hunting Accidents in the Forests of Rock & Roll
By James Greer
Black Cat Books, 320 pp., $16 (paper)
Guided by Voices: A Brief History – Twenty-One Years of Hunting Accidents in the Forests of Rock & Roll is deceptively thin. Yeah, it clocks in at over 300 pages, but about 100 of those are devoted to discographies, set lists, and band genealogy. The rest is overwhelmingly Bob Pollard. That makes sense as Pollard was largely Guided by Voices, but the smattering of other voices – Pete Buck, Matador principal Gerard Cosloy, Cheap Trick drummer Bun E. Carlos, etc. – seems cobbled together without adding much. The result is more canonization than bio. Still, there’s something oddly appropriate about the disjoints in the narrative, as this is a band whose albums were defined partially by how the sound from one song to the next was dictated by which microphone was being set on which part of the floor during recording. And while Hunting Accidents does include a nominee for Best Acid Story Ever Involving a Cow (see “Steak and Eggs”), that episode doesn’t even involve any GBV members. Bottom line is for a band of legendary drinkers that didn’t break until their schoolteacher frontman was 36, there’s a better bio somewhere waiting to be written.
This article appears in October 7 • 2005.