Guided By Voices: Watch Me Jumpstart (1998)
Directed by Banks Tarver
Genres - Music |
Sub-Genres - Biography, Music History, Vocal Music |
Run Time - 77 min. |
Countries - United States |
MPAA Rating - NR
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Synopsis by Mark Deming
Guided By Voices were one of the most celebrated indie rock bands of the 1990s, and one of the most unusual. Fronted by a former junior-high-school teacher from Dayton, OH, named Robert Pollard, the members of Guided by Voices were five guys from the Midwest who were all in their early-to-mid-thirties and for the most part had lost any illusions about becoming rock stars when their 1992 album Propeller -- recorded on the cheap on a four-track cassette machine -- began to earn the band a sizable cult following for its brilliant pop hooks and strange energy. Watch Me Jumpstart is a documentary directed by Guided by Voices fan Banks Tarver who offers an off-the-cuff look at Pollard and his bandmates as they relate their story of unexpected semi-stardom and ponder what might happen next for them. In a sad irony, within a year after Watch Me Jumpstart was completed, the lineup of Guided by Voices documented in this film collapsed; Pollard fired most of his bandmates in favor of stronger musicians from the group Cobra Verde, and GBV's membership became something of a case of musical chairs until the group finally broke up in late 2004.
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Themes
Keywords
band [music group], career-retrospective, indie-rock, rock-music