Pavement is the greatest run-on sentence in the history of rock and roll.
How can one band be the greatest jangle-pop band, jam band, punk band, pop band, and trippy band all at the same time? It doesn’t make any sense…
Last week I had the chance to talk with Robert Schneider of The Apples in stereo, who toured with Pavement The Rock Band back in the ’90s. He told me it was almost impossible not to be influenced by them because, to that generation of indie musicians, Pavement was their Beatles.
As someone whose third favorite band of all time is Pavement, I couldn’t agree more.
The difference is, we’re incredibly lucky. Beatles fans never got reunion tours.
The most beautiful thing about last night was looking around the room and seeing so many younger fans. Thanks to TikTok and crazy algorithms, a whole new generation has found this wonderfully strange, impossible band. The torch was being passed a bit.. and the kids got a legendary sloppy poppy show!
Whether they’re at their sloppiest or not... nobody writes songs quite like Malkmus, nobody screams like Bob, nobody is as cute as Mark, nobody is as tormented as Spiral, and nobody is as fun as Westy.. and Rebecca is holding it all together now.. They’re songs are so witty, clever, beautiful, strange, effortless, melodic, noisy, and everyone of them … is just fucking great.
I found myself getting emotional. At one point I almost started crying because I realized this could very well be the last time I ever get to see them. I had never seen them play my fave tune At&t.. but they did last night!
Then, in the most Pavement moment imaginable, after their initial encore.. they walked offstage seemingly forgetting they hadn’t played their, "New".... “hit.” Someone must have reminded them, because they all looked confused and had to drag Stephen Malkmus back out, he now had baseball hat on and was holding his laptop and laptop cables.. like he was walking into work or a coffee shop... they then sloppily stumbled through “Harness Your Hopes” to close the night.
It was so imperfect. But Beautiful and the kids loved it.
To the band that made me believe I could be in a band… after all these years, they still give all of us hope. We just got to know how to harness it!