Bobby O'Reilly

On December 31, 2004 Guided by Voices played their final show at The Metro in Chicago. I'm sure anyone who frequents POP ZEUS! is fully aware of this fact. The reason I mention it, is because several of my "friends" attended this show. I, meanwhile, sat alone at home, eating mac and cheese, crying over being left out, and probably alternating between video games and masturbation. It wasn't until months later that I found out that my "friends" had had multiple extra tickets that they "couldn't" unload. Motherfuckers.

Anyway, I only mention this because, aside from seeing their glorious final performance, the thing I always really wanted for and from GBV was huge, Spinal Tap style main-stream success. See, I'm not a music snob who needs his favorite bands to be a big fucking secret, or something, you smarmy horn-rimmed glasses wearing douche-bag art school bitches. I'm not talking about you guys, but you all know people like that.

I always thought it would be kick-ass to see Bob Pollard truly fulfill his calling, and rock my socks off in front of 75,000 at the Superdome. Honestly, GBV was built for stadium rock, and we never really got to see it come to fruition.

The above footage is from a Pearl Jam show in Cinci in June of last year that gives us a little glimpse of what could have been. Bob opened for those guys on that particular leg of the tour, and for those nights, jumped on stage with them to perform "Baba O'Reilly." I'm not a huge Pearl Jam guy, but they hold a special place in my nostalgic little heart, and it's worth a look just to see Mr. Pollard on stage rocking the kind of crowd GBV should have been rocking if America wasn't so stupid. The sound/picture quality ain't great, and there's big feedback at the beginning, but it does the trick.

Also, it's cool as hell to see Bob Probert's doppelganger singing next to Eddie Vedder. I'll end here because I possess two things "a certain other blogger" on this site does not: masculine physical strength, and brevity.