This is Bob's house. Thank S. for some amazing COMS work and GBV minutiae scouring on the fly for finding out which one it was. This is the house where he lived and recorded I think basically everything up through Alien Lanes. He's since moved and some unknowing family lives here now. We wondered if we were the only indie rock pilgrims that came skulking around or if it's somewhat common for GBV nerds to cruise by and gawk. As S. pointed out, you can see the basement where it all happened from the street. Almost eerie in its surrealism.
Raising the official beer of late period GBV in toast to all that it is, in the car, parked just off Titus Ave.
Please refer to the GBV live post for a better synopsis but, when we saw them he played some songs from the Bob solo album "The Crawling Distance". He explained the title with a story about back when he was married to his first wife, "Back when I was the VAMPIRE ON TITUS" and he said there was a bar down the street from his house he'd drink at all the time. He said there was a bridge between the bar and his house and he knew that if could make it as far as the bridge that he could crawl the rest of the way home. Hence the name "The Crawling Distance". So we decided to go searching for this bar. Based on his geographical clues and some map work and driving around our best guess is that this abandoned and boarded up storefront was the best candidate. It looks very much like it was once a neighborhood bar, it's close to his house, it's the only thing that even looks like a bar in proximity and it's just over the bridge that we're guessing he had to be talking about. As it turns out the bridge is actually right outside of this bar and still about a half mile or mile from his doorstep. Which led me to the reaction "That's impossible, no one can crawl that far". I mean it's just right there on a a main drag. The notion of someone crawling almost a mile down a main street, at night, I mean, it would take hours and surely someone would stop him or he'd be stopped by the police or something. But hey, who am I to doubt.
Of note is this, which is the cross street to that former bar.
As well as this auto-detailing shop, passed on the way there...
The exit to Titus Ave. as featured in "Watch Me Jumpstart" and which is also the name of Bob's publishing, "Needmore Songs".
...and now we're on our way up to Vandalia "which I call EVIL Vandalia..."
It is 2:34 a.m.
This is the seance
xx
