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Guided by beers

Now that we've established that there's far more to Guided by Voices than drunken shenanigans, here are a couple of vintage tales of drunken shenanigans, GBV style.

JANUARY 2000 | A meeting of the minds took place when GbV played the Middle East on January 17. Hanging out backstage was Lyres leader Jeff "Monoman" Conolly, who'd given GbV some opening slots during the lean years in Dayton. A secret deal appears to have taken place between Robert Pollard and Conolly just after GbV got off stage. The house lights were up and the crowd was making for the exits . . . when on stage jumped Conolly, who'd stripped to his undies and was carrying the remains of GbV's deli platter, on which remained some cold-cut scraps and a lot of gooey potato salad. This he proceeded to dump on his head and smear all over himself, making appropriate noises as accompaniment, while Mid East security began to freak out and push the remaining crowd toward the exits. Backstage afterward, Pollard rewarded Conolly by peeling off and handing him six $100 bills from the night's proceeds.

MAY 2001 | Contrary to legend, Pollard did not get trashed at every show. During one of GbV's last Paradise appearances — the days when the band's song tally was up to more than 50 per gig — Pollard threw beer bottles aside after a sip or two and was by all evidence stone sober at night's end. Not the case with the rest of the band, who emptied most of a tequila bottle on stage. During an encore of "Psychic Pilot Clocks Out," guitarist Nate Farley tripped up in mid solo and fell into a bank of amps, but he didn't miss a beat, and his landing on the stage floor was perfectly synched with the crashing on the final chord. The band followed that with a rare but fitting cover of the Who's "Baba O'Riley."

READ:Guided by Voices return with self-inflicted nostalgia. By Brett Milano.