Two hours ago, a writer and poet, Bethany Jarmal, tweeted a prompt that interested me. She suggested picking one of the books in your collection at random. The author suggested looking at six to eight words on page 29 of the book and writing from those.
It sounds interesting, and I thought I’d check out Robbed of Sleep (Stories to Stay Up For). The eight words I liked on page 29 of ‘THEM IRON EYES CODY BLUES’ by JOHN BODEN were:
Brilliant orange in contrast to the blackest black
While touring Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain in 1994, Pavement played a strange composition titled Orange, Black. The band has performed on John Peel’s BBC radio show more than once (they’re excellent).
What does Steve Malkmus’ orange and black symbolize? He gets breathless singing those words on the track.
Once I burned this song to a mix CD for a friend of mine who enjoyed weird music. What she said hearing this was “What’s wrong?”
“Did he forget to take his medication?”
I just heard a rock musician being cool. The track is listed as Brink of the Clouds Brink of the Clouds
Yesterday The Smile released what I’m guessing is their sophomore album. I watched on YouTube the song Bending Hectic. The Smile – Bending Hectic
The lyrics include, “If you’ve got something to say, say it now.” The video presentation includes eyes on orange much like the cover for the 1997 Pavement LP Brighten the Corners. As Pavement has played loads of tour dates this year and last, Nigel Goderich, the unofficial “sixth member” of Radiohead (the band that preceded The Smile) produced the final Pavement record Terror Twilight in 1999.
I’m sure it was a lot of work, but it is well done. I wonder why The Smile would seem to reference Brighten the Corners in art from their new release.
It is the oldest popular music festival in existence today. In the last five decades, Reading Festival has hosted big bands and acts, such as Nirvana in 1992, Paramore in 2014, and Metallica in 1997.
Reading ’92
If you want to listen to some nineteen-nineties-era rock that you could share with friends, you should have no problem finding Pavement’s discography. They are an unparalleled example of a fun, witty rock and roll band, that won accolades and a level of popularity that has helped their discography endure.
What happened?
It was on 23 August, during their two-week Europe tour with rock band Sonic Youth, that the band played at Reading, an approximately 40-minute set.
Pavement was a five-member band, although Stephen Malkmus, Scott “Spiral Stairs” Kannberg, and Gary Young alone formed the band in 1989. Pavement recorded the music at Gary’s studio, Louder than you Think.
The song from those sessions includes Box Elder, seeming to be about leaving town in frustration, which enjoyed some interest. The Chicago record label Drag City handled it.
Why it was so awesome
On 23 August, ’91, the band was playing on the strengths of a 7″ single, Summer Babe (Winter Version), and three earlier EPs. The first full-length LP was a big deal, as Matador Records was working to help make Pavement a name for themselves. Meanwhile, Geffen Records was getting Sonic Youth major success, Sonic Youth having previously been shoegazers known for their song Death Valley ’69.
Both Sonic Youth and Pavement are influential music acts.
Despite obscurity in 1991, Pavement was becoming a success. Pavement’s most recent album now is Quarantine the Past, and the time seems right for both old songs and unseen material.
The unreleased songs from Pavement won’t be hard to find. Bandcamp is making it available in different formats in April. Besides the reissue of Spit on a Stranger from 1999, there is a set of all their music.
You don’t need to hear the complete collection if Pavement interests you. You could begin with Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain, which is their best-known release.
What the band said about Reading
The members of Sonic Youth and Pavement became pretty good friends. When Malkmus turned his attention to Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain, he sold a lot of units, but not as much of Pavement’s music after that found the same popularity.
Certainly, it would have been more difficult to make videos that would have been more popular with MTV audiences. Still, the two videos Pavement released with Wowee Zowee in 1995 were, in one instance, simply a bathtub filled with water, and, in the second one, the band appeared to be in a country-rock video, even though they were known for their straightforward rock music.
Perhaps Malkmus was being difficult. I like the Father to a Sister of Thought video, but Wowee Zowee obviously had little chance to break into the country music market, being an experimental rock album.
You can’t see them, but they were great!
You can get an idea of what they were like with the second CD from Slanted and Enchanted Luxe and Reduxe, where, for example, the discs include the song Frontwards from the Watery, Domestic EP, in both its studio recording and also played live, at Brixton Academy, in December of 1992.
An MTV video from 1995 of Pavement talking at Reading can be seen on YouTube. You can watch how they handled themselves when they are talking somewhat candidly.
Pavement is a band that you might find interesting if only for the sake of hearing songs that are both unique and entertaining. Like Range Life, from Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain, or In the Mouth a Desert, on Slanted and Enchanted. Artistically, Stephen Malkmus is competent.
“Thanks for coming to Reading Festival this year. As you probably already know, we’ve got a few of our most interesting acts playing live on the Main Stage: Arctic Monkeys, Rage Against The Machine and Megan Thee Stallion. We also have other great names, such as Bring Me The Horizon and Halsey.”
I’m joking, I’m not a Reading Festival emcee 😉 Those artists are apparently in for Reading this year, however.
If I could time travel, I would go from 2022, back to the year 1994. Major league baseball players walked out. It was Tom Hanks’ second consecutive Best Actor Oscar win. Woodstock ’94 recalled the original concert. I wouldn’t want to create a paradox.
I would have to go to a department store or mall to buy clothing in style, like oversized sweatshirts, sweaters, and t-shirts. I would likewise move away from the town where I carry on with my life, as not to run into my seventeen-year-old self, of 1994.
It would have been cool to see Pavement play a show in 1994 when their record album Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain was a commercially-significant album. They weren’t a characteristically commercial rock band. Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain briefly took Pavement to the top of the rock music industry, an industry much different today than it was then. I’ve heard quite a few recordings of Pavement playing live, and I would have liked to be in attendance when they were most famous. Some people really gravitate to Pavement. By the way, Pavement is doing a reunion tour this year, in 2022, and releasing a box set with both old and unreleased recordings on April 8. Stephen Malkmus, Pavement’s frontman, returned to the stage recently with a different band. Rolling Stone reported on it.
For Jim Adams’ blog bounce, for Sunday, January 10, 2021, Jim has requested MA, meaning a tune with a title that begins with either the letter M or with the letter A.
I thought of a song with an unusual title, that begins with A.
“And Then (The Hexx)” is a song by Pavement, a b-side on Pavement’s “Spit on a Stranger” single in May 1999, I read somewhere. It sort of provides a conclusion to the 1997 Pavement album Brighten the Corners. Quietly now, that’s the Pavement record where the entire quintet is performing–it’s sometimes known as “dream pop.”
A second version of the song “And Then (The Hexx)” is again the conclusion to the next, and last, Pavement album, Terror Twilight. Strictly speaking, to the best of my understanding, the song is “And Then (The Hexx)” for the Brighten the Corners b-side, and simply “The Hexx” for Terror Twilight.
Rock musician Steve Malkmus, who around the year 1990 put together ideas for what became a classic all-American rock record, Slanted & Enchanted, while the young man was in high school in Stockton, California. Nice work if you can get it.
“And Then (The Hexx)” is eerie, and it has happiness to it as well.
Malkmus has reinvented himself twice since Pavement folded. First he played as Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks, and more recently, since 2018, just Stephen Malkmus. I’ve seen video of Malkmus performing his songs by himself for the groove denied tour.
Terror Twilight producer Nigel Godrich was keeping active on Twitter in December 2020, when he tweeted on the thirteenth of December, 2020, that, despite what Godrich called “the dark” of December, Godrich preferred the advice,”get your SAD lamp out and party!” SAD indicates seasonal affective disorder, mild depression brought about by lack of sunlight, in a cold climate.
The feeling echoes what Steve Malkmus said for the 2002 documentary Slow Century. Godrich’s observation is certainly deliberate.
“Get your handkerchiefs out,” Malkmus says, “and party.”
Writing for a Chicago online mag highlighting music, motion pictures, and TV, consequence of sound’s DAN CAFFREY says, “‘Spit on a Stranger’ looks back on a relationship that’s gone kaput — maybe a relationship with a band.”
I have the impression that, of the five band members in the band in 1999, that other than Steve Malkmus, they wanted to hang it up.
When touring the Terror Twilight record, Malkmus often hung a pair of handcuffs on stage, from his mic stand, to illustrate how he felt making a living in a rock band.
Dissected: Pavement BY DAN CAFFREY ON AUGUST 11, 2015, 3:00PM
“Terror Twilight,” Caffrey writes, “has a reputation of being Pavement’s tamest album, and that’s true, musically speaking — the tempos are sturdier and there’s much less yowling, despite a ripping harmonica solo (?!) from Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood.” Wikipedia says Jonny Greenwood, from Radiohead, played harmonica both for “Platform Blues,” and for “Billie,” both of which are Terror Twilight songs, Billie penned about Billy Graham.
Whether the various elements of Terror Twilight, Caffrey says for consequence of sound, scare the shit out of you or not, the lyrics prove that, even when they had run out of momentum and had to be practically forced by Godrich to come up with new material (the band reportedly was more concerned with playing Scrabble than recording) — even when music didn’t sound quite like itself, Pavement was still Pavement.
I saw in a more recent interview, it is somewhat eluding me where I heard this (I think it was organized by Vanity Fair for Seattle radio not too long ago), when Malkmus was talking about getting ready to play shows with Pavement, Malkmus said that to this day he enjoys the game of Scrabble.
I presume that’s Pavement fandom knowledge. Malkmus has said publicly he got really quite good. In a round of Scrabble, you make words on the game board utilizing letters, which add to the score.
Anyway, some fans consider “And Then (The Hexx)” to be a Brighten the Corners song, because of the 2009 rerelease of Brighten the Corners with the second CD with “And Then (The Hexx).” It is also the conclusion to Terror Twilight, which when discussed is usually just called “The Hexx.”
I still like to think of “The Hexx” as “And Then (The Hexx),” and that’s why it fits into Jim’s MA prompt challenge. However, the true release date of “And Then (The Hexx)” should be 1997, not 1999.
Pavement And Then (the Hexx) Composed by Stephen Malkmus
Today’s Discover challenge, by Michelle Weber, is about the word “orchestrate.” The last piece of music which moved me is the song battle born by The Killers.
Up against the wall (Up against the wall) There’s something dying on the street When they knock you down (Up against the wall) You’re gonna get back on your feet Cause you can’t stop now (Cause you can’t stop now) Did they break your heart? (Did they break your heart?) And did they cause your soul to mourn Remember what I said Boy you was battle born
While The Killers are a great band, I didn’t initially have a strong positive reaction to this song of theirs. Eventually, though, it began to move me the way a piece of music does, giving me the odd moment of pause while relevance in the song hits home with me.
What would it be that is “dying on the street?” I wonder briefly when I hear it. There is a Pavement song from 1995, Grounded, that has a similar lyric. Both are interesting songs.
The Myth of the Independent Blogger and How I Learned to Love It 