Entry Two: Official Iron Man Rally Song

From "Under the Bushes Under the Stars" LP, 1996

Classic, quintessential Pollard anthem. It's hard for me not to look at this song in the context of GBV history. After something in the realm of a decade of Guided By Voices being little more than a hobby, Bob and the boys found themselves the level of famous that, while not garnering massive wealth, at least allows musicians to quit their day jobs. In a few years, Guided By Voices had gone from an inside joke to a Dayton oddity to the sort of band that hipster's used to measure their dicks against one anothers' to the sort of band that was filling venues, selling albums, and even getting the occasional plug from Kurt Loder on MTV News. All of a sudden Matador's gonna pay for studio time and, shit, they even snag Steve Albini to produce. If you're Bob and you've "made it," what do you do next?

Fuck Disneyland, man. You pound a couple of Nattie Lights and write your own goddamn "We Are the Champions." While the descriptors "anthemic" and "fist pump worthy" were used in the last entry, they are here, too, apropos. This is, indeed, a rally song.

It's a call to arms, a rock n' roll union hymn, a uniting anthem of some absurd Midwest separatist political movement whose platform planks are threefold: 1) Rock the fuck out. 2) Drink beer. 3) Make sure that you have your buddies along while you accomplish planks 1 and 2. Bob Pollard: the Joe Hill of the Drinking Class.

Less indulgently, this song is concretely a "radio single." Weighing in at a lean-for-radio-but-downright-portly-compared-to-some-Pollard-songs two minutes and forty eight seconds, and with a hook, it is packaged to sell. That being said, I don't think it's a compromise, but rather a song idea that actually comes to fruition, which can't always be said for some Pollard efforts.

A

Favorite Lyric: "Confirmations through the wire / Spitting gas into the fire / Am I also worthy of a drink?"

ALSO: Apollardgist would be remiss if we failed to belatedly acknowledged Bob's 50th Birthday. Happy birthday, Bob! 50 years of Bob is worth more than a million years of Roger Daltrey. You're way the fuck better than The Who, Bob!