Guided By Voices formed in Dayton, Ohio, in the early 1980's, and began their career as a bar band working the local scene. As line-ups and day-jobs shifted, however, Robert Pollard moved the band towards a studio-only orientation, and their recording career began with a stream of self-financed, independent releases beginning with the 1986 R.E.M.-inspired E.P. 'Forever Since Breakfast', and followed by the albums 'Devil Between My Toes' and 'Sandbox', both recorded in 1987, 'Self-Inflicted Aerial Nostalgia' from 1988, and 'Same Place The Fly Got Smashed' in 1989. With only a few hundred copies of each album being pressed, these tended to circulate only among the band members' family and friends. With the release of the ultra-limited album 'Propeller' in 1992, with only 500 copies pressed, each with a unique, handmade cover, Guided by Voices finally gained some recognition outside of their hometown. This was due in part to gaining fans in the college rock circuit, along with bands such as Sonic Youth, R.E.M. and The Breeders. By 1993, the always-fluid line-up of the band coalesced around the core of Pollard, guitarists Tobin Sprout and Mitch Mitchell, bassist Greg Demos, and drummer Kevin Fennell. Sprout, who was briefly featured in an early-'80s version of the band, had re-joined circa 'Propeller' and soon became Pollard's primary musical foil, in addition to contributing several of his own songs to the band's catalogue.
1993 also saw the release of 'Vampire On Titus', as well as the 'Fast Japanese Spin Cycle' and 'Static Airplane Jive' EPs, and they started to receive national media exposure from sources such as Spin magazine. In 1994, after culling both new songs and reams of archival recordings from GBV's history, Pollard delivered the indie landmark 'Bee Thousand' via Scat Records, with a distribution deal through indie label Matador Records. Soon, the band officially signed with Matador, concurrent with Pollard and his bandmates finally retiring from their day jobs to work in music full-time. The band surprised early audiences accustomed to the generally shambling, lo-fi and collage-like quality of the records with their energetic live show, featuring Pollard's homegrown rock theatrics, Mitchell's windmilling and chain smoking, sometime bassist Greg Demos' striped pants, and a never-ending barrage of tunes that all seemed to clock in under 90 seconds. Some of the songs jettisoned in 1993 included an entire album called 'Pissing In The Canal', which was actually recorded under one of Pollard's many aliases as Coyote Call in 1984. Although some tracks have since surfaced, not all of them are that easy to track down, so this collection includes nine of the proposed tracks from the original demo cassette, with a further half-dozen recordings from 1984 tagged onto the end of the album to make it up to a reasonable length of 40-odd minutes.
Track listing
01 Angry Pillows (Gone Away)
02 Lockets of the Empress
03 The Quality Of Armor
04 Tell Me
05 Walls and Windows
06 Echoland
07 Before My Eyes
08 Together/Apart
09 Amnesia
10 A Kind Of Love
11 Try To Find You
12 Old Friend
13 I'd Choose You
14 Groundwork
15 Shake It Out
If anyone has a copy of the missing track '6 Feet Down' or 'The Quality Of Armor' which matches the lyric sheet then please do let me know.
