Or how to make your own Guided By Voices masterpiece.
1. Take an old R.E.M. song, you know from one of the earlier, better albums (in as much as solid stools are preferable to sloppy shits).
2. Remove lyrics (not sounding bad so far eh?)
3. Start fifty seconds in.
4. End exactly ninety seconds later. Note it is preferable that you end halfway through a chorus, or at least at a point where it really makes no sense to finish.
5. Think of a name. There are two types of names to GBV songs. The short and the long. If making an album you must restrict yourself to three long and seventeen short.
i) The short names consist of two words, one of which must be a noun – the second of which must have no connection to said noun. It must however be pleasing on the tongue – so that someone with no knowledge of English will think it is a perfectly ordinary phrase. Examples of the short title to get you going are : Pimple Zoo, Liquid Indian, Hollow Cheek and the peerless Bread Alone.
ii) The long name is equally nonsensical and can either be created by taking two randomly generated short names and sticking them together (14 Cheerleader Cold Front or Burning Flag Birthday Suit) or excerpt a chapter heading from a fantasy, science fiction or porn novel. (Ghosts Of A Different Dream, A Contest Featuring Human Beings or The Stir-Crazy Pornographer). You’ll soon get the hang of this, and you will need to.
6. Take your title and write a relatively generic pop song lyric, subtly substituting words associated with the words in your title when necessary. Sing said lyrics in a gruff yet anthemic way, robbing them of whatever meaning they may have ever had. If you can make the chorus catchy all the better, it becomes much more annoying when you finish halfway through it.
7. Repeat twenty times and slap on an album five times a year.
Piece of piss really. Mind you, you won’t make that much money out of it, and two albums down the line you’ll run out of R.E.M. tracks and have to move on to the Afghan Whigs or Buffalo Tom for your source material. If you find you have to get on to Superchunk albums you are Robert Pollard and you must stop this madness now.