MUSIC: Don't Stop Now

I watched about 2 hours of the new Guided By Voices dvd, The Electrifying Conclusion. The dvd is the complete chronicle of the band's farewell show last New Year's Eve at the Metro in Chicago. It's four hours long! Like I said, I only watched a couple hours of it, skipping around to the tunes I wanted to hear most, as well as the two lengthy encore sets, and geez, gotta say it wore me out! If you're a fan, you've no doubt seen them do better shows, and you've also probably seen them worse shows, but probably not one as all-encompassing of their history.

It's an amazing 63 song set list! Whew! The "farewell show" sentimentality that runs throughout is indeed very touching. Several ex-band members and friends of the band make cameo appearances onstage, which is very nice to see. And lead guitarist Doug Gillard's magnificence is once and for all cemented visually on this dvd---the guy who always kept the circus together. Where the hell would Pollard have ever been without him these past several years?

And of course there is the drinking. The weird thing about watching this is you actually feel Pollard getting more and more wasted as the show carries on. The last third or so of the show he is clearly DEEP into the bag, staggering around & slurring the song introductions, his singing voice increasingly weaker with each new number, but damn if that inexplicable phenomenon within his particular mind and body was still at work, cause even up to the very end the guy never missed a single lyric! Always an amazing thing to see in action at any GBV show.

In 1994 GBV rekindled my faith in rock and roll, and for that I will always be thankful and carry the torch for them. The Electrifying Conclusion is a nice little, uh, make that massive document of them going out on a very "high" note. Cheers to anyone who can make it straight through all four hours in one sitting, maybe some day I'll be strong enough to pull that off.