Devil's Night

"Oh yeah, I'm going to drive my car

Oh yeah, I'm going to go real far."

I first heard the opening lines to Guided By Voice's "Quality of Armor" back in 2006 or something when a forum that I had been frequenting since high school did a mix CD trade and one particularly cool guy added this song to his tracklist. This was back before I kept my music neatly organized in iTunes and any miscellaneous songs were stored together in their own folder. The file name stood out, and I recognized it more so than the band, whose name was among many which my internet friends had told me I would enjoy. And every now and then I'd try and remember what this song sounded like; and I would play this short little snippet of a song and I would enjoy it.

Flash forward to earlier this year when, stuck at work for the better part of January, on the recommendation of my then girlfriend I downloaded all of GBV's full-length albums. For anyone unfamiliar with this incredibly prolific band, that's sixteen albums in their seventeen year career. She's a big fan of them, and I gave her a binder of CD-R copies of each album. I also burned, for myself, their greatest hits compilation, Human Amusements at Hourly Rates. Since then most of my knowledge of GBV has been from listening to that album. For a band with 300+ songs, it's hard to feel like you really know their material but over time I've come to really love a select handful of their songs.

A few months ago I got word that GBV was reuniting for a short tour, and would be playing Detroit on October 30th. Without hesitating I texted my ex to tell her about the show. She's not the kind of girl who likes making plans, but I knew that she would want to go and wanted very much myself to go with her.

Saturday she came over to my house and made herself a Halloween costume to wear to the show. Basically that meant painting a white shirt with fake blood that was leftover from my Devil's Night party last year. I had my own similarly splattered t-shirt which I wore. Surprisingly, there were few other people at the show dressed up. We arrived there just as The Love Language was ending their set and grabbed a couple drinks and found a great spot in the middle of the crowd. After a team of roadies brought out five-foot long setlists and a stack of towels, they turned on a neon sign hanging high above the stage with the lyrics to one of their best songs, "A Salty Salute":

"C'mon, C'mon..."

Out came the man himself, Robert Pollard, the brains behind this musical operation. It was clear from the already 1/4 empty bottle of José Cuervo he was carrying what direction the show was going to take. Obviously, the guys in the band were old. Bob was turning fifty-three at midnight, and I kinda hope he was drinking so much out of celebration, but I have a bad feeling it's a daily thing for him. That doesn't take away from how rock 'n roll the show was. Bob can still high-kick, that's for sure. Two hours/thirty-plus songs later, they had already done three encores when our backs started to be more important than seeing another slurred song. They had already played the songs we wanted to hear, and the ones I recognized were amazing.

Yes, those guys were smoking the entire time. So were their roadies. I guess if anyone deserves the privilege, they are sure high on the list.

On the drive back to Ferndale, we decided to stop by the WAB for a nightcap and to meet up with my friend's friend who was desperate for an excuse to leave the Halloween party she was at. We sat at the back corner of the bar and remarked about how good it was to see GBV live before (knock on wood) one of them clocks out a little too early. Our friend showed up dressed in a slutty mad hatter costume and lamented to us about the bad vibes she had gotten from an old high school friend who was hosting the party. We conversed for a while about memories from our childhood, and the strangest part of the evening was when a guy came over to ask the girl about her costume and literally defined himself as creepy. Lest we believe there was anything but creeps out in Detroit that night.