Redmen and Their Wives

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

Zeitgeist 1996: Most of the popular music is crap, not surprisingly, and there is a weird undercurrent of whiny, grunge-lite post Cobain suicide. Notably, Guided by Voices never was a grunge band, but zeitgeist influences all and if ever there were a moment that GBV were to think that they might make it bigger than dorky dorm room supremacy, as I have noted before, one is led to believe that "Under the Bushes Under the Stars" was maybe their best shot. If one is attempting to maybe try to make it big, one is wise to listen to the airwaves and see what's popular and see if there isn't something they vaguely can imitate to sell a bit. Probably it's not even that consicous. Probably we are informed by what's around us, sometimes for better, sometimes for worse, often for some of each.

In 1994, Bush had hits with drivel like "Glycerine" and "Everything Zen." (Editorial sidenote: When this comparison occurred to me, I did some "research" that consisted of watching the "Glycerine" video on YouTube. Firstly, I'd never really consciously listened to this song as an adult; it fucking sucks. Secondly, judging from the YouTube comments, a lot of people still really, surprisingly, love Bush. Still, as YouTube comments go, I was impressed to see no misspelled racist screeds by toothless idiots, who I am convinced are the primary constituency of YouTube's commenter-base...so that's something.) In 1996 Dishwalla played an even drippier brand of late-grunge shit into a single with "Counting Blue Cars." "Red Men and Their Wives" is a metric shit-ton better than the aforementioned crap, and it's also better than Ben Folds Five's sniveling "Brick," which followed in 1997, but as no art is created in a vacuum, it's hard for me to not see "Red Men" as analogous. A better looking cousin, but the sort of cousin whose better haircut still can't hide the tell tale family eyes.

This song opens with the ennui of a gray morning. Lyrically, this song is not strong by Pollard-standards, but this opening line and the breathy sadness in Bob's voice is evocative, if not exactly revelatory. The slow building of the single guitar line builds behind the vocals. In comes a basement-y, reverb-y, effects-ridden, sitar-y guitar line in the background. (Is it apparent I'm not a musician? There's no doubt a name for this effect, but I am an appreciator of art, not an arter myself.) It's sad, see. Get it?

After that, the hook is played boldly twice before the band fully kicks in. When the band kicks in, this song begins to rock a little, but still with the melancholic plangency of the times.

All this sounds pretty negative, and a way it is, but I still sorta like this tune. I've been mulling over this entry and listening to it a lot lately. I think it kinda stimulates the receptor in my brain that might be primed for nostalgia for Bush but is too smart to actually be nostalgic for mid-90s sad-sack rock sung by pretty-boys. It is like the best Bush song Gavin Rossdale never wrote. (Editorial note: I'm not afraid to like catchy songs from "uncool" bands. I still like "Singing in My Sleep" by Semisonic...okay...I only really like the keyboard line...)

Or, you know, alternately, I could take the college-freshman-anarchist-with-one-semester-of-sociology-under-his-belt approach and declare the song racist and sexist based merely on its title. Firstly, "Native American" or "American Indian" are really the preferred terms. Secondly, by defining the wives as merely modifiers to the "Native American males" we are robbing them of their individual humanity the way the patriarchal structures of the West have for millenia.

C (but maybe I'm just inflating the grades like they were when I was a know-it-all-college-radical-who-had-taken-one-course-in-socilogy)

Favorite Lyric: Lyrically, this song is prohibitively weak, and I ain't gonna mine for gold where there's only lead.