A music writer departs

By these albums we shall remember Mike McGuirk.

By Jay Boronski

IF YOU WEREN'T at the party, if you didn't piece it together while climbing over the enormous pile of rock and baseball detritus outside his old apartment on 23rd and Folsom, and if you didn't read his updated blog on the California Registered Sex Offenders Web site, then here's the news: Mike McGuirk is gone.

He quit.

He moved to Italy.

McGuirk was the skinny, bespectacled guy who reviewed music and ultraviolent video games here in the pages of the Bay Guardian. He looked like the guy you'd see in one of those hostage photos: beleaguered, holding up a newspaper to document the day's date. He was the one in your high school who was voted Most Likely to Drive a Cab with a Suspended License. McGuirk looked like a composite drawing of every guy you've ever seen asleep on a bus. He wrote about music and how much he loved it when vocalists set themselves, their instruments, and other bandmembers' balls on fire.

He liked music 90 percent of the population would consider unlistenable, albums surreptitiously recorded during conjugal visits at psychiatric institutions for the criminally insane. His favorite covers usually featured some combination of she-wolf goddess, busty mermaid, ferocious two-headed panda, archaic surgical instrument, and hardcore Russian pornography. He set the bar very high. Asking McGuirk to review mainstream music for the Bay Guardian was like inviting Dr. Josef Mengele to write a monthly wellness article for Parenting.

I liked McGuirk's articles because you could never tell what he hated, but you knew it was something. When critics befriend their subjects they tend to lose their objectivity, their ability to express hatred. From this incest, you end up with impossibly positive reviews of things that just flat-out suck. McGuirk never had the stomach for this. He ended up being friends with everybody he wrote about and basically stopped writing. He had an authentic voice that didn't work when he was forced into writing about self-referential and talentless Friend Rock.

He really loved music, though. He was never not listening.

McGuirk sold about 1,200 records before he left town. He had a yard sale, borrowed my car, fucked with my car's pre-sets, went to Amoeba twice, and then sold the rest to Open Mind. I couldn't believe how easy it was for him to let go of such a gigantic piece of his life. He did the same thing in Boston before he moved to San Francisco seven years ago. He needed the money.

It's not just that, though. I remember a couple of years ago we were going to go up to Seattle to watch a Red Sox-Mariners series. The opener was on a Friday night, and McGuirk said to me, "We'll leave with the shirts on our backs." He was always much more comfortable with chaos. When a hurricane is coming, most people get out of town. A rare few lash themselves to their couch and wait for the water to rise. McGuirk is in this second category, although I don't remember him ever owning his own sofa.

Of course, he couldn't sell everything. McGuirk kept enough so that when he comes back from Italy, he'll be able to listen to something while he naps and burns cigarette holes into my carpet. He had to have something, besides the restraining orders, that would document his time in San Francisco. But what did he keep? Out of 1,200, he held onto 11 albums, and I'm going to tell you what they are because those albums and a bunch of his other shit are all sitting in my kitchen, blocking access to life-sustaining food and water, and, frankly, emitting some horrible noise-rock stink that smells roughly like cat period. Amid the Fisher-Price walkie-talkies and tan Fluevog loafers – which used to be mine, were stolen by McGuirk, then returned to me so that I could now "look after them" (private conversation: Aug. 7, 2005) – you will find a startling referendum on McGuirk's ultimate taste in music. For a critic, this is the final word, more important than any bullshit review of whatever free CD a label mails you.

Please note: If your record is not included in this list, it means McGuirk hated you and hated your band.

Brainbombs, Burning Hell (Blackjack, 1999) If somebody made a movie about zombie rats who spend all their time feasting on the trash bags inside a Planned Parenthood dumpster, then this would be the soundtrack. More troubling, McGuirk listened to this album a lot when he was playing Bases Loaded, 2004, on his PlayStation.

Andrew Lloyd Webber, Jesus Christ Superstar (Decca, 1971) At first glance this doesn't look like a real record. The jacket is stamped "Pudding Maker" on the front. The back has stamps reading, "Peter Pussy," "Joseph Butler," and "Diz-E's on Fire." Inside, however, it contains both Jesus Christ Superstar albums and the original Decca playbill, all in pristine condition. McGuirk often spoke to me about writing a toned-down version of this, called Jesus H. Christ Superstar, for folks who don't want their rock operas to take the Lord's name in vain so much.

Black Sabbath, Never Say Die! (Warner Bros., 1978) This is the Black Sabbath album with the two guys on the cover wearing those frightening biohazard-jet pilot outfits. This is classic past-their-prime Sabbath, and I can only believe McGuirk kept it because it was a present from an ex-girlfriend and he probably hopes to one day bang her again.

Lightin' Hopkins, Lightin' (Prestige/Original Blues Classics, 1961) McGuirk grew up in heavily Catholic Maynard, Mass., in the 1970s. Lightin' Hopkins was everywhere. This album, I think, functions as his Rosebud. While other white kids were out smashing school bus windows, McGuirk was home memorizing chords for "Mojo Hand" and "Back Door Friend," waiting for the day he could walk down to J.J. Newberry's with four coffee cans full of dimes and buy his first guitar. This all happened, and as Mike liked to say, you weren't there.

The Impossible Dream: The Story of the 1967 Boston Red Sox (Fleetwood Sounds, 1967) This is a no-brainer. Decoding the Red Sox and their public miseries is central to understanding McGuirk and his whole loser complex. There's a part of every Red Sox fan that died when they won the World Series in 2004. This is an album McGuirk would listen to at night, alone in his room, playing one of the many Vietnam War-themed videogames that helped him pass the time before he could fall asleep at 6 a.m. and be late for work.

Temple of Bon Matin, Cabin in the Sky (Bulb, 2001) A few years ago the Hemlock Tavern hosted a Bulb Records night featuring DJs, drink specials, and rare video footage of artists from throughout the label's 10-year history. Five people showed up; McGuirk was three of them. McGuirk's supposed love for Bulb was one of his most impressive acts of self-delusion, perhaps the greatest since an ALS-ravaged Lou Gehrig called himself the luckiest man alive.

So So Many White White Tigers, So So Many White White Tigers (Weird Forest, 2005) This is a psychedelic noise-sludge album, and while McGuirk liked psychedelic things – especially psychedelic drugs – I can't imagine how he made it past side one of this late-in-the-game Spockmorgue-scene retread. For the record, McGuirk always mocked the "on acid" default rock comparison, although he never had any problem reusing the same tired bong references when writing about Sleep side projects.

Monoshock, Walk to the Fire (Blackjack, 1997) This shrieking hackfest inspired some of McGuirk's best writing – right up there with his lengthy Roger Waters-themed treatise, The Pros and Cons of The Pros and Cons of Hitchhiking.

Ego Summit, The Room Isn't Big Enough (Old Age/No Age, 1997) This is a vintage McGuirk album, in that Jim Shepard, one of the guys who made it, was a crazed alcoholic who blew a ton of money after getting signed, then turned up dead in the back of a Jaguar parked along an Ohio interstate. Which reminds me of the time I was trying to convince McGuirk that Steven Jessie Bernstein's Prison (Sub Pop, 1992) was good. He really didn't like it until I told him that Bernstein stabbed himself to death with a pen knife. Then it became a decent album.

Sublime, Sublime (MCA, 1996) If you skated during the '90s, you owned this. I asked McGuirk why he decided to keep this ubiquitous multiplatinum seller. He said, "Simple: It's got good songs."

The Royal Guardsmen, Snoopy vs. the Red Baron (Laurie, 1966) This album is also sort of a proto-Langley Schools Music Project, so I'm sure McGuirk was happy he owned the original prototype of teenagers covering creepy standards. You don't tell McGuirk anything he does is derivative. It's like telling Steven Seagal that somebody's above the law. You just don't do it.

Eric Gaffney sampler (contains Sebadoh's The Sebadoh [Sire, 1989] and The Freed Man [Homestead, 1989] and Fields of Gaffney's Fields of Gaffney [Animal Friends, 2003]) A lot of life comes down to being in the right place at the right time. Ask somebody who just got hit by a car. Northampton, Mass., was the place to be for about two hours in 1990. McGuirk and Eric Gaffney were there. I was too, but it was all lost on me. I'll tell you one thing: Gaffney can talk.

Additional writing by Will York.