A Special New Band: Pavement

pavement

So, okay, they aren’t exactly new, but it is hard to argue that Pavement isn’t special.

Sure, as a 22- year-old I can’t claim I’d been there or participated when they first came around. I’d never heard of Pavement until my sophomore year of high school in 2005, six years and several solo projects after their collapse. I don’t remember when “Cut Your Hair” swarmed MTV airwaves. I finally heard of them when Doug Martsch of Built to Spill mentioned them in an interview, and once I found them they became, and have remained, one of my favorite bands. Pavement was one of the most consequential bands I had encountered…and I had missed them by nearly a decade.

When the members of Pavement called it quits in 1999 it was hard to imagine a reunion ever happening. A band that had been together for so long and had experienced so much turmoil stood little chance of ever getting back together to rehash songs that seemed so ingrained in a certain time, mood and attitude.  However, in late 2009 Matador Records announced Pavement would be touring the world in the new decade.

Maybe it was a business venture, a chance to call to mind a ridiculed, forgotten era that marked the final stages of the record labels’ domination and strangle hold on artists….so what? They are the heroes of the 90’s (a crowning they would probably hate, or maybe just ignore).

And as I walked in the surprisingly pleasant air on the last day of Coachella, I realized that all the bands I had seen during the previous days were in one way or another there because of Pavement, whether directly influenced or obliquely guided by them. When I sat waiting for Stephen Malkmus, Scott Kannberg, Bob Nastanovich, Steve West, and Mark Ibold to take the stage, I had for the first time in all my concert-going experience grown nervous. How often do dreams come true?

They came out, strapped on their guitars and launched into “Silence Kit,” and as Malkamus sang “C’mon now, talk about your family,” the PA gave out. Pavement was silenced once more, and for several seconds the crowd carried on “Your sister’s cursed, your father’s old and damned, yeah,” singing every word, every note perfectly in tune and in time, as if nothing had changed. They revisited their Slanted and Enchanted era with “In The Mouth A Desert,” “Two States,” Frontwards,” and “Trigger Cut,” the Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain favorites “Gold Soundz” and “Range Life,” briefly skimming through Wowee Zowee and casually played Brighten The Corners standouts  “Stereo,” “Shady Lanes,” “Starlings on the Slipstream” and “Date With Ikea,” avoiding Terror Twilight altogether. Malkamus chugged through the songs with all the attitude, emotion and flavor from the records, shifting between bored groans, angry howls, sarcastic sneers and romantic murmurs without breaking stride. I’m not embarrassed to admit I choked up when Malkamus and the crowd sang “You’re my summer babe” (alright, just the tiniest bit embarrassed). Pavement ended their set, as everyone knew they would, with “Cut Your Hair.  The crowd sang along to the group’s only commercial hit, a song about bands selling out, and the Indio night air was full of irony.

As my friend and I sat down and waited for the Gorillaz, I thought about how fortunate we were to be of age at that time, at that moment. To be able to look back years from now and say “I was there!”…when Pavement was on their reunion tour.

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