Pavement:Classic or Dud

The organism is sluggish.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XQateJSGgAo

god bless that spleef in my mouth
or should I say Jah baby
Spin Doctors are crazy

June 4, 1993
Melbourne, Prince of Wales
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hc1JZ_IM4aI

In The Mouth A Desert
Ell Ess Two
Trigger Cut
Soiled Little Filly
???* [punk cover, anyone have any idea?]
Cut Yr Hair
Debris Slide
Canada [Silver Jews cover]
So Stark (You're A Skyscraper)
Angel Carver Blues/Mellow Jazz Docent
She Believes
All My Friends [clipped]

Pavement ist rad

i was watching the "Slow Century" doc a few nights ago and it made me kinda sad.

one of the best bands ever

is Pavement one of those bands that has zero appeal outside of the generation that experienced their initial popularity? I mean I like this stuff a lot but when I revisit it the inscrutable in-jokey lyrics and tossed off guitar noise make them seem like something that would be largely incomprehensible/not worth investigating to people who didn't cut their teeth on 90s indie rock. It reminds me of 80s hair metal, where it's popularity is very limited to a subset of people who were teens in the 80s.

oh i dunno hair metal brought us plenty of enduring pop hits

i'm sure there are plenty of millenials who dig pavement but if someone is doing the semi-annual "pavement sucks" meltdown my only response is "ya had to be there, man..."

oh i dunno hair metal brought us plenty of enduring pop hits

there's a few ("Pour Some Sugar On Me" springs to mind) but if you look at the crowds at Motley Crue or Poison shows or whatever, it's all just the people who were there the first time around.

anyway this thread is not about that, don't distract me!

as opposed to the wide variety of people at any other 80s act's concerts?

"80s act" is a very broad set of people, so yes

well i don't go to motley crue concerts or concerts of any other 80s acts so i bow to your experience re: the demographics that can be found

oh wait i did see the feelies. i was on the young end.

my point was some acts transcend their initial popularity and appeal to other generations - certainly plenty of boomer acts did this, the huge 80s acts (Prince, MJ, Springsteen, Madonna), etc. Pavement not so much.

yes the bigger the star, the more people from future generations know about them. pavement was always at a disadvantage compared to say, madonna.

i mean, i wouldn't necessarily pin pavement-digging on a generational wavelength. the most uptight people regarding their popularity tend to be people who hated them from the get-go.

those acts had hits!

xpost

also pavement was only a going concern IN the 90s, all those acts you mention were on the pop charts for 2 decades plus.

"Cut Your Hair" wasn't "Open Your Heart" or "When Doves Cry."

v true

surprised this thread was revived for some couchgazing when THIS is brewing

http://www.avclub.com/article/pavement-something-although-no-ones-sure-what-217912

I guess this revive is my way of wondering what non-Gen X Pavement fans make of Pavement, because to me they seem so inextricably tied to a particular era and its attending cultural concerns/baggage that I would think they require a lot of "explanation" for their output to make any sense at all

The kids at the college station know them well. They haven't disappeared from that demographic.

i know them but i don't really "get" them

i just assume young people who like terrible twee pseudo-indie think they're the beatles or something

yeah i'm such a crank about modern indie that i can't imagine pavement's deficits even make these little shits radar

if anything it's people my age checking out pavement after years of mild awareness that i can see being all "really? you nerds were making me feel bad about not being up with THIS?!"

i'm sure there are plenty of millenials who dig pavement but if someone is doing the semi-annual "pavement sucks" meltdown my only response is "ya had to be there, man..."
― da croupier, Monday, April 13, 2015 5:12 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i'm one of them. uhhhh but i had a 'cool' brother who was 10 yrs older than me who gave me a bunch of the music he liked when i was like 12?

an entire generation of aughts kids got raised on Pavement. they broke up in what... 2001? 2002? everyone was discovering those records afterwards. they soundtracked my highschool experience

so your point is wrong or maybe i'm just in the minority.

weirdo kids in their early 20s like pavement ime

idk anyone under 25 that like gbv tho fwiw

they broke up in 1999

i'm sure pitchfork's unending approval of their catalog had something to do with the fact that they remained such cult favorites into the 2000s. i mean they were never selling records or TV spots

an entire generation of aughts kids got raised on Pavement.

yup

my first girlfriend seemed to have spent 80% of high school (00-04) watching slow century w her bestie

every flimsy aughts indie band bared at least a little bit of their influence. Broken Social Scene, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah etc. it was huge talking point and a shared interest among friends

if you liked Pavement, we had something in common.

i'm 22 as well and this was happening in 2006 or 2007

There was really no time for Pavement to go away, because Matador starting releasing deluxe anniversary editions of their albums in 2002 and continued on until 2008 until the only one left was Terror Twilight, which they didn't bother with.

Pavement's the one band I adored that I can barely listen to now. I can't even listen to the Parquet Courts album that lots of people liked last year: the sloppy mamacita ethos.

huge nostalgia over the nineties is making sure some twenty/mid twenties persons are into Pavement. Once you get to know pitchfork, the pixies reunion tour and twin peaks, Pavement is really just a stone throw away.

xp and yeah the box sets have been pretty good at capturing the feeling of the era and why Pavement mattered.

i wouldn't even say it was nostalgia. more than it bled over into the next era

those records sounded fresh and undiscovered even in that time because everyone was already ripping them off

Now that I think about it, Pitchfork has been around now as long as Rolling Stone had been when I was old enough to start reading Rolling Stone. I wonder if Pitchfork seems like the old guard.

Pavement blows. No heart

As a Gen X-er who feels a special affinity for Pavement (I've been listening to them since 1992) and who has young impressionable music fan cousins, I've found that the kids dig Pavement and think they still sound relevant.

The band that has not aged well with the kids: REM. At least that's been my experience from a very small sample set.

Pavement blows. No heart

― Pentenema Karten, Monday, April 13, 2015

"No heart" LOL. And as Beavis and Butthead said, they're like, not even trying...

REM is much more of a you had to be there band...seriously, does anyone listen to that stuff anymore?

REM hung around way too long, so the kids remember them as this old lame band that old lame people enjoy.

my dad listens to REM!

of course people my age enjoy R.E.M. you'll find your way to to "Murmur" eventually. I thought they were a corny radio band for awhile though

xp
Yeah, kornrulesz, that's true...they stuck around.

is Pavement one of those bands that has zero appeal outside of the generation that experienced their initial popularity?

was talking a guy at one of the pavement reunions shows who was 19

How are we defining "Millennial" here? I'm a borderline [born late '82] and I know plenty of people who love them born between 1980 and '85. I discovered them sometime after buying the Spin Record Guide (1997 or '98), and they've remained among my three or four favorite bands ever since. What's weird is that even though Shakey's post in the thread revive makes perfect sense to me - I don't know why they would mean anything to someone who came of age ten years after their cultural moment, either - I find that they've diminished less with time than, say, Nirvana.

IOW, my experience is the near-opposite of Alfred's. ILM has rerouted my thinking about music enough that I barely listen to indie rock anymore, but Pavement still sounds as good to me as it ever did.

Pavement aren't exactly Truman's Water or whatever at this stage, plenty of scope outside of OG fanbase

they're a very clear starting point for "indie rock". just like joy division or whatever else. there will always be kids attracted to this type of music

it's not like everyone born in '95 is bumping PC Music and Drake