WESTING BY POLL

Box motherfuckin' Elder.

"You're Killing Me" is my favorite Pixies song.

STOP BEING CLEVER

Oooh tough one. Gotta go with "Forklift" but also thinking fondly of:

"Heckler Spray"
"Angel Carver Blues/Mellow Jazz Docent"
"My First Mine"
"Baptist Blacktick"
"From Now On"
"Perfect Depth"

"You're Killing Me" doesn't sound like any Pixies song I know. I guess he mentions a whore, which sounds like the kind of thing Black Francis would sing about.

That guitar riff is pure Surfer Rosa.

STOP BEING CLEVER

Waah, it's a Pavement thread.

debris slide over here for sure

^^ second choice

Perfect Sound Forever > > >the various singles on this thing > > >Demolition Plot J-7 > > > Slay Tracks

U RONG

okay that is cool. tell me how i am wrong

PSF does have "debris slide," but its more just like not-as-good S&E style stuff, which of course rules, but the slay tracks stuff is so fucking bizarre and awesome, and not really replicated or improved upon later in their career

She Believes is pretty awes.

ba da ba da ba

DEBRIS SLIDE

WHOA

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cEvWbwa_1iQ

"Debris Slide" is the clear winner here, a rocker not really like anything else they ever did. In my heart I probably love "Summer Babe" more but I can't really justify that love.

"Price Yeah!" is also pretty great.

(Though I'm still voting for "Box Elder".)

box elder is probably my runner-up

a rocker not really like anything else they ever did

I think it's like a lot of other things they did! that track wouldn't be out of place on slanted at all

box elders the new order rip off right?

what was the question you asked me?

I really gotta listen to this someday. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow... well, maybe tomorrow, if I d/l it tonight.

new order? I don't think so

unless there's something I'm missing

baptissblacktick

Box Elder no contest

Perfect Depth

debris slide is one of my fave pavement tracks ever.

Slow-Mo
Got his hand stuck in the kitchen sink
It was his birthday tomorrow
And he couldn't resist
But he never found a sign on his second skin
At least he knows how the other half lives
Inside a little room about four inches wide
With windows glued shut,
And air that stinks
But he only saw the kitchen
And the bath
He should be thankful
So thankful

That all's ok with her

And I wasted
No one's precious time
Like I wasted, I wasted all
Your precious time, precious time
Was a sorry thing to do
Was a sorry thing for you
Cuz I wasted,
I wasted it all on you...

Forklift or Home

From Now On, on a whim over Forklift

summer babe ftw

pretty sure Boxelder sounds a lot like a song from Technique. but i cant remember which and only have it on tape.

love less i think

but technique came out two weeks after slay traxxx!

maybe SM downloaded a promo version of Technique from OINK right before he went into the studio

man, I love this one. gotta go w/ Blacktick. Box Elder right there, though.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

I stand by my "Debris Slide" pick but dmr is right, on further reflection it is not at all unlike later traxxxxxx.

Internal K-Dart. First time I ever taped a record because I knew otherwise I'd wear it out. You get two totally rocked out songs for the price of one, and the transition between them halfway through is perfect.

Steve Shasta thanks for posting the Perfect Depth lyrics! I always wondered but half are so buried I gave up on figuring it out.

debris slide but it only just inches out a bunch of others

perfect depth being second

Debris Slide or Box Elder for me... I can't decide *cry*

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

.

I stand by my "Debris Slide" pick but dmr is right, on further reflection it is not at all unlike later traxxxxxx.

I voted for it too

so close :(

OK, let's see if dmr agrees with this: given that _Westing_ is to later Pavement as _Distant Plastic Trees / The Wayward Bus_ is to later Magnetic Fields, we should see songs like "Summer Babe" and "Box Elder" as analogous to "Candy" and "You Love to Fail" -- songs which are terrific in their own right but who owe more to the band's founding influences than their more mature work will. And "Debris Slide" is more like "100,000 Fireflies," the moment at which the band's true sound breaks free and reveals itself for the first time.

i agree on "box elder," but i think "summer babe" is pretty fully pavement!

also that "debris slide" vid upthread fucking RULES

fuck yeah it does

I don't think I know Mag Fields well enuff to comment on that analogy

but yeah Debris Slide and Summer Babe add more hooks in with the noisy Fall type stuff

Interesting timeline stuff:

March 1989 - Slay Tracks recorded in Stockton during Spiral's spring break from ASU (Phoenix/Tempe, AZ)
April-October 1989 - Malkmus backpacks around the Middle/Near East and parts of Eastern Europe for 6 months
November 1989 - Demolition Plot recorded during Spiral's thanksgiving break from ASU
December 1989 - Perfect Sound Forever recorded during Spiral's winter break from ASU

All this "We're a Stockton band" they pushed in their early press/zine coverage is pretty funny, Gary was the only one living in the area.

(Malkmus was living in Brooklyn/Hoboken prior & after this gap year.)

I recently re-read the first half of the Rob Jovanovic book, and was also struck by the timelines and good fortune (well, earned, thanks to the material) of how everything took off with those early EPs.

Perfect Sound Forever and Watery, Domestic are probably their best releases in retrospect

Watery, D is just immaculate, even being 25% "filler". It works

I love reading glowing fanzine reviews of the early EPs, reprinted in that book. Everyone just "got it"... someone was like, "In 10 years, there will be Pavement tribute albums." Think of all the bands that pressed up 1000 copies of a self-produced 7" around that time, and still have 900 copies in their garage... SM/Spiral/Gary happened to have the goods, and reaped the rewards. (I guess this is a "Westing" thread, though, so I could take this elsewhere.)

well, Westing is a compilation of the early singles so

Uhhhh, you're right... I was confusing the title w/"Watery" (mentioned directly above my post)!

Kind of related (given the opening tracks): https://daily.bandcamp.com/lists/pavement-alternate-top-10