Guided By Voices - Learning to Hunt (1988)

The following is the first in a series of aborted GBV albums posts that I will be making in the coming weeks.

Anyone who has even the slightest familiarity with Guided By Voices knows that Bob Pollard is an ultra prolific song writer. Bob himself has admitted on many occasions over the years that part of this is due to his own impatience. He doesn't like to dwell on single song for very long because he is anxious to move on and a by product of this is that he is constantly second guessing his approach to album sequencing during the song writing process. There isn't a single GBV album that didn't exist at some point as some other sequence, many times with completely different songs. Bee Thousand famously went through 6 different album sequences and at one point even existed as a double album. The Bee Thousand that eventually went to the pressing plant has almost nothing in common with the original Bee Thousand sequence (for more info on that, check out this page)

During a few points in GBV's history, Bob became so dissatisfied with a finished product that he ended up scrapping an entire album and starting over again. The first example of this was what would've been 1988's "Learning to Hunt" sandwiched between GBV's second album Sandbox and their third album Self Inflicted Aerial Nostalgia. While it is true that Learning To Hunt's sequence did have a few songs in common with their third album, I think that most would agree that they are very different albums with Learning to Hunt definitely being the weirder of the two. Bob has stated in interviews that in hindsight he wishes he would have released LtH instead but to date the album has not been officially released in this sequence. The songs have however been released slowly over the years spread across many GBV rarities compilations and we are now able to piece together the album ourselves. Because the songs have trickled out slowly, they have unfortunately been subjected to slightly different mastering and one track "Soul Flyers" seems to have come from a second generation source rather than a proper master tape. Until Bob decides on an official release, this is the best we have for now, but it is still a very interesting look at a lost piece of GBV history. Check the comments page for a full track listing and source info.

Coming up next: 1992's Back To Saturn X