Best Bizarre Onstage Banter

It certainly seemed like just another fantastic concert by Guided By Voices that fateful spring evening at Mississippi Nights, but Bob Pollard's bizarre midset rant soon changed all that. An unprovoked Pollard launched into a tirade against Scat Records, the St. Louis-based label that's perhaps best known for releasing the Guided by Voices breakthrough record Bee Thousand. Pollard claimed that Scat, and label head Robert Griffin, owed him something like $400,000 in back royalties and such. Anyone even vaguely familiar with the workings of independent record labels knows that no one makes that kind of money, and besides, if Griffin had those kind of funds, his band Prisonshake would have had a lot more records out by now. It would probably be best if Pollard stuck to writing brilliant rock songs and left the money talk to the lawyers.