I bought Bee Thousand in 94 after reading an article comparing GbV and the Grifters, and like a lot of people was quickly turned off by the crude recording. After listening to it a few time, it found a nice little spot on the cd rack where it stayed for about two months. But during that time I would catch myself humming little things that I had heard from Bee Thousand. Tunes like ‘Tractor Rape Chain’ and ‘Big Fan of the Pigpen’ don’t just go away because you put the disc on a shelf.
To make a long story short, I became obsessed with Bee Thousand, not understanding why the hell I didn’t ‘get it’ the first time. After about a year and what seemed like about a five hundred bucks, I had just about everything this band had done up to that point. The output of Pollard is flat out dizzying.
Ruebarb, you asked if anyone has ever gotten any inspiration from them/him, and I say yes – most definitely. For better or worse, the mountain of songs by him that I had collected convinced me to not concentrate on the production aesthetic of songs, but on the songs themselves (see my post from a couple months ago about how ‘equipment won’t write songs for you’. I don’t mean to imply that I strive for the ultimate in lo-fi bullshit like a lot of people in the wake of GbV do/have, or that I try to mimic Pollard. What I mean is that I was inspired to make attempts at progression without feeling inadequate due to lack of recording resources/know how. The fact is, no matter how much shit you’ve got stacked up in your basement, if you don’t have material, you won’t produce anything worth listening to. If you’ve got good material, it’ll be worth listening to whether you commit it to a high end recorder or an RCA boombox.
Pollard works lightening fast. He recently did a record with the Dayton band, The Tasties, that took all of 4 hours on a Saturday morning to finish, and The Tasties said they would never record the same way again after having worked with him. Yeah, I think maybe some things are compromised by style, but his idea is to get it out while it’s hot, and move on – avoid stagnation at all costs. Do The Collapse was obviously contradictory to this, and I think it shows. Even though there are some excellent songs on the record, the feel of it just isn’t there. There’s no spell binding effect like there is on so many of their other records.
Anyway, it’s late, I’m tired, and I’m rambling.
“I am a lost soul, I shit myself with rock n roll. The hole I dig is bottomless, but nothing else can set me free” - R. Pollard
