Pavement:Classic or Dud

These fuck sticks who don’t like S&E

How was the show

Setlist looks amazing: https://www.setlist.fm/setlist/pavement/2022/the-fonda-theatre-los-angeles-ca-73b75eed.html

That setlist is kind of making me want to shell out the $$$ to see this, dammit

Feeling good that I got tickets for one of the nights in London in October, and that I just remembered this fact. Hope they're not burned out by then.

Amazing show

I’ll give a full report later!

So on a personal level, I can't remember ever having more "fun" at a show... I was dancing, pogoing, screaming along at the top of my voice, in a sea of ppl doing the same thing (many of them in their 20s - the band has a whole new fanbase, it's great). It was everything I would have wanted a Pavement show to be "back in the day," but which they weren't (at least as far as I recall).

A group of the kids was slam-dancing to some of the "bangers" - it sounds contrived, but it was cute and good-natured. Everyone was super into the show; no one was just "making the scene." (There were plenty of older folks, course - the guy noodle-dancing next to me was a Tobias Fünke dead ringer.)

The band sounded terrific, their sound was big and full - they have great gear, and the keyboard player / backup singer fleshes out the sound nicely. The songs hit hard, with full force.

Interestingly, Malkmus wasn't so much the focus; he didn't bring much of the ol' guitar magic, for whatever reason... maybe he's under-rehearsed, or just doesn't "play like that" anymore? (His playing was a little rough / flubby in a few spots; he winced at himself at one point.) But this didn't detract from the show - it just put the emphasis more on the full band, and the songs themselves. (Malk did have a few nice solos - particularly in the long jam at the end of "Folk Jam.")

For those interested, he changed the lyrics in the infamous verse of "Range Life" - the line about SP became something about going to a club where "they don't play New Wave, they don't play dub"; and he sang about Toad the Wet Sprocket in the next verse, instead of STP being elegant bachelors.

Office Hours is a weird thing to watch if you aren’t familiar with it; not conducive to drop-ins.

its very white

this is the Pavement thread after all

That setlist is kind of making me want to shell out the $$$ to see this, dammit

― Guayaquil (eephus!), Tuesday, May 24, 2022 10:11 AM (three hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

For real. Motion Suggests!! Also that Jim Pepper song makes perfect sense as a Pavement cover, hope a vid gets posted soon.

Yeah, it was an awesome closer! I wasn't familiar with the song

listening to it now - reminds me a little of "Fé Cega, Faca Amolada" (which is what I thought I was last night, at first... with different lyrics or something)

oh geez I would have totally teared up hearing them do “witchi tai to”! have they covered that before?

This Guardian article (which the band is promoting) has some interesting details about how the breakup affected Kannberg, etc.

Does Mark still bartend in nyc? I mean like when he’s not making bill at the stadiums

According to the article he does.

Heya, a recording of the Fonda Theatre came up so I've placed it in a dropbox link, I"ll leave it up for a few days.

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/kmbnc8p4u7m1of2/AACHTZ7rCbIRSlBiGvOOCdhma?dl=0

Thanks!

Yeah thanks a lot!

Gave me chills listening to this.

As in The Big Chill, when they start dancing around in the kitchen. Kinda embarrassing, to be honest.

Yeah, the 2010 reunion didn’t feel like this… and I don’t necessarily think it’s just because we’re older now (although I don’t know what else it could be).

I’m hesitant to vocalize this (because it’s a drag on several levels, both practical and metaphysical), but it may be partly due to the sense that these guys will probably not do this again.

the new streaming-era fanbase definitely seems to be changing the feeling of this tour compared to 2010. I was content to pass on this one & stick with my fond memories of the last reunion, but I think I've convinced myself to shell out the bucks and go since this feels like a different experience than just "2010 reunion but we're even older"

We’re older, it’s been a longer break, the world is unquestionably worse, Pavement is still good.

It was the first show they played in awhile, but whenever they'd hit the wrong chord or a sour note, I was just all "That's My Pavement!"

Not sure if this has been shared on any of these threads, but it will hopefully be of interest to some.

~88 SM and the Jicks live cuts from 2001-2005, with their own songs and a ton of covers.

https://archive.org/details/jickspicksvol1_rev4.1/209+Fractions+%26+Feelings+-+2002-06-01+Graceland%2C+Seattle+WA.flac

they were great last night. SP/STP references back in Range Life. learned that my 19 y.o. knows all the lyrics.

Do we have an idea of how big this new fan base is supposed to be? Because zoomers aren't discovering, say, Archers of Loaf. I know "Harness Your Hopes" took off but I wouldn't have guessed Pavement had much appeal for the kids.

not just Pavement, my daughter was raising her arms and dancing to Yo La Tengo songs yesterday that I didn’t recognize and there was an absolute sea of people for Dinosaur Jr. felt bigger than the Kacey Musgraves crowd. lots of young fans that knew the music.

pavement are like the most canonised 90s indie rock band there is and dinosaur jr. & yo la tengo are both up there too

archers of loaf are still a much deeper cut

let me me tell you younguns about Polvo

Wingtip Sloat or gtfo

I don’t know how representative the Fonda show was, but I’d estimate that 1/3 of the crowd was in their 20s (or younger).

The kids like Pixies too iirc

I mean I feel like this is the analogue of all REM-listening college kids in the 90s discovering we were into the Velvet Underground. I wonder if the 90s VU reunion shows had a young crowd? I wasn't there (but listened to the CD of it a lot after the fact)

I imagine indie and underground bands like these will always have an appreciative audience among more cultured kids, but not all of them, which I guess is something of a reflection of how it was the first time around.

ILX 2035 "what are all these teenagers doing at the wet leg reunion set"

It sure seems like there are more indie rock bands now that sound like Pavement (and the Fall) than 10 years ago. That hard-to-define Pavement feel of the occasional odd chord with medium distortion and rhythm section threatening to fall apart, lyrics that prioritize an erudite outburst or unusual direction without concern about actually telling a coherent story, and musical mish-mash of the Velvets with a sprinkling of more melodically unusual moves suggesting a fondness for Beach Boys, Big Star, early REM, etc. It strikes me as a bit of a shame that Mark E. Smith didn't live to see a triumphant Coachella appearance where he could sabotage it with drunkenness and nearly impotent fisticuffs.

there was a whole lot of 90s indie rock revivalism about a decade ago too so idk that pavement are a bigger influence now than then

i'm in my 20s and discovered pavement as a teen around a decade ago now via their prominence in the indie rock canon (p4k surely did a lot there), not sure that too much has changed there beyond tiktok etc., there is still a niche of young people who love 'indie rock' and are discovering the classics

I wonder if Sonic Youth has any profile.

i doubt they're suddenly going to have any sort of tiktok hit, they're less accessible than pavement, but if they did reunite i'd probably expect the same sort of 'wait the kids like sonic youth?' posts too, they're similarly canonised

It sure seems like there are more indie rock bands now that sound like Pavement (and the Fall) than 10 years ago

I am not as in tune with indie rock as I used to be, but -- what's a current band you think sounds like Pavement? I really can't come up with one! Like maaaaaybe certain moments of Parquet Courts?

mean I feel like this is the analogue of all REM-listening college kids in the 90s discovering we were into the Velvet Underground. I wonder if the 90s VU reunion shows had a young crowd?

exact same amount of time since terror twilight as between loaded & the VU reunion

When my wife asked me for other examples of the band’s current popularity with younger folks (after what we observed at the show), I mentioned the Beebadoobee song about Malkmus… but it was the only thing I could immediately think of.

(Of course I’m not that “plugged in,” don’t use TikTok or w/e… I mostly know stuff via this board)

I wonder if Sonic Youth has any profile.

FWIW, Thurston Moore and Kim Gordon both had concerts in recent months (with Gordon forgoing Sonic Youth's stuff altogether), and both shows seemed to attract old fans and young ones in equal measure.

I should say at least with Moore's show, it seemed like a lot of NYU students. They just came back for the fall and LPR is basically right around their campus area. (If you can call it a campus - it's more like a ton of buildings spread throughout Manhattan, moreso in lower Manhattan.)

> what's a current band you think sounds like Pavement?

This type of thing for a start - dryly talking over angular riffs. This playlist is all UK stuff but it gets the idea across, there are loads of US bands in this style too. Obviously it was starting 10 years ago with Parquet Quarts and a few other bands like that but I think the big sound then was Thee Oh Sees-ish garage psych and now the hipster indie stuff feels more wry and loose to me.

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1waonK4xk9LtxR73hdcelV?si=aeaefa50649146d4

Sports Team (whom I didn’t see on that playlist at a glance, tho I stopped scrolling eventually) is another UK band that seems influenced at least in terms of aesthetics – even if they’re not exactly soundalikes.