Pavement:Classic or Dud

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

This is all v informative

Malkmus' career post-Pavment is pretty underrated and he is still touring the world at pretty decent sized venues. The Jicks do play Pavement songs in countries that did not get a chance to see Pavement more than 1-2x. I hear traces of Pavement in current acts like the Parkay Quartz and Speedy Ortiz.

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

― hackshaw

phew!

Anyone young enough to have tindr do a quick search for # of results for Pavement?

kids still listen to Pavement like kids still listen to Nirvana

how is that?

i ask because afaict kids these days listen to nirvana the same way kids in my generation listen to bob dylan and i don't think pavement is quite there yet

People around my age who read Spin were pretty well acquainted with 90s indie rock, so even if we didn't cop Slanted and Enchanted when it was topping critics' polls we were on board a year or two before the group broke up. I suppose the reissues and Pitchfork appraisals would have acquainted '00s teenagers with the group, though their inspired, funkless amateurism was a pretty far cry from what U.S. indie rock sounded like after 2004 or so.

I once heard the comment "don't talk to anyone under 25 about guitar music" and shook my head so that's why i feel the need to clarify all this stuff

and Guided By Voices, and Sebadoh. and you name it. it's not some forgotten thing. nor will it ever be for a certain subsect of people

I didn't get Dylan at all until I wasn't a kid anymore

alright how about led zeppelin as a comparison then

Also, to state the obvious, Pavement never posted anywhere near Dylan's or Nirvana's sales numbers - kids in the early 90s didn't listen to Pavement like they listened to Nirvana, either!

Which answers your above question - only suitable comparison for Led Zep would be, like, AC/DC/Aerosmith/Guns N' Roses/Metallica. No one else even approaches that sales bracket

Pavement was the first indie rock band I got into. This was in 2002, when I was 13. I still like the records a lot (didn't catch the reunion tour).

My impression is that they're an indie rock staple of enduring cross-generational appeal. In short, hackshaw is right.

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.

have you already forgotten about Guitar Hero and Rock Band?

also: I Love the 80s, 100 Greatest One Hit Wonders, and 100 Most Shocking Moments in Rock & Roll, all on constant VH1 loop.

Yeah, I was in college when Pavement was as-big-as-they-ever-got and I was sort of shocked to find myself among the oldest people at the reunion show.

pavement obv aren't culturally entrenched like mj or the beatles or zep; they're culturally entrenched like the velvet underground

a close but cooler friend in high school whom some combination of mental illness and acid later made very different burned me a cd-r with "cut your hair" on it and i can hardly listen to it these days

I am 27, got super into Pavement in high school around 2003 or 2004, I get that they're a product of a past era (loose meandery goofy slackers with a wry sense of humor) but I can still appreciate them and I think they're musically really ultra great.

I wonder what is happening now that's SUPER rooted in the current era that 20 years from now I'll be like "really? What are you getting out of this in 2035??" All I can think of is PC Music

Diplo will probably be president in 2035.

Or his mother.

I dig Pavement, fell hard for them in high school, but man i don't begrudge anybody for not getting them or liking them, and indie rock these days seems partially detached from pavement style slacker steez anyway

Diplo travelling through time and being his own mother was the worst Star Trek episode

I hear traces of Pavement in current acts like the Parkay Quartz

I thought I'd read Parkay Quartz (who I like) deny it in an interview, but it's beyond traces - they sound like a tribute band half the time.
The last song on their last LP is called "Uncast Shadow of a Southern Myth" LOL

It seems like the Pavement influence is pretty big in the young indie rock scene even beyond Parquet Courts and Speedy Ortiz. Grooms, Twerps, Menace Beach etc. all remind me of them in some way.

yeah, if anything i think there's more Pavement echoing thru current indie rock than there has been in many years

I hear a lot of "90s" running through current indie rock, but only a little bit of Pavement here and there.

I've always thought of Pavement as sort of 90's continuity/evolution of what The Replacements for their time; I can totally see both bands having similar trajectories when it comes down to their appeal to subsequent generations.

I hear a lot of "90s" running through current indie rock, but only a little bit of Pavement here and there.
yeah i think malkmus is a pretty unique/unusual musician/lyricist when you get right down to it... parts of the pavement sound were easy to replicate perhaps, but he's hard to pin down. kind of like what big star worshipers miss about alex chilton, i think.

I hear a lot of Chilton in Pavement

yeah i do too, w/o it being particularly explicit

First time I heard Pavement I bought "Slanted and Enchanted" and "Mellow Gold" on the same trip to Media Play. Kind of sad that the slapdash atmosphere and lo-fi DIY spirit of those records hasn't really been revisited amidst all the 90s nostalgia. One thing I loved about both acts was they really didn't take themselves seriously at all. Beck's career has veered in the complete opposite direction but Pavement seemed to have kept its sense of fun up until the end.

yeah, seemed like terror twilight was a bit of a half-hearted attempt to make a "mature" record, but they blew it (typically). [i do like TT though]

yeah even with all the moroseness in TT they still made Carrot Rope the single

xp

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ij9Tm5vewY4

xpost

yeah I guess the Pavement traces in a lot of contemporary indie bands could be attributed more to a general 90s-ness I'm hearing, because none of these bands have someone as distinctive as Malkmus on guitar or writing songs, which is why I'm not really feeling this current trend.

I liked Pavement in the 90s, but I didn't typically elevate them above all others (I saved that honor for Archers of Loaf), so hearing a little bit here and there in current indie pretty much mimics my experience with them back then.

What about the voice of Geddy Lee? How did it get so high? I wonder if he speaks like an ordinary guy.

I know him, and he does.

Then you're my fact-checkin' cuz.

[cue 90s lounge-Bossanova drum machine]

I was about to make the Chilton/Big Star comparison to Pavement. it's super cliche. but yeah the mystery, the sense of humor and the sense of commercial "failure" is part of what drove them from well-respected to canonical

the lyrics are also just something that have a huge impact on you at an impressionable age. they can be interpreted and studied over forever. they impacted my personality for sure