A Salty Salute

Robert Pollard, the 47-year-old self-described "gang leader" of underground rock outfit Guided By Voices, swaggered onstage at the Fillmore Saturday night with all the pomp of an arena rock star about to appease his zealous disciples.

"Rock and roll is hanging on by the skin of its ass ... and we are the skin," declared a fantastically drunk Pollard to the boisterous and very crowded venue. This show was to be Guided By Voices' last-ever Bay Area appearance on their "Electrifying Conclusion" tour, and the band was glad to make the occasion an explosive, beer-drenched celebration of rock music creation and fandom.

The evening began with a humorous retrospective slide show projected onto the wall behind the stage. Reflective of their efforts to avoid taking themselves too seriously, it featured band photographs from over the years interspersed with scenes of flying doves and sun-lit mountains and prairies set to a backing track of new age music. Afterwards, the band emerged from backstage and launched into a set of about 50 songs that lasted nearly three hours.

50 songs? Playing that much music is certainly an indulgent approach to live performance, but it was the only way for this hugely prolific band to pay tribute to itself and its avid followers.

Guided By Voices is not so much an actual "band" as the longtime solo project of Robert Pollard with a frequently changing cast of backing musicians. A fourth-grade teacher up until about 10 years ago, Pollard started the band in 1983 as a recording project feeding off of his obsession with seventies hard rock groups like T. Rex and The Who. Since then, Guided By Voices has become a prominent fixture in the independent rock world as joyous, unpretentious champions of the hook-heavy rock song.

Pollard is essentially the indie-rock Santa Claus. He has released new records under the "Guided By Voices" banner nearly every year since the band's inception, and has recorded somewhere between 600 and 700 songs. This tour follows the August release of their fifteenth and final full-length album, "Half Smiles of the Decomposed" on Matador Records, and their third (yes, third) box set, "Hardcore UFOs," last year.

Robert Pollard might not be Roger Daltrey, but he does his darnedest. He giddily leaps and scissor-kicks with surprising ease for a man his age, and gleefully spins his microphone around -just because he can. Gaps between songs are short-just enough time for Pollard to introduce the title and album origination of each tune and take a swig of whiskey. His reputation as a drinker is truthful: roadies brought two tubs of iced beer bottles to the stage for band (and audience) consumption, and the band gladly accepted a champagne offering from an audience member nearby the stage.

"The great thing about Guided By Voices," said Pollard about halfway through the show, "is that you think we're deteriorating right before your eyes, but we never do." And he was right-despite any drunkenness, the band never displayed a lack of tightness and togetherness as they ran through their extensive set-list. Smoke spewed out equally from Doug Gillard's lead guitar riffing as from his cigarettes, and the muscular rhythm section of bass player Chris Slusarenko, guitarist Nate Farley, and drummer Kevin March propelled each song along with skillful force.

Although Pollard will continue to record (but perhaps not tour) as a solo artist, his choice to lay Guided By Voices to rest certainly symbolizes the end of a rock institution-a band whose output, while erratic, has frequently spawned memorable, enormously satisfying songs.

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