A film by Banks Tarver
A documentary on Guided by Voices is a great idea, right up there with the beer cooler and the distortion pedal as useful and enduring inventions go. Enveloped in legend and lore, the Dayton cult rockers make for a quirky story of old-fashioned ingenuity and artistic persistence. A scant percentage of the general public are aware that an average, beer-drinking ex-high school jock, ex-schoolteacher and father of two has written more songs, and more *good* songs than arguably anyone in the history of rock. Watch Me Jumpstart begins to unravel the story of Bob Pollard and his pals.
Kicking off with the footage of Dayton backed with the GbV obscurity “Club Molluska,” the film finds Pollard, his brother Jim, guitarists Tobin Sprout and Mitch Mitchell, and drummer Kevin Fennell tromping around the snowy, cozy city shooting hoops, hanging out at the pizza parlor, buying beer, and doing what they do best: retreating to the basement to knock out songs on four-track. Scenes of the group recording songs for their masterpiece Alien Lanes LP are particularly exciting. The camera follows the group out on tour behind the record, including a bizarre night in which the boys are kicked out of their own show for trading insults with opening act Picasso Trigger. It’s a priceless moment when the sheepish GbV drive off in their van as the clueless club employee who tossed them says, “It’s shitheads like that who give the industry a bad name.”
Tarver does an admirable job piecing together the GbV story in a brisk 45 minutes. “Manager for life” Pete Jamison is shown silk-screening T-shirts and cheering the band on at practice; Sprout is interviewed in his kitchen amid his superb hyper-realist paintings. Pollard’s friendly, loquacious demeanor shines throughout, whether he’s bragging on his son’s jump shot, charming a British journalist, or breaking into song in the back seat of Jamison’s car. It’s touching as Bob tells of his teen years constructing fantasy album covers and tracklistings for the band he and his friends would one day become. When there wasn’t enough of the psychedelic garage pop that Pollard craved to go around, he simply wrote his own, creating what the Music Hound Rock guide calls “a private history of rock n’roll”. Commentary from Spin writer Jim Greer, who loved the band so much they let him play bass for a while, helps things along with a unique perspective.
If Watch Me Jumpstart has a weakness, it’s in Tarver’s penchant for self-conscious footage of ultra-grainy roads, floors, and ceilings. While these passages arguably are the visual equivalent of the band’s imperfect production aesthetic, they could’ve been chopped in favor of more interviews or performance.
To complete the package, there are outtakes from the film and, best of all, all the group’s videos. Originally relegated to sporadic late-night showings on MTV, many of GbV’s most fervent fans have yet to view the goofy, engaging clips for essential tracks like “I Am A Scientist” and “My Valuable Hunting Knife.”
Watch Me Jumpstart is valuable for either the GbV vet or novice. If you’re a fan, buy it immediately; if you’re curious, borrow a friend’s and let it be a primer to the phenomenon.
--Lane Hewitt
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