terror twilight

Being Stephen Malkmus is … easy. You’re born upper-middle class in Los Angeles, the son of a general property/casualty insurance agent.

from https://magnetmagazine.com/2001/04/01/stephen-malkmus-being-stephen-malkmus/

Sounds like Kannberg never actually went to school for it

“I have a few blogs I look at all the time about city planning,” he says. “I get pretty excited about that kind of stuff. I lived in Seattle for a long time and I still follow what’s going on there. San Francisco too. I had the idea that I was going to get back into it but I just kind of let it go and kept making records.”

From https://www.popmatters.com/city-plans-and-vulcan-hands-spiral-stairs-scott-kannberg-speaks-2495400365.html

"there's blood in the butter the kitchen's are closed" always sticks in my head from Speak See Remember. Unhygienic!

xp And people call them slackers...! (ha ha)

I always heard "the kitchens are closed for the holidays" as referring to, like, a ski resort or boarding school... but not sure about that

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w2Ww_O3ceKU

Very on brand to promote this web oddity

The track may be a significant source of $$ for them, considering its numbers (assuming streaming at that level does make money for artists)

weird turn of events! will there be a bunch of gen z kids at the pavement reunion shows? i'm guessing "no" but I don't really know.

Maybe with their parents

Nast really needs to write a memoir

http://vishkhanna.com/2022/04/05/ep-677-pavement/?fbclid=IwAR1IXLmY4sjqOV1EbV9P7ygxG9QzHMblmR3OgjcokUvKi3SATXU43nC9Zsg

he does. man he sounds bitter in that interview though. and he's living in a shack???? yikes. hope the dude is ok

The scuttlebutt for the 2010 reunion tour was that Malkmus did it to help out Nastanovich financially iirc.

yup

I remember that turning up in a MAGNET profile

Also

https://pitchfork.com/features/article/so-much-for-destiny-the-story-of-pavements-terror-twilight/?fbclid=IwAR3VxDN0JcOH7ZIukECQ7pBOFDDDKlSr97e4_QUfEovBhvNNIPXVqfp8zCg

That Pitchfork piece is a good read, but also annoys me all over again that they are only restoring the Gordich sequencing on the LP, but not the CD version. Seems dumb.

in that interview its funny to get godrich's take on the infamous forgetting-bob's-name issue. happy to have some closure on that one.

"Look, maybe I only forgot his name once."

Yeah, that's kinda weak, lol – "there’s five of them and just one of me"

I mean I'm sure he's a nice guy, etc.

he got paid very well for that gig, iirc. least he could do is remember the name of one of the nicest guys in music.

he does. man he sounds bitter in that interview though. and he's living in a shack???? yikes. hope the dude is ok

bob lives in a house, i think he just was recording the podcast in a shed haha.

yeah i wasn't sure.

that pitchfork article is kinda great. i dig the new sequencing too

really hope malkmus tours with the traditional techniques band next year, would love to see that live. seems like he recorded an album this past fall/winter with that crew too, so i hope it happens

Tix for the NY shows are more than $100 each wtf?

what's his name needs a new pair of shoes.

i dig the new sequencing too

It does seem pretty good, I just don't at all get the thinking behind hyping up the new sequencing as something they "fixed up" for the reissue if they were only going to bother doing it on one of the two physical formats. Just seems bizarre.

This version of stereo has me roflin

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GI5akIHu99E

no idea why they didn't just have Spiral sing lead at that gig

when we did our worldwide deal with Matador [in 2020]

kind of blown away by the economics of the tour, at least the NY dates
4 shows x 3000 capacity x $150 avg price = almost $2 million
songs mean a lot...to someone I guess

Mark Ibold's Kreative Kontrol out now.

Does anyone know other examples of him singing on Pavement tracks, than just Carrot Rope?

Some of the Coachella video comments are great - "Steve hates them so much, he won't play ball" etc

i had never seen that coachella video. . . yikes!!!!!

It’s weird to me how people in bands whose albums are coming out or being reissued are like “yeah, you know, I haven’t heard this yet” but maybe I shouldn’t be surprised

I agree - especially for something like this, which it sounds like the band had an active hand in "producing"

“Have you seen the liner notes?” (That you contributed to)

“No, not yet”

Anyway Spit on a Stranger is a bloody lovely thing and i never heard it before today, somehow.

imo best argument for the godrich running order is spit on a stranger makes for a wonderful closer

Tix for the NY shows are more than $100 each wtf?

Hey, you can buy a ticket or the vinyl (same price!)

Someone says online: I was surprised to see in the credits that Gary Young played drums on the 2 spiral stairs demos, stub your toe and time to...

I do like the Godrich track order. “Shagbag” is a neat little filler/transition.

I forgot about this song “Rooftop Gambler” – it’s a good b-side

It’s kinda funny that this set doesn’t include their viral hit “Harness Your Hopes” (even though it was on the “Spit on a Stranger”single). They coulda double-dipped and threw it on…

Track 24 (“You Are the Light,” recorded at the Portland studio) is a real treat… that classic Pavement vibe.

Don't think I'll ever be able to listen to this album again without agonising about but what the correct sequence should be (probably neither of the official ones)

I have always enjoyed this record which has that "a weird end of the band or first solo album in all but name" vibe, cf Trompe Le Monde, In Through the Out Door, Lamb Lies Down on Broadway... can't think of others right now but you know what I'm talking about.

I'll probably always prefer the original order - I think I get what the Goodrich order is trying to do, clustering the weird stuff at the front and the poppy stuff at the back seems like a reasonable plan to lull the pavement fan with spacy/noisy songs then blindside them with major leagues/carrot rope/stranger, but I like how the original order works, with those 3 poppy songs as first, middle and last tracks of the record, a bolder statement. Daring you to take Malkmus in heart-on-sleeve mode seriously. I love how Carrot Rope lurching in after Hexx just totally deflates that grand statement, and subverts the earlier love songs into something strangely lascivious yet silly. And I don't think Stranger works as a closer, really.

Not a ton of great outtakes compared to the earlier series, as expected based on comments back then. Not including the vocal version of Preston School seems questionable, I always liked those goofy harmonies. I need to sift through my old mp3s and pick out the essential random live tracks from the 90s that were never released, all those hilarious covers like Wonderwall and Love is Lies, and half written songs like the Mark E Smith tune. Never a very convincing live band, I think a live compilation of half-assed fragments from across the 90s would work better.

Also, Malkmus needs a single disc best-of covering his solo stuff with a bonus b-sides disc. Perhaps there'd be interest in ballot polling him? Having his top songs spread across three different spotify entries (Pavement, Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks, and Stephen Malkmus) definitely helps keep his artistic profile a bit artificially low which I assume is what he wants (slacker cred).

I don't care for the Godrich order. The most interesting thing for me to hear is the demos. The melodies are already so fully-formed, even with the lyrics being half-there or absent. Which isn't suprising, but it does shine a necessary light on the fact that SM's primary gift has always been melody, as opposed to lyrics, even though so much attention is paid to those, at least in the Pave era. It makes me wish he and Berman had combined their strengths more often with the Joos (see American Water, especially "Blue Arrangements")

my father came in
from wherever he'd been

I think the original order makes more "sense" and was probably the right one to go with, but the Godrich order breathes fresh air into the album, and it's cool they went with it now (and dumb they didn't with the CD; I would have bought it if they had, but don't see a reason now).

There are definitely some lyrics here where you can tell Berman rubbed off on SM.