Why Does This Exist?: "Jimmy's Einstein Poster" by Guided By Voices

Illustration from the pamphlet "How the Underground Fights Back", 1942

I realize that I should have done a Guided By Voices "Why Does This Exist?" a while ago. As a big big fan of the band, I can't deny that, in the course of releasing thousands of songs over the last couple decades, Bob Pollard has released more than a couple songs that raise this question. My favorite may be "Jimmy's Einstein Poster", a brief boombox-recorded ditty that tells a simple story. Bob Pollard's brother Jimmy bought a poster of Albert Einstein, and Bob thinks this is hilarious. There are a couple interesting questions here, though.

First, why did Pollard bother to commit the song to tape, even including a messily "spliced-in" bridge that required stopping the boombox and then pressing "record" again? Also, why did Pollard record a "teenage brothers teasing each other" song in 1996, when both Bob and Jimmy were in their late thirties? The song was most likely written in the '80s, but Pollard committed it to tape while making demos for the album Not In My Airforce. I guess Bob still thought it was funny enough to be worth recording. And, to be fair, I do get a chuckle out of the line, "He looks at it to make him smarter every day! Now he's smarter every day!"

"Jimmy's Einstein Poster" by Guided By Voices