It’s exactly 1 year since Guided by Voices first appeared on this blog, a year which covers 3 weeks in terms of Peel shows. My God, how does anything get accomplished here? It’s a good thing he wasn’t doing daytime stand-ins on a regular basis or we’d get nowhere.
So happy anniversary to GbV and it’s a pleasure to come back to a track from the album, Propeller. This was originally intended to be the swansong release for Guided by Voices, who had spent most of the last decade plugging away to widespread indifference. They had quit live performance and chose to make Propeller a bit of a special occasion to sign off with. They restricted its run to 500 vinyl copies and took the time to give each copy a unique cover.
Exit Flagger, which is the job title given to anyone on a roadworks team who flags traffic off at exits when a road has been closed, alludes to the changes which awaited a band who were ready to take the exit from being Guided by Voices and potentially from music altogether.
I don’t know where I’ve come from.
I don’t know where I’m going.
And I need to find a way out.
And he’s here to help me find it.
The exit flagger could represent all those people down the years who may have advised Robert Pollard that it was time to put rock ‘n’ roll dreams aside and find a “proper” way to make a living. And with the refrain, I’m not going to race you today, it sounds as though Pollard was ready to agree with them. The song continues with Pollard continuing to make promises of change, at least real soon i.e.once GbV have finished their final album. And if Propeller hadn’t found the attention it did, which led the band to carry on, then who knows what road Pollard and friends may have found themselves travelling on. In the event the exit flagger directed them to the future Pollard always wanted.
Video courtesy of PeteAxm.
All lyrics are copyright of Robert Pollard.
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