Show notes
jD is joined by Pierce from Detroit to discuss his Pavement origin story and wax poetic about song 37 on the countdown. Enjoy!Transcript: [0:00] Hey, it's JD here, and I just wanted to throw something down, somewhat of a challenge to all you musically inclined folks out there.We are going to be doing a pod list again this year, and a pod list is simply a podcast playlist.It's a pod list. The previous four pod lists have consisted of talented members of our Pavement community submitting songs that they have covered from the Pavement oeuvre.Pavement adjacent songs are also welcome. So you could do PSOI, you could do Jicks, you could do Malcolm is Solo.Anything is fair game, truly. So get your band together or grab an acoustic guitar and just play your fucking guts out.From there, submit the song to me by email and we'll go from there.So please submit those songs, jd at meetingmalkmus.com, or even better, use wetransfer.com if it's a big WAV file. And WAV files are what I prefer.That will work out just magnificently. That's what she said.Podlist 5 coming July 8th. So get those songs in and be a part of something special. Thanks so much.Now, on with the show. Previously on the.Track 2:[1:26] Pavement Top 50. Without further ado, number 38, Date with Ikea.Daniel from Chicago. Hey.Talk to me about your experience with this song. Well, it was the first Pavement album that I was able to buy on its release date.So it has a special place.It was released, I think it's April 17th, 1997.And I went to my local mall and walked in and bought this album.Hey, this is Westy from the Rock and Roll Band Pavement.Track 4:[2:13] And you're listening to The Countdown. hey it's jd here back for another episode of our top 50 countdown for seminal indie rock band pavement week over week we're going tocount down the 50 essential pavement tracks that you selected with your very own top 20 ballots i tabulated the results using an abacus and a small group of children in the fourth grade,How will your favorite song fare in the rankings? Well, you'll need to tune in to find out. So there's that.This week, we're joined by Pavement superfan, Pierce from Detroit.[2:47] Pierce, how you doing, motherfucker? I'm good, I'm good. It's good to be here.Oh, it's great to have you, man.[2:54] How's the weather in the city right now? It's been unseasonably warm yesterday.We got close to 60. I think we got to 60.So you know every people in shorts and uh it's not going to be here forever it's going to be nice today again and then it's going to go you know it's uh we're still in february so.[3:16] It it's going to be some jacket weather before you know it yeah i bet yeah how about you how what's the what's the weather like there it's been the same here it's been unseasonablylike i wore a vest yesterday instead of a jacket right like kind of nice yeah i mean you know aside from the existential dread but we won't go there yeah i suppose you're right yeah so let'slet's get right to this let's talk about pavement uh you mean my favorite band your favorite band of all time yeah oh man yeah i uh i you know i i kind of i listened to a uh previous episodeand then i you know got my mind you know i'm always jump chomping at the champing at the bit to uh relay my pavement origin story.So, I mean, I don't even know if it's like, it's not anything spectacular, but I mean, I guess the thing that really strikes me is just how much the band means to me and how much musicmeans to me.And, you know, so I'm always, you know, looking to knock on somebody's door and tell them about pavement.[4:26] So where did it all begin? Well, I mean, um, you know, so I came, I found pavement, um, in high school um i uh you know i i was really into just like a lot of corporate rock youknow i was all about like you know back and bc boys which are still i i still like and value those but uh you know i mean it's listening to like the sublime and 311 and you know all thatand And not to say that that's not, if that's your bag, that's your bag, you know, but like I, I, uh, so then in my sophomore year, a friend got me into fish and, um, and so like fish, you know,I, I've had like, I've kind of estranged myself from fish.Um, and I realized that, uh, starting at the top of a pavement podcast, talking about three 11 and, uh, and fish, I don't know if that's the coolest start, but, uh, you know, so I remembervividly, I got an entertainment weekly fish feature magazine and, uh, I guess the summer of 2000.[5:45] Summer of 2000 and just going just before going into my junior year in high school and uh there was a fish a to z and key they had uh like a little cartoon of the guitarist treyworshiping at this pedestal with slanted and enchanted like a little a little drawing on it and uh so key he, the A to Z P for fish was pavement.[6:12] And, uh, I was like, okay, well, I'll check that out.And, um, you know, I got slanted and enchanted and it just, uh, it was like instantaneous, you know?[6:23] And, uh, and so then I think the same day I went out to another CD store, I think I bought it from either a local CD store or from Best Buy.And then I went to another local CD store and i bought the major leagues ep so like wow my first two were like you know slenderman major leagues and uh i was like wow this this iscompletely different but i love it totally so different and so then you know i think within like a couple days i had bought um wowie zowie you know and then i went on uh a week-longsummer uh like a band camp thing to interlocking and uh so i remember being in this school bus and like hearing half a canyon you know and it just it blew my mind i was like in thegarden state natalie totally right i mean the headphones was like this is gonna change you know and uh and i mean um you know the uh the ensuing years of like and even just moments oflike trying to like play it for friends and having them be like oh okay that's cool man but you know and then gradually getting more people into it but yeah I mean man you know it's so it'sjust wild to think that you know.[7:49] My musical adventure really, I mean, I don't want to like put it all on pavement, but I feel like, like that, that really was the catalyst for so many, so many things that I've, um,discovered and enjoyed in the last 24 years.[8:07] Talk to me more about that. What does that look like?Oh man. I mean, so, you know, I'm just, you know, that that was the age of Napster and Audio Galaxy and LimeWire.And so you'd connect your audio galaxy.If you connect your you disconnect the phone line and connect it to your computer and then like try to download three songs and then go to sleep.And then you wake up and like one of the songs would have downloaded and you'd be like, OK, I'm good.Now i know about dinosaur junior you know it's like they would uh that it was just uh it was a wild time and then yeah then the advent of uh you know you had like music mags like thebig takeover and you had um the starting of pitchfork and so just you know over the last however many many years, just, I mean, it's, we just, we live in a, an age of renaissance.I mean, the reissues of just classics and never heard classics.Like I'm into like light Italian library music and like, you know, world music and.[9:28] These niche like i got into vaporwave over the pandemic and i got into dungeon synth and it's just like it's this exploding cosmos of never-ending musical discovery and at the sametime i mean you know at the end of the day pavement's still my number one favorite yeah you know and and terror twilight is my favorite album of all time okay that's which is i i realizedthat that's uh that's kind of like the one of the wildest takes i could have but sure yeah yeah i mean i just uh yeah i mean i when it comes to pavement i would say every just.[10:13] Just about every song every release is like i mean there's something so special i i know i don't know if we're supposed to like lead into this or but i'll just say like you know the earlystuff you know know the the original eps and and seven inches that are collected on westing or yeah um it i mean it's just magical i mean uh yeah there's just there's such a swirling vortexof melody and dissonance and feedback and i mean it really it's it's all it's all thanks to those three individuals that you know were just like conjuring some kind of alchemy out of youknow obviously they had they had their their you know pavement they had their artists that were informing them but I mean the way that Malkmus and Scott and and Gary like.[11:19] Did that i mean it's it's still it's just they could have just done those eps and i would still probably talk with the same reverence but then you know you see you see that line uh andand so you know coming to pavement you know pretty much at the end of pavement without i did too that's So that's my story, too.[11:41] They, you know, I was able to kind of just, like, find this tome of amazingness.And, I mean, with the reissues, I mean, there's clearly still so much to be discovered.I mean, I think we're so fortunate.I mean, with Terror Toilet being my favorite album, like, that reissue, like, last year or the year before.I mean that that was like the greatest thing that matador could i i've been like on you know uh mouth miss and pavement message boards crying for this for just so long and i mean idea orsince 2008 rather yeah and um and i mean it just like it really you know minus it's it's it's missing missing you know just one or two tracks from the at home with the groove box with thegroove box comp but i mean i i have that comp so i i also think it's missing for sale the person school of industry oh right like the actual version right right and um you know that's funnytoo because i i was going to mention that later i feel like the brief slide i feel like hold on.[12:59] Let's come back because we don't mention in the first half at all oh sorry yeah no that's okay Okay.It's all building up to that. Oh, sure, sure. So, yeah, I mean...[13:13] You know, I, I, I was able to see one of the, the Central Park shows.Oh, me too. And, and, oh, awesome.Which one did you go to? I forget now. I think it was the one on the, I want to say it was on the 10th or 11th of September.Okay. All right. Yeah. I think that might've been.[13:36] So I've got the, I've got the poster hanging in the other room.We went to the third night, which was Thursday night.Um and i think the night before uh i had some friends that went and it was there was a downpour, okay so i don't go to that one so i guess i'm fortunate oh so you saw the one with the ocsopen don't worry i have a very poor memory okay well that's okay i'll just say you know pavement is my number one and the ocs are by number two really yeah and so that that that thatsung not seeing that particular show um especially that era like that was like the warm slime uh which i i did i saw the vocs the week before and i told them how excited i was for them tobe opening for pavement oh man were they excited oh yeah and and john doyer like signed my uh signed my my albums that i brought and he like gave me a poster i've got the poster thathe gave me like hanging next to the central park pavement poster um yeah but i mean like.[14:47] You know so that was my at the time my girlfriend now my wife's first time in new york and we like went right up to like we got there probably at like five in the afternoon oh wowand we're like standing right like probably like 20 feet from basically where malchmas would be standing you you know, for the rest of the night.[15:12] So like, you know, we made it through this marathon set and pretty close to the end, like, I think my wife, my now wife was like, I need to go to the restroom.Like, I've been standing in this one spot, you know, because as you're standing there, just people continue to compact.And so eventually you're just kind of stuck, you know, know especially if you want to hold on to your spot um and i was i was standing next to this dude that was like heckling malchus tolike play like deep cuts from like territory which like i'm like thinking in my head like yeah i i want that too but i'm not gonna like not right harass him yeah yeah yeah so that was uh thatwas a really amazing experience and then then we get to see, uh, the Detroit show, um.[16:12] Not last year, but the year before. 2022, yeah. Yeah, yeah. And that was also, that was incredible.I mean, just, wow, what a band, you know? Right, agreed, 100%.So what's your, okay, so just, you're in a rarefied air with Terra Twilight as your number one.What is your least ranked?What's your number five? And I mean, I know these are difficult and often sort of ridiculous questions, too, because it's more like 1A, 1B, 1C, 1D, 1E, right?Right, right. I kind of, I bring it on myself when I throw something like that out there.[16:56] Um but you know i mean i'll say my number five when i first heard brighten the corners i thought that it was my favorite uh i think over time i've come to so with terror twilight ismy number one i think my number two is uh wowie zowie just because i mean it's it's a masterpiece and then then three i think goes to slanted just because again i mean how many timescan you have a masterpiece but they apparently did and then i would say.[17:34] Brighton and then crooked rain and i i you know i know no disrespect to crooked rain because no of course not this is just you know this is just what it is yeah yeah but i mean um,The other thing is just the hidden tracks, the B-sides.I mean, I think that really is what, I mean, I don't know.I would say that the five studio albums are enough to make it like pavement, pavement.But but then this rich, rich undertow of of just amazing songs that, you know, should have made the albums or, you know, in some cases, for sure, at least, you know, at least we havethem.Um you know i i really i i heard you mention uh in a previous episode that there's like a seven inch box coming yeah and uh i'm curious what what that looks like is that me too straightsingles or i don't know are we gonna get a remastered clay tracks like Yeah, but the Secret History.[18:53] You know, they launched that first volume of the Secret History, which is, you know, it's basically just extra tracks from, you know, Slenderman, Enchanted, Lux, and Redux.Um but you know i feel like crooked rain uh uh the desert sessions and uh and what was that we sent no addition like those those are crying to be double or triple augmented yeah yeah imean you know it always it's interesting because when you're putting something like that I mean, I remember being on the Stephen Malkin's forum once.And people, you know, when they came out with the first Secret History Volume 1, they were like, I have all these tracks.But it's like, yeah, I mean, I have those tracks too.And I don't even think at the time, like, Spotify was what Spotify is.But, I mean, there's having the tracks, you know, on CD, and then having the tracks on a 45-7 inch or a 12-inch.But like the joy of being able to put down a two a double lp set or a triple lp set and like flipping it over and having i mean again um what matador did with uh the spit in a stranger ep.[20:19] Uh you know i mean like that's that was a dream come true i mean i i kind of wish that they did that f…
Full show notes at the publisher 
Our TOPPODCAST Picks 
Stay Connected
