Matador Records
2003
Human Amusements At Hourly Rates: The Best Of Guided By Voices
About This Album
Rock bands usually release greatest-hits albums when (a) they want to get out of a record deal, (b) they've just gotten out of a record deal and the old label is trying to wring a few more bucks from the back catalog, (c) they've creatively run out of gas and have nothing else to sell, or (d) they've broken up. By all accounts, Guided by Voices and its current record label, Matador, are getting on just fine, they're releasing product at a feverish pace, they've got plenty more stuff in the pipeline, and Robert Pollard and his partners in beer-fueled hard pop aren't going away any time soon. So what's the explanation for the appearance of The Best of Guided by Voices: Human Amusements at Hourly Rates, a 32-track compilation that skims the cream from 12 years' worth of recordings by Guided by Voices? A disc that, for the record, also appears in a different sequence in a concurrently released career retrospective box set, Hardcore UFOs, whose timing seems similarly curious? The reason isn't clear, to be perfectly honest, but given that GBV and songwriter, frontman, and benevolent dictator Pollard have long borne the curse of not knowing their wheat from their chaff, Human Amusements serves a long-needed function -- it's the ideal introduction to a great band with a sprawling but spotty back catalog.
Track List (try tracks 1,6,8,11,14,18,23 and 31)

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