Search - Robert Pollard: The Devil Went Home and Puked on DVD

Bizarre ADD-riddled music/video collection.......

Chris Carter | my music room | 12/02/2009

(4 out of 5 stars)

"Don't mind if I do. I'm assuming most of you are familiar with Robert Pollard, or you wouldn't be here. This is a kind of hodge-podge of Guided By Voices footage, Bob recording, Circus Devils videos, and it seems to largely feature Greg Demos (who played bass for GBV in the 90's) and his AMAZING STRIPED PANTS!! (Could 'Striped White Jets' really have been about Greg's pants??) Actually, they are very cool pants, and Greg is fun to watch, but maybe we could have used less footage of this.....

But that's the thing about this DVD, and Guided By Voices in general : There's never any rules, except what Bob wants to do, BOB DOES. You may have figured that out by now, gentle reader. Perversely, the clips that show the 2000's GBV on actual TV shows are the shortest clips in this collection (a few seconds), while we get quite a bit of home video with curious characters who probably loom large in Bob's mysterious mind mythology. And the Circus Devils (side project) videos (there's a few) are BEE-ZARRE and hilarious. There's a cool, almost poignant video for "The Best Of Jill Hives", a weird keyboard-performed, static-shrouded interlude, a fat guy in possibly The Monument Club mumbling some frightened, paranoid stuff about how he's 'got to get out of here now', a video for "Winston's Atomic Bird" (Boston Spaceships - Bob's new band), excerpts from an interview with Kevin Fennell (former drummer for GBV - dude's gained weight), some live stuff, and all these clips are randomly placed throughout the whole thing with little regard for pacing. Actually, he does break up the random-ness with videos. The 'arty' re-interpretation of "Gold Star For Robot Boy" is pretentious dog droppings, in my opinion, but hey - whatever blows up yer skirt. Bob must have liked it or it wouldn't have made the cut......

So, all in all, everything AND the kitchen sink, but if you're a GBV fan, you've probably seen "Watch Me Jumpstart", and you wouldn't expect an immaculately produced, logical video ANYWAY. To me, it's very entertaining and I'm glad I picked it up on a whim."

Filter please...filter

Mej | Atlanta, GA United States | 05/03/2010

(2 out of 5 stars)

"I'm an unabashed fan and collector of all things Pollard. Despite his incessant churning out of amazing pop tunes, there's plenty of swill to take the most avid fan aback. Even then...every release has something on it that makes the purchase necessary. For the 1st time I can say that this is simply not the case. The music is good (at times), but the VHS turned DVD is just bad. This DVD is not worth $5. Netflix exists for a reason kids. Save your money for the next Boston Spaceships LP. This is not worth the scratch, nor the time you'll spend fast forwarding."