If you could be a member of any rock band ever, who would you be? 

If you’re a guy, it’s tempting to say something like Led Zeppelin or even Motley Crue.  The constant barrage of loose women alone would sway most of us. 

I’d have a hard time narrowing it down myself, but if pressed I’d go with Robert Pollard of Guided By Voices.  Why?  Because he’s been doing pretty much whatever the fuck he’s wanted to do for the last twenty years and hasn’t had to work a day job since 1994.  Argue all you want, but I’d give up the excess pussy for the freedom to follow my muse wherever it takes me.

That said, you should know that I’m going to like this DVD.  I first heard of the band in 1995 through a mix tape.  In 2001 though, I saw the band live and went from casual listener to obsessed fan.

Here’s the scene:  I walked into the House of Blues in Los Angeles with a good friend of mine.  At that time I owned about five Guided By Voices albums.  I was definitely excited and I’d heard they put on a great show.  I’d also heard they got hammered during their set. 

“So what?” I reasoned, “Any good rock band should catch a buzz while playing.”

As my friend and I waited for the set to start, two people brought out a cooler that could easily have been used to stash the body of an NBA forward.  This thing was fucking huge and the two guys carrying it were obviously straining. They parked the damn thing right in front of the drum kit.  About twenty seconds later, they brought out two white five gallon paint buckets.  One had, “Puke” scrawled across it in black marker.  The other was labeled, “Piss."

The lights dropped, the band came out and over the course of the next three hours; they played one of the most memorable shows I have ever seen.  They also emptied that gigantic cooler of every single can of Miller Lite stashed inside as well as doing pretty good damage to a bottle of Jack Daniels.   Amazingly, it seemed that they never missed a note.

I was floored.  I’m a guitar player myself and was even in serious, professional bands for a while.  To do what they did takes concentration, talent and an iron liver.  My interest went from “casual fan” to “obsessed completist." 

Over the course of the next few years I rarely missed an opportunity to see them again.  I spent a lot of time collecting every single and half-baked side project that spun out of this band.  When in 2004 they announced they were calling it quits after over 21 years, I was floored and what was worse, I missed their farewell tour when it swung through L.A.

That’s why Guided By Voices: The Electrifying Conclusion was a “must have” for me whether it was good or not.  I craved a record of this band’s live show to look back on and raise a glass.  Luckily for me (and for you) this DVD delivers on almost all counts.

Guided By Voices: The Electrifying Conclusion captures their entire final show on New Year’s Eve 2004.  Recorded at the Metro in Chicago, the DVD includes all four hours of it.  That’s right, four hours.  No, I’m not kidding; four hours and 63 songs that span their entire career.  Overkill? 

Not for Guided By Voices.  Marathon shows are their calling card.

Ultimately, for this DVD, that’s both a blessing and a curse.  It took me three days to make it all the way through the main feature.  Remember, I’m a hardcore fan of this band and I still couldn’t take the entire four hours at once.  That’s a fucking investment!  Ken Burns puts out whole documentary series that take up less time than watching this show. 

Additionally, concert DVDs never capture the true feel of actually being at the show.  I mean, how can sitting comfortably in your living room compare to the feeling of sticky floors, the smell of sweat and cigarette smoke and the almost certain destruction of major amounts of your hearing?  It can’t and this DVD doesn’t do anything to change my mind about that.  However it does present a pretty solid document of a one of a kind moment.   You get a taste of the party atmosphere that always surrounded a GBV show.  That it’s New Year’s Eve only adds to that and when the clock strikes midnight and two guys lug out a gigantic bottle of champagne only slightly smaller than this reviewer’s wang, you’ll wish you were actually there.

The music is great and while the end of the set begins to get ragged, you can’t really complain.  The thing that amazed me the most was how well the newer songs held up alongside the older ones.   Pollard runs through them with barely a stop in between (except for when the clock hits midnight) and the muscular rendition of Pimple Zoo from 1995’s Alien Lanes sounds perfect alongside 2004’s Everyone Thinks I’m A Raincloud (When I’m Not Looking).  The band puts on a great show.  It’s rarely bittersweet in presentation.  Hell, Robert Pollard even has his own private bar ON THE STAGE!  This is not a goodbye so much as it is a rocking New Year’s Eve party.

A big contributor to the quality performance is that this line-up of GBV was one of the strongest, with Doug Gillard and Nate Farley on guitars, Kevin March on drums and Chris Slusarenko on bass.  These guys were tight as hell and had to know around 150 songs on command at any given time each night of this tour.  The set lists changed drastically from what I’ve read and they handle this appearance with the swagger of a band that’s done this for fifty dates already.

Another great plus for fans are the guest appearances.  One of the highlights for me was hearing Tobin Sprout and Robert Pollard duet on 14 Cheerleader Coldfront.  Other guests include Greg Demos, Jim MacPherson, Tobin Sprout, Jim Pollard and even Jon Wurster from Superchunk and Matt Sweeney from Chavez/Zwan/Superwolf.

Okay, Cary, get your tongue out of Pollard’s backside and tell us how it looks.
Guided By Voices: The Electrifying Conclusion looks pretty good considering that there’s only so much you can do with five cameras in a club for four hours.  There is one camera to the right of the stage which seems to be in super-grainy mode the entire show and the camera behind the sound board starts getting fuzzy toward the end (my guess is the cameramen began drinking also).  Overall though the damn thing looks great!

What about the sound?
Ah… the sound.  You couldn’t ask for better than this from a live DVD. It’s Dolby Digital Surround 2.0.  It pops from the speakers and only toward the end do things begin to sound muddy.  That’s primarily due to the players though.  Far be it for me to suggest you do anything illegal, however  I used DVD audio ripping software on this and made MP3s of the whole set.  I now have a high quality four CD set of Guided By Voices: The Electrifying Conclusion which sounds better than any live disc this band has ever put out (official or otherwise). 

Did someone say, “extras?
It’s hard to ask for much more than a four hour concert but damn if Plexifilm doesn’t give you two more bits of GBV goodness.  The first is footage of Pollard recording two of the demos for the band's final studio album.  This looks and sounds great.  The stripped down version of Girls of Wild Strawberries is a particular highlight.  The second extra is a terribly filmed (but audibly well recorded) snippet from a concert during their 1994 tour.  It only contains four songs but they’re songs not heard in the main feature.  Finally, inside the case is a foldout poster with the set list on one side and liner notes from one of the first DJs to play GBV on the radio.  They’re a fun read if you’re a music geek like I am.

Bottom line?
If you are a fan, you need to get Guided By Voices: The Electrifying Conclusion.  If you’ve never really heard them before, then go buy one of their CDs (preferably Bee Thousand, Do The Collapse, or Earthquake Glue for starters).  Chances are you’ll find at least a couple of songs on one of those that you’ll like which is more than you can say for most of the shit artists radio throws at you on a regular basis.