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	GUIDED BY VOICES Fond farewell

The first time I saw Guided by Voices, at the Paradise about 10 years ago, I remember that what first grabbed me, on that very first song, "Unleashed! The Large-Hearted Boy," was the lyric "It’s up to you to stay put/The shoe is on the other foot." It was one of those moments in a GBV song where the guitars and the drums drop out and leave Robert Pollard’s voice alone, and even though you don’t really know what he’s talking about, those words sound very important.

At the Paradise a week ago Thursday, Guided by Voices, who formed back in 1983, played what was being billed as their final Boston show. The farewell tour is scheduled to end, Pollard told the sold-out crowd, in Chicago on New Year’s Eve. Before the show began, a little movie screen was set up on stage and an ironically sentimental video was shown, with lots of still photos of the band in all their phases and many close-ups of Pollard (the one constant: after all this time, to all intents and purposes, he is Guided by Voices). And synth music swelled and a butterfly rose from a daisy.

Those very important words were there too. "This time I really mean that/A cracking coat where I dig that," Pollard sang on the opening "Sad If I Lost It," in a quiet moment that was quickly filled with a power chord and accented with the first patented Pollard scissor kick. It’s his mastery of the tension-and-release of pop songs that gets everyone singing along to such abstract lyrics, just as they would to R.E.M.’s "Losing My Religion."

Guided by Voices shows have become great marathons over the years, and this one was no exception. The band went on a little after 10:30, broke for an encore a little after 1:10 a.m., and finally got off stage about 1:15. By my count, they played 39 songs — give or take a fragment — before the encores. And they ended, appropriately enough, with "Don’t Stop Now." As always, Pollard drank a lot of beers, and occasionally he chased them with slugs from a bottle of tequila. And, truth be told, I think he was bit drunker than the last time the band came to town, a year ago — and damned proud of it. "I remember the words better when I’m drunk," he told the crowd.

Maybe he didn’t forget any, but some of them became very hard to decipher. It didn’t matter, the faithful knew the songs and sang along anyway — a great demonstration of stamina for all involved. Whether it was transcendent probably depended on your own endurance or degree of inebriation. Certainly this final edition of GBV — guitarists Doug Gillard and Nate Farley, bassist Chris Slusarenko, drummer Kevin March — held it all together. And Pollard — who’s beginning to look like a cross between Bill Clinton and W.C. Fields — was loving it. "You know me, I’m your Uncle Bob," he announced at one break. "You’ve been trying to put me away for 20 years, but I’m still here!"