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	Guided by Voices Smokin’ at the Paradise

It’s not about second-hand smoke — for a lot of us non-smoking rock fans, the sole pleasure of the recently imposed unfair Boston non-smoking laws is that we can get home from a crowded club at 2 a.m. and not stink like an ashtray. But my heart had to go out to Bob Pollard at the smokeless Paradise a week ago Wednesday as the law provoked one between-song comic monologue after another from the chain-smoking, beer-guzzling leader of Guided by Voices. "You cannot expect a rock-and-roll band that comes to your town not to drink beer and smoke cigarettes," he said at one point, then added, "So I guess I’m just going to have to do a little more libating," as he lifted his bottle for another taste.

Pollard did finally break the law at 10:15, an hour into an almost three-hour set, but perhaps all the extra "libating" explains why his vocals were a bit wobblier, his between-song patter a bit more slurred in the latter half of the show. No matter. He is one of the few people on Earth (Jeff "Monoman" Conolly and John Felice also come to mind) who just seem to intuit how a rock-and-roll song is supposed to go. And it doesn’t matter who’s joined his constantly revolving cast of supporting players — they all respond to his ability to craft rhythm, dynamics, and verse-chorus tension-release into an apparently endless series of ecstatic variations.

At the Paradise, touring in support of the new Matador CD Earthquake Glue, Pollard bragged that Chris Slusarenko, a replacement for long-time bassist Tim Tobias, "learned 75 songs in five days." He probably had more time than that, since it’s become clear at this point that younger players like Slusarenko are most likely long-time GbV fans who’ve been studying Pollard’s songs for years. The most gratifying new member of the current crew (Doug Gillard and Nate Farley stay the course on guitars) is former Dambuilders drummer Kevin March, who matched Pollard’s inventiveness with his own, propelling every song-form shift with his own varied attack: rolling thunder patterns, triplet eighth notes against the big rock four, and, my favorite, the splat-splat-splat-BOOM of hi-hat to kick drum, landing on that last beat like a rat to drive the song into the next bar. You’d think this kind of playing would be a standard rock-drummer requirement, but, hey, Max Weinberg never heard of it.

Pollard, meanwhile, was court jester, rock star, fan. "This is a great encore! This is a great encore!" he said, introducing "The Ids are Alright" as if he were throwing another 45 on the turntable. Fan and anti-fan, he amended "Echos Myron" with a "Dave Matthews sucks!" chorus. And filling one of those exquisitely placed silences in "Teenage FBI," he sang plaintively, "Someone tell me why I do the things I don’t want to do." Lucky for us, Pollard’s compulsions translate into great rock and roll.