Hot Freaks!

It’s almost a week later, and my ears are still ringing.

Guided By Voices (aka The Greatest Fucking Band Ever) played their final Seattle show last Wednesday night at Neumos. Despite the fact that I’m at least 4000 years old, I dragged my decrepit ass down to the club to see GBV’s last hurrah.

Now, I’ve seen myself some rock shows, kids, but this one will be forever known as The Greatest Concert in the History of the Universe. The band played for over four hours, drinking enough alcohol to blind Kentucky, and was still at Full Rocking Strength at 2AM. After playing seemingly every song in the history of GBV, the Band That Wouldn’t Die came out for at least three encores (I lost track), each of which would’ve been better (and longer) than most band’s entire shows.

Not only was this The Greatest Concert in the History of the Universe, but it also featured The Craziest Fans in the History of Rock. The house was packed, and seemingly everyone there knew every single word to every song. Now, if you know GBV, you know that they have an insane amount of songs. No one should know every word to every GBV song. Not even Robert Pollard! Yet this rabid bunch of GBV fans was amplified to rock, and they poured out their drunken little hearts to the band all night.

A great GBV show would not be complete without Pollard going on a rant about the sorry state of Rock, and Uncle Bob didn’t disappoint. Throughout the evening, the drunk-ass founding father of GBV ripped on everything from Stone Temple Pilots to Willie Nelson. He even challenged the security staff to a brawl (“Not all at once. Just pick one, and I’ll kick your ass!”).

When the show finally ended, no one wanted to go home. I was a smelly, sore, deaf mess, but I still wanted more. We didn’t want to let GBV go. We wanted to take something home with us.

I guess, if nothing else, I’ll always have the ringing in my ears.