if someone held a gun to your head and said "Sing Pavement's 'Gold Soundz'" could you do it?

http://lineout.thestranger.com/files/2008/07/funeral.JPG

Not sure if I could remember the lyrics to "Happy Birthday" with a gun pointed at my head.

WARRIORS
WARRIORS

"if whiney g. was holding your head underwater in a bathtub and said 'blow bubbles with your nose to gary young's drum beat' could you do it?"

i could sing Gary Young's "Plant Man"

Anyway, it is fucking inappropriate to sing "Gold Soundz" unless at least five people are singing it at the same time and you're all drunk or high or both.

i wish i had more friends that knew the lyrics to "Protect Ya Neck" than fucking "Gold Soundz"

my friends know the lyrics to "country grammar" more than anything

i would have to use placeholder lyrics for some of the lines i dont know but i could sing the melody

i probably know all the lyrics to 'protect ya neck' too i guess

i basically mean the melody not like all the words perfectly

I have no idea what this song is, so I would be dead.

GO BACK!
to those Gold S0undzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
something something

...

I KEEP MY ASHTRAYS TO MYSELF
blah blah

FIN

i would have to use placeholder lyrics for some of the lines i dont know but i could sing the melody

― ciderpress

This, basically. Probably same for Malkmus, don't cha think?

SO DRUNK
in the august sun

I got the same in-depth knowledge as NickB but I didn't know that word was "Ashtrays".

i wish i had more friends that knew the lyrics to "Protect Ya Neck" than fucking "Gold Soundz"

i'm so glad most of my friends can sing along to "are you that somebody?" or "juicy" with me

I got the same in-depth knowledge as NickB but I didn't know that word was "Ashtrays".

To be honest, it could well be "Assflakes" instead.

I always* conflate this song and Range Life so when I looked at this thread title I was like, hmm once I got to the bit about the Smashing Pumpkins I'd be more or less home and dry

*has only been a thing in any recent years thanks to relevant ILM threadz and I guess that comp from last year, but yeah

I don't think I've ever heard a Pavement song, so unlikely to be able to sing this one

this coupled with popping my karaoke cherry last week has reaffirmed that I have a really really poor knowledge of lyrics in general, even for songs I have heard countless times

I don't think I've ever heard a Pavement song, so unlikely to be able to sing this one

You'd know this one Tom, it's the one with that slacker guy mumbling oblique lyrics over some weak indie rock.

I don't think I've ever heard a Pavement song, so unlikely to be able to sing this one

― Tom A. (Tom B.) (Tom C.) (Tom D.), Friday, September 10, 2010 9:48 AM (14 minutes ago) Bookmark

yeah p much

i have listened to this a few times, recently, to try to understand a little more and condemn a little less

but i couldn't even hum the fucker, let alone sing it

would still be alive w/ pavement, wu, aaliyah, nelly and biggie. would be dead w/ gary young.

"Go back to those gold sounds and bring ice cream to your door..."

Is that how it starts or am I fucked?

RZA needs to mediate between lex and indie like he did between Vampire Weekend and Jake Gyllenhaal.

afaik i've never heard pavement

go back
to those gold sounds
and keep my [ath-ent] to yourself
because there's nothing
I don't like
is it a crisis or a boring change
when it's central
so essential
it has a nice ring when you laugh
at their low life
opinions
and we're coming to the chorus now...

(Do I get to live, of do I have to go on? It does get spotty from here.)

I'd keep my address to myself...

TOOT TOOT
can I hear a
BEEP BEEP

This scenario is going to be IN MY BOOK.

xp haha too easy

"Quarantine the Past" is a collection of Pavement's greatest hits btw.

I have one friend in the world who could recite both gold soundz and protect ya neck, and that reminds me, I owe him a handwritten letter.

But seriously, fuck you post-post-ironic hipsters.

Like the Canadian national anthem I could probably fake it reasonably.

I could get through it. It's a fine song, some memorable turns of phrase, but whatever.

i wish i had more friends that knew the lyrics to "Protect Ya Neck" than fucking "Gold Soundz"

You sound like the GZA on Sunday, lol.

I could do 'Here' or maybe 'Summer Babe', but aside from, like, one line, I'd be fucked with this one.

"Gold Sounds" pffft

I could totally do Here. Gold Soundz I can kind of sing along to and kind of mumble all the bits I don't know.

"shady lane's" the best pavement singalong song anyways.

if someone held a gun 2 ur head and asked u 2 recite the web address of indie music review blogazine Pitchfork could you do it

DON'T FORGET, it changed a few years ago!!

American gun culture at its worse, this thread

cret cret cret cret cret cret

GO BACK!
to those Gold S0undzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
something something

...

I KEEP MY ASHTRAYS TO MYSELF
blah blah

FIN

This is kinda where I'd fall in line, plus the "coming to the chorus now" part -- and could hum the ~10 essential seconds of the chorus melody. That's about it. I could do "Summer Babe" or "Spit on a Stranger" or "Stereo" pretty well, though.

if someone held a gun to your head and said "change that flat tire"...?
... "smoke this whole doobie"...?
... "recite Shakespeare's Macbeth"...?

"Are you good men and true?"
"Yea, or else it were pity but they should suffer salvation, body and soul"

'sfar as I get

Never understood why people like Shady Lane, it sounds so clumsy and awful to me.

I couldn't recite anything from this song either.

I do actually like Pavement, just not all that much I suppose.

it sounds so clumsy and awful to me

This is how I would describe Pavement as a whole

I can do a wicked imitation of morrissey singing the opening verses of 'summer babe.'

w/Shady Lane, it's all about the hang before the chorus, with the chorus itself as silly anticlimax that turns powerfully unironic and awesome the second time around (cf David Bowie - "Life on Mars")

I do actually like Pavement, just not all that much I suppose.

^

dead. because the lyrics are secret. they are secret cret cret cret cret cret cret cret.

I consider myself a pavement fan and couldn't do this. This song almost always goes by pretty much unnoticed when I listen to crooked rain for some reason.

honestly, if you could sing the melody or chorus just by someone saying the title, I would file that under "yes"

as of this second, I probably couldn't hum a pavement song by title alone except "cut your hair" and "plant man" if that counts. I can hum the drum beat to "Summer Babe" but don't remember how the actual song goes hahaha

I could probably hum 40 to 50 Faith No More songs on title alone, and I kind of lol me a lol at anyone more excited about the Pavement reunion than the FNM reunion tbh

I could def do the choruses for 'Debris Slide' and 'Loretta's Scars' I think.

i can remember most of the tunes and choice lyrics from most pavement songs despite not having heard them in probably 3/4 yrs

they have some good tunes, is all

R.I.P. BRAINWASHER :(

Going down the P4k list

I couldn't sing a single Neutral Milk Hotel song if given a title alone although I know one goes "I LOVE YOU JESUS CAHRISSSSSTTT JESUS CHRIST I LOOOVE YOUUUU" but don't know what that song is called.

I could probably do four or five My Bloody Valentine songs easily but honestly I don't know any of them by their title. I just know them all as part of a nice blur of music when I put on "Loveless" and don't really look at the CD art.

I don't think I've listened to Pavement for 16 years! xps

I consider myself a pavement fan and couldn't do this. This song almost always goes by pretty much unnoticed when I listen to crooked rain for some reason.

― peter in montreal, Friday, 10 September 2010 14:07 (13 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

pretty weird imo, it's the bright heart of the album for me. and yeah could sing it word and note perfect.

more than you can say for pavementsingerbro AM I RIGHT

Pavement songs I could randomly hum at this second -- "Box Elder MO" thanks to the Wedding Present, that song about REM from the AIDS benefit album and the opening riff to "Texas Never Whispers." Which is three more than most bands in the world have provided in terms of tunes I could name so hey.

There are very few songs to which I could sing every lyric exactly as it was written.

However, haha, just about an hour ago, I was singing bits of "Gold Soundz" in a silly voice while getting dressed.

Here's an attempt:

Go back to those gold soundz, and keep your advent to yourself
Because I'm not quite ... and it's a crisis and a ball and chain
With your low down underground down ...
Keep your advent to yourself cuz we need secrets, we need secrets-crets-crets-crets-crets-crets-crets, right now!

... cuz you're the kind of girl I like
Cuz you're empty and I'm empty
And we can never quarantine the past
I remember in September ...
And now we're coming to the chorus now

And we've been waiting here too long, and we need secrets (etc.)

central, so essential
it has a nice ring when you laaaaaugh
at the low life opinions
and we're coming to the chorus now

that's all i can add
i remember this song alright, but it has been a LONG TIME

I've never listened to Pavement

the part i always hated about this song was the "remembah in decembah" part
STOP IT

this is easily one of my favorite Pavement songs but i probably hate them more often than i like them

I couldn't sing a single Neutral Milk Hotel song if given a title alone although I know one goes "I LOVE YOU JESUS CAHRISSSSSTTT JESUS CHRIST I LOOOVE YOUUUU" but don't know what that song is called.

I lol'd hard at this - SO TRUE!!!

Also -- "THE TWOOOO HEADED BOOOOYYYYYY...." *strumstrumstrum* FIN

lol @ needing a month to discuss this

saw pavement last night. sang along to this song.

They allowed guns into the gig?

guy just got me into a headlock and said he'd snap my neck

should've known not to stand next to him, since he kept requesting "Cut Your Throat"

never heard this song, pretty sure i only know one person who has

you know me

i mean real people, like in wisconsin

OH SHIT SON HE SAID UR NOT REAL

I could probably sing at least a little bit of every song on the pitchfork top 20 list, except the Belle & Sebastien song. I have pretty strong song retention skills.

I've been in Wisconsin. I ate macaroni and cheese pizza.

ok sorry i know two people who know this song. i bet most chicago thread people know it too?

I couldn't sing a single Neutral Milk Hotel song if given a title alone although I know one goes "I LOVE YOU JESUS CAHRISSSSSTTT JESUS CHRIST I LOOOVE YOUUUU" but don't know what that song is called.

I could probably do four or five My Bloody Valentine songs easily but honestly I don't know any of them by their title. I just know them all as part of a nice blur of music when I put on "Loveless" and don't really look at the CD art.

Whiney, weren't you just complaining about Deej "pretending" to be not well versed in indie rock last week or something?

I may have the nuance of the argument wrong, but it seems kinda ironic you're taking this "who really knows these bands anyway" stance now

i didn't say i didn't know what these things ARE. I try to stay pretty up on my Pavement/NMH/MBV/Shellac ish, but like the details of what exactly "Holland 1945" is completely fucking escapes me.

I'm not really making an argument, I'm trying to learn something...

As far as I know (and I could be wrong) most ppl on ILX could sing "Smells Like Teen Spirit" or "Loser" or the chorus of "Juicy" at the drop of hat. And most ppl on ILX are pretty familiar with at least some of the work of indie rock group Pavement. But I'm wondering if the intimate details of what exactly "Gold Soundz" is—ie, a decade-defining 90s moment we all supposedly shared—is either a) something that completely blew by ME in particular or b) actually kind of an obscure song to represent a canonical band

And also, miccio, being able to sing a song immediately is WAY different than being familiar with it. I'm sure I heard "Hyperballad" and "Paranoid Android" like dozens of times, but I couldn't sing either for you right now

It's funny, Pavement meant the world to me back in the mid-late '90s, catching "Gold Soundz" on Alternative Nation got me into them (I could easily sing the whole song, maybe not word for word, but I could Stipe the tricky parts). Their canonical status is kinda goofy to me in hindsight, but it's hard with any 90s group for me to sync up what I hear now to what I heard in high school to what critics are going on about then and now. I get why people are all "fuck a Pavement" but it still feels funny when people get all Chuck D about the power they be.

xpost I could Stipe-sing "Hyperballad" and "Paranoid android" too!

And also, this thread is me trying to understand and grapple with the music and opinions of my generation/workpeers/community not going, "this doesn't have 808s so why should i give a fuck about it"

I've never gotten an answer from anybody about whether this poll was stacked by the pitchfork eds to SAY SOMETHING or literally just which songs got the most nods from a list of 1000 or whatever, but I totally believe that "Gold Soundz" was the most generally liked on the poll. It's the sweet little morsel in the middle of a big indie album, could easily tortoise all the more aggressively canonical hares.

i can't in my mind honestly believe more people voted for some pavement album track than like era-defining rap songs and Nirvana

or b) actually kind of an obscure song to represent a canonical band

I strongly doubt Pavement have songs that a significantly larger amount of ppl could sing, or sing along to, than others - there seems to be no real consensus on what is or isn't 'obscure' in their catalogue even among paid-up fans

i can't in my mind honestly believe more people voted for some pavement album track than like era-defining rap songs and Nirvana

when you make your list of your favorite songs of the 90s, do you chose "era-defining" shit or shit you really liked? I can easily see a bunch of people saying "oh yeah, i like gold soundz, put that in my list" while "smells like teen spirit" would be an infinitely more loaded choice to make.

We've been a terror from the magnet-school era
Bathroom passes, skipping classes, being wise-asses
Smoking blunts was a daily routine
At 13, a bunch of slackers on the scene
Used to have the Fall and the Wingtip Sloat in my peacoat
Now I got Billy Bragg in my messenger bag

wait no this seems wrong

umm but yeah I could sing this song easy. obviously it's not broadly decade-defining in the "everyone knows it" sense, but I think it's pretty totemic and representative as far as a certain strain of 90s indie/rock stuff goes! (I don't get this idea that an era can only be "defined" by whatever's biggest for everyone, or complaints about the p4k list that are basically like "how is something I'm less familiar with higher than something everyone remembers?" -- you know, it's not a VH1 remember-when list)

It'd be an odd choice to lead a Pitchfork Staff Manifesto (unless the goal was to say "stop sweating the canon and mellow to my indie jamz"), but a pretty understandable display of the writers' chill indie-lovin' subconscious

- it's one of the 2 or 3 best songs on Crooked Rain, which a large contingent of the Pavement-fan and general-indie-rock-fan crowd seems to rate as their best album
- it's got that kind of nostalgic, end-of-summer vibe that maybe resonates with indie rock doodz in the process of compiling best-of-decade lists?
- it's "pretty" and "accessible" without being too "earnest" or "sacrificing the weirdness" or whatevs
- intentional misspelling bonus points

Like, Whiney, to put it in a context you might appreciate, what if all the pitchfork writers just happened to put "Epic" (cuz who doesn't like "Epic"?) in their top 10 even plenty of other songs got more #1 picks.

even IF plenty

I voted Yes. However, I don't think there's a single person I know IRL that would also be able to say yes.

fuck yes i could, what's your cell phone # whiney

to memorize lyrics I really need linear ideas, not the PaveMen's specialty

^ Yes. Pavement's specialty is writing that lyrical hook that even the most casual listener will remember

I don't call myself a Pavement fan, I couldn't sing a single verse in full but I could name and sing bits of about twenty of their songs.

I think this album was also the high point of his messing with lyrics/diction/pronunciation so that words would slide between being two things -- career/Korea, silence kid/kit, advent to your self/cell, "I won't NEED you" vs. "I won't EAT you," etc. Which probably doesn't help with the confidently-remembering-lyrics thing.

I'm usually weirded out by the whole "let's pore over Malkmus lyrics like sacred texts" thing some people do, but that's basically because I don't think they're that deep or opaque -- there's always a pretty clear line of associations running from idea to idea, even if it's just wordplay, and the general sense and topic of them usually feel pretty straightforward to me.

Oh and "advent" vs. "address" in this one, too.

I will admit that early in college I thought some of his wordplay was Just So Clever -- like this "show me a word that rhymes with pavement" riff on a b-side -- but a lot of that stuff is a just-for-fun cleverness that's not super-meaningful and, yeah, wisely kept on the b-sides and whatnot.

i remember the lyrics to pavement songs because the lyrics are usually awesome and funny.

i'd like to think they put harness your hopes (the show me a word that rhymes with pavement song) on a b-side because the song sounds like a b-side. . . i doubt bands put stuff on b-sides because of the lyrics.

no, not at all, but I think in terms of writing there's often "fun tossed-off song" and "serious thing that's probably for album," and a lot of their poppy wordplay b-sides and EP tracks seem like they came from the "just writing a fun song" category, you know? like the jangly straightforward poppy ones with funny lyrics.

yeah but pavement albums contain lotsa fun tossed off songs or jangly straightforward poppy songs: stereo, trigger cut, shady lane, serpentine pad, at&t, grave arch., two states, etc etc.

I can't get past "to those gold sounds" because I always pressed >> after that.

On the other hand,

Lies and betrayals
Fruit-covered nails
E
lectricity
And lust
Won't break the door
I got a heavy coat
it's filled with rocks n sand
and if i lose it i'll be comin back 2 day

I can't get past "to those gold sounds" because I always pressed >> after that.

ALWAYS? Like, 1994 you was like "nuts to this"? hard fucking core!

As far as I'm concerned this band ends at "Stop Breathing".

I KEEP MY ASHTRAYS TO MYSELF
blah blah

FIN

By "Fin" I thought you start segueing into the closing song on Brighton the Corners :-/

always thought "ashtrays" was "address" which pretty much otms a bunch of people earlier in the thread.

i heard 'anthems' and i fear to hear it again to find out different.

I like my apparent mishearing of "boring change" as "ball and chain."

I always thought it was "address" myself too.

Think I tried to sing along when I saw them at Primavera and gave up after 15 seconds.

i'd probably be pretty nervous but yeah i could do this

"I like my apparent mishearing of "boring change" as "ball and chain.""

i heard "foreign change",
like they were in budokan, but refused to play "cut your hair" (keeping anthems to themselves)
but got karmic comeuppance in the yen to dollar conversion.

I do think I'M GONNA TAKE THE CROWN is a great last line.

this song is great. I can sing it and I have friends of mine who I am sure could do the same.

why everyone pickin on pavement

what a worthwhile & fascinating question op!

it certainly says a lot about the 'legitimacy' and 'relevance' of a song to know how many ppl can it sing under threat of imminent death!

I had never heard of this song before the recent ILM thread (not this one, the other whole thread dedicated to this one particular Pavement song). So I checked it out on Youtube a few days ago and now I can't remember the first thing about it.

Ergo, I'm dead in this scenario.

i would improvise my own lyrix and hope he would be pleased

i could sing it so save my life

you are in an investigation room. you got 2 choices: admit now for a crime you didnt commit or listen to Gold Soundz in a loop for 24 hours.

^ lol

So I checked it out on Youtube a few days ago and now I can't remember the first thing about it.

You can remember a song after one play? That's some talent.

I liked da Pavement plenty, saw em like at least 4x, but c'mon HAL DAVID, that was a lyricist!

also there's nuttin to make u apprec the P like hearing the boring motherfucking Jicks drone on for an hour.

^ a common misconception

outta here morbs jix rock too

Nope. Would be dead.

I do not like Pavement and I'm not even sure which of their songs this is.

it's the one that goes "go back to those gold soundz..."

I mean, I'm sure I've heard it but http://peoplesing.org/gathering/Smileys/default/shrug.gif.

I couldn't hum a note of any Pavement song. I walked out on them in 1999 or so. Only went because Geraldine Fibbers opened.

Please freeze what's left of me. I don't want to be buried.

I've been in Wisconsin. I ate macaroni and cheese pizza.

I live in Wisconsin, I ate macaroni and cheese pizza two nights ago, and I sang "Silence Kit" really loud in the car this morning. Could sing the tune of "Gold Soundz" but don't know that many of the words, not my favorite track on this record by a long shot.

lots of low-life opinions itt

I mean, I'm sure I've heard it but http://peoplesing.org/gathering/Smileys/default/shrug.gif

― master of retardment (ENBB), Saturday, September 11, 2010 12:28 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Yeah, basically i want to see how common this is ^^^^

I want to see how common YOU are

i wanna live like the common people

http://www.brendontreanor.com/files/images/jRickAlleyOOP.jpg

btw i can sing and play this front to back and it's probably embedded in my dna

I am utterly shocked when people who don't like an indie band don't know individual songs by name

(I don't get this idea that an era can only be "defined" by whatever's biggest for everyone, or complaints about the p4k list that are basically like "how is something I'm less familiar with higher than something everyone remembers?" -- you know, it's not a VH1 remember-when list)

― oɔsıqɐu (nabisco), Friday, September 10, 2010 4:14 PM (Yesterday)

wow miccio, its not like i'm saying it should be VH1's nine-millionth coronation of Nirvana, but when a good chunk of non-tuomases on ILX, which is one of the biggest music obsessive dorkball communities on the planet, aren't really familiar w/ it, yes it raises an eye. That's all I'm saying, fuck.

Keep your advent to yourself...?

xpost

which is why a lot of the list strikes me as intentionally going over the heads of people (ILX, etc) who usually go over everyone's heads. But keep believing everyone at a website that deifies M-O-R ish like Iron & Wine are totally huge fans of Acen Razvi and just happened to have him on their list

I can sing this song, at least the opening lines & a few scattered phrases, & certainly remember the melody. I'm by no means a Pavement fan, but I gave them the old college try at the time. It's a memorable melody, no "Summer Breeze" but up there with a second-tier Bread melody, & that's worth something.

Boy, you know I have spent a number of hours in my day listening to those Pavement boys but I only know some of their words and I don't know which words those songs belong to. If this one says "spent his cash convincing us: that the desert was a starscape," we're in. Otherwise: no.

♪♫gold sounds,
shiny, shiny gold sounds
sounding so golden,
i am beholden to...
gold sounds♪

so precious and rare,
i have no fear,
of gold sounds,
i don't have a care with...
gold sounds

la la la la,
la la gold sounds.
gold soouuunds
gooold souuunds!♪♫

but keep believing everyone at a website that deifies M-O-R ish like Iron & Wine are totally huge fans of Acen Razvi and just happened to have him on their list

Um, I haven't said I believe anything of the sort? Unless Acen Razvi is some obscure Scott Kannenberg alias I'm unaware of.

Did you (or anyone else?) bother to compare the individual lists to the final staff outcome? I'm not going to bother but I'm not the one acting like a Pitchfork "truther" here.

Ironically enough, I HAVE heard of the Acen track that made the list (at #139 - verrrrry suspiciously high), though not the Super Furry Animals song that ranked four spots higher. Didn't know his last name though!

haha nevermind, looks like pfork didn't put up their staff lists this time. Usually they do, maybe you see if it falls under the Freedom Of Information act.

hahaha

i will also say that "Gold Soundz" being a very popular song "at a website that deifies M-O-R ish like Iron & Wine" is aggressively plausible

this is easily one of my favorite Pavement songs but i probably hate them more often than i like them

― some dude, Friday, September 10, 2010 10:46 AM (Yesterday) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

I heard this song in the Biggby's my sister works at and it made me want to download and hear CR, CR for the first time. Album's kind of rub, but I do like this song.

also, Whiney tries to buy a firearm, but in the 5-day waiting period the gun store owner finds this thread: does he get it?

yes
no, he has no means of protection against any Pavement-fanatic terrorist on the street.

I wouldn't mind seeing a poll along the lines of "So you've been forced to pick a Pavement song to be "the best song of the 90's. Which one do you choose and why."

I've always disliked CRCR, but when I start to think of what I'd sub for Gold Soundz it gets tougher than I would have thought, mostly because all of their songs start to seem kind of slight when asked to fill big shoes. I mean, I love Debris Slide, but would feel weird proposing it as the best song of a decade.

Might actually just go w/Summer Babe, even though it's far from my favorite. Not sure.

the hexx fr all time

lol I never actually bothered to read the blurb for "Gold Soundz" - surprisingly enough they acknowledge it's noncanonical status!

"Cut Your Hair" was the indie rock "Smells Like Teen Spirit", to an extent: It was topical and had a sneer, but it was also melodic and you pretty much knew how you felt about Pavement from the first time you heard it. Also like "Smells Like", after you heard "Cut Your Hair" a million times you were ready to put it away for a while. But "Gold Soundz" was different. It sounded like a memory in the best possible way. The first two words are "go back," and that's exactly what it does: It was easy, light, and tinged with nostalgia, with a radiant guitar tone and drums that float along, joyously uncommitted...

There are a lot of ways to think about the music of a decade. Sometimes when you sit down to make a list like this, you think about songs that seemed important-- maybe they changed music or were emblematic of prevailing trends in culture. And then sometimes you think about songs that make you feel good whenever they come on. You hear the first few notes, remember how much the song does for you, the excitement builds, you want to sing along, and hey-- they're coming to the chorus now...

In other words "stop sweating relevance and chill to our mixtape"

more "ahhh the 90s" than "LADIES AND GENTLEMEN....THE NINETIES"

Pretty chill decade imo.

We let Pavement and TLC do the thinking.

when a good chunk of non-tuomases on ILX, which is one of the biggest music obsessive dorkball communities on the planet, aren't really familiar w/ it, yes it raises an eye. That's all I'm saying, fuck.

― Whiney G. Weingarten, Saturday, September 11, 2010 2:05 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

what if the guy with the gun hated pavement and if you sang the song right he shot you

"you already know how to sing gold soundz. now sing it wrong and make THAT right"

this thread concept wd be pretty funny if it wasnt trying to make a larger 'point'

Haha, mookieproof. In fact that was already done by
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/614AGQMZPJL._SL500_AA300_.jpg

what if the guy with the gun hated pavement and if you sang the song right he shot you

― k3vin k., Sunday, September 12, 2010 5:25 PM (2 days ago) Bookmark

I AM THE GUY WITH THE GUN!

do they have 5-day waiting periods in the UK, Lex?

I wish there was a magazine/journal/website that published popular music criticism that was actually based on scientifically stringent research and analysis. Like where the writers would go out and conduct solid polls of the general population or subsections of the population and then use this to come to conclusions. I would actually read this music criticism.

not quite what you're looking for, but close:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billboard_(magazine)

but Lex wouldn't the person holding the gun be a Pavement fan? that doesn't make sense.

Also, this thread is the lamest in the history of all ILM. If you don't know the song Gold Soundz, it's your fucking loss, losers.

like if you can't appreciate this, i dunno, i kind of wish you could? y'all aren't losers, you're just missing out.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QYJetBi94xs&feature=related

no because im under 30

The thing is, I really don't feel like I'm missing out. Like, not even a little.

I don't know if I would have voted for it as the number one song of the 90s, but I do know all the words by heart.

ah, the certainties of rockin' roll youth--the time lines. have fun with that and call me when you get old and you wanna...catch up on things. but I don't listen to Pavement much any more and was already 30!! years old when they appeared! but could I sing this song, you bet.

Go back to those gold soundz and keep your affairs to yourself
cause I'm empty and you're empty and you never quarantine the past
I keep my affairs to myself 'cause we need secrets, we need sec-rets right now
so drunk in the august sun 'cause you're the kind of girl I like
when your uncle's downtown the weapon's drawn the weapon's found
you just shot me with because that's all I can remember, remem-bah, remem-bah, septem-bah is when I died

and fuck off anyway

Pavement is all the shittiest things about rock music with the added bonus of "not trying"

Laziness as a fucking aesthetic, this generation fucking deserves Salem

^^ double-tap

I guess Whiney is gonna need a jacket too NRQ.

lol

good lord, the "pavement doesn't try" thing was tired when beavis and butthead used it.

Laziness as a fucking aesthetic

kind of a logical development of indie's beloved "incompetence as an aesthetic", no?

Laziness as a fucking aesthetic, this generation fucking deserves Salem

http://www.baltimore-club.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/oh-snap.jpg

Pavement is all the shittiest things about rock music with the added bonus of "not trying"

^ full disclosure: early incubus fan

though I guess most funk-metal bands are "trying"

I find them very trying.

whiney what the hell generation are you even talking about; there are like three in play here

full disclosure: early incubus fan

LOL this should be Whiney's new display name 4realz.

Pavement are the suckiest bunch of sucks that ever sucked, and their hype promotes lazy thinking!!!!

keep their affects to yourself.

put two more strings on Ibold's bass and give Bob Nastanovich some turntables. Then we'll talk.

i think an 18 year old liking Incubus is leagues less embarrassing than grown adult liking Pavement, but keep those zings coming, anthony

am driving 1.5 hrs to see reunited pavement tonight, will sing gold soundz at full volume in the car on the way there (but not during the concert, that's tacky)

I'd love to see a photo of 18yo Incubus fan Whiney.

i might dig some up and put them in the lollege thread

if somebody held a gun to your head and said "Name a Parts & Labor [mk III] song" could you do it?

for someone calling Pavement lazy shitty indie rock, you need to look into the mirror dawgglez smdh@u.

i think an 18 year old liking Incubus is leagues less embarrassing than grown adult liking Pavement, but keep those zings coming, anthony

are you saying you don't enjoy the funk-metal of your youth now?

i think an 18 year old liking Incubus is leagues less embarrassing than grown adult liking Pavement, but keep those zings coming, anthony

― Whiney G. Weingarten, Tuesday, September 14, 2010 12:11 PM (7 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

what about a grown adult who was 18 when they heard Pavement (ie probably most of the people posting on this thread)?

someone sold like 4 p&l lps to my local record store, i thought about grabbing one

lol college: a what did you look like thread

^ fyi Whiney

I was 14 when I first heard "Gold Soundz," so I think my ass is in the clear as far as the shame of liking a shambling pretty indie jangle song goes

are you saying you don't enjoy the funk-metal of your youth now?

― da croupier, Tuesday, September 14, 2010 1:20 PM (10 seconds ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Well Faith No More and Living Colour def still hold up for me. 311 and Incubus definitely not at all, sorry brodel.

I mean, the idea of Pavement as "lazy" or "slack" is super-strange; their songs are these intricate, finely-wrought sound constructions that ALSO happen to work as pop songs. Maybe this description applies to the pre S&E singles, but you know what? With the exception of "Debris Slide" and to some extent "Summer Babe" these are far from the best of Pavement; they got better as they started getting more finicky.

I mean, is it really possible to listen to "Silence Kit" and feel like it was just thrown together?

xp first heard Pavement at 19 after reading laudatory essay about "Debris Slide" in LOLcollege literary magazine!

When do I get to enact the Darnielle rule itt?

When more then 10 people have heard Parts & Labor?

why are you guys getting personal when all I said was "this band this thread about is everything bad about rock put together, kill em all let god sort em out!"

whiney just doesn't like it when people go at their jobs half-assed

i don't

'good lord, the "pavement doesn't try" thing was tired when beavis and butthead used it.'

my memory is beavis & butthead were pro-pavement? it was probably a compliment!

why is this poll a month long?!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gXidAz2L8xU

not complimentary, but hilarious

woops, wrong link

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ToDfDQTd2Xk

why is this poll a month long?!

― لوووووووووووووووووووول (lex pretend), Tuesday, September 14, 2010 1:27 PM (49 seconds ago) Bookmark

so whiney can fly off the handle as gradually and painfully as possible.

beavis and butthead otm

I was working on a metaphor where that "lazy" aesthetic is more like Jackie Chan's fighting in Drunken Master -- like it's woozy and stumbling but keeps turning out graceful, always lurching in the right direction at exactly the right moment...

btw this is sort of bonkers:

keep believing everyone at a website that deifies M-O-R ish like Iron & Wine are totally huge fans of Acen Razvi and just happened to have him on their list

I mean, the list wasn't put together by aliens; hell, a lot of the people involved have posted on ILX. Why wouldn't people know/like Acen? I like Acen a lot, and voted for the track on this list -- pretty sure it was in my top 10. And if the question is how it turned out to be Acen, and not all the writers splitting votes between Acen and Slipmatt and Adam F or something, the answer is: discussion, shortlisting, etc. I don't particularly get into Iron & Wine, but if I did, I'm not sure it'd stop me from thinking "Trip II the Moon" is amazing -- appreciating one kind of thing rarely means someone's so categorically stupid that they can't appreciate another, you know?

totally irrelevant:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UPxbBh7kbdw

^^ Wait, I take that back -- I might have had "Euphoria" in the top 10 and "Trip II the Moon" in the top 20 or 30. Probably some votes split between those two.

holy fuck that photo is disturbing

i could maybe fudge it but i dunno. and i'm a pavement UBER fan.

beavis admitting he poops in the tub is his way of expressing secret solidarity with pavement.

I managed to make it 31 seconds listening into Gold Soundz - basically long enough to recognise that I had not knowingly heard it before.

Christ, Pavement really were worse than I remember them being.

lol calling pavement "lazy" is about as thoughful a trope as o'reilly complaining about camron glorifying "pimping and bitches"

dude just has a dreadful, awful, terrible vocal style
that alone would be enough
+ the music's just kind of ehh
the first track b&b discuss is particularly nothing-y blah

ok this might be a stretch of B&B's capacities for irony but maybe their tone of "try harder!" isn't so much mocking pavement as mocking the aggro stylings of their nemesis, coach buzzcut?

dude, beavis & butthead don't like Pavement, just accept it.

listening to wowee zowie right now this is a pretty chill stoner record

They still cool with PJ Harvey though, right?

peggy hill loves preston school of industry so they get a pass

For someone who doesn't usually care about lyrics, I have to admit that Malkmus's opaque poetry was one of the things that first attracted me to Pavement. The band just seemed clever and sophisticated in a way that really resonated with me in the context of the larger alt-rock scene.

yeah, he seemed like one of the few indie rock songwriters who really enjoyed writing lyrics, rather than just a last-minute "oh shit the song needs lyrics" kind of thing.

When do I get to enact the Darnielle rule itt?

― Whiney G. Weingarten, Tuesday, September 14, 2010 12:22 PM (1 hour ago)

When more then 10 people have heard Parts & Labor?

― Fartbritz Sootzveti (Steve Shasta), Tuesday, September 14, 2010 12:23 PM (1 hour ago)

"Only 10 people heard Parts & Labor back in the day, but each one of those 10 people went out and quit their bands, formed a Twitter account, and reviewed 1,000 albums in a year."

just wanna say I have whiney's back on thinking "lol yr music sucks/no-one likes it!" angle is a bullshit angle to take & suggests that the person making the argument has run out of actual ammo

btw I like Pavement pretty well because when they jam it's all blissed but mrs. aerosmith I think got off the train precisely because you get the impression they could make a really focused, excellent, smart album with kick-ass melodies (aside to hi dere: yes I know, the singing. still) and solid jams if they tried but instead they're up on this "it's all been done and we'll never be as good as the greats so let's refer to them instead" -- which, surprise, is in line with a lot of how poetry gets treated after the age of the berryman/plath/lowell/jarrell et al: "nobody here is going to write the waste land, but everyone here has read it" -- which is essentially english major malkmus's position w/r/t rock I think

which is a not uninteresting stance imo, and as I say, there's a grateful dead or allman bros quality to pavement when they're fully in stride, and I like that kinda music, so I am pro-pavement. and honestly I think whatever objections one might have about "laziness" are answered on the first malkmus solo album where things are pretty tight and he actually stays focused long enough to tell stories (one of which, "jenny and the ess-dog," is essentially an extended Whiney post in verse) and makes a good album. which people hated on him for, so he went back to being less focused.

"lol yr music sucks/no-one likes it!"

i never said the second half

he actually stays focused long enough to tell stories (one of which, "jenny and the ess-dog," is essentially an extended Whiney post in verse)

Had to look up the lyrics after this comment. So, thought I'd share before everyone else does the same thing (or not?):

Jennifer dates a man in a '60s cover band
He's the ess-dog, or Sean if you wish
She's 18, he's 31
She's a rich girl, he's the son
Of a Coca-Cola middle man

Kiss when they listen
To "Brothers In Arms"
And if there's something wrong with this
They don't see the harm
In joining their forces and singing along

See those rings on her toes
Check that frisbee in his Volvo
It's a Volvo with ancient plates
They've got a dog she named Trey
A retriever with a frayed bandana around his neck

Trey has a window into their relationship
The baby talk voices
And the post class-a nasal drip
But it all seems to function
At least in her dog's mind

Let me out of here
Let me out of here
You got to let me out of here
You got to let me out of here
Let me out of here
Out of here
Out of here, out of here
Let me out of here ill hit the ground running

Jennifer left for school up in Boulder
And the Ess-dog came to visit when he could
But the strain was too much
They could not make up for distance
And the distance between their years

Neither one listens
To Brothers in Arms
The ess-dog waits tables
And he sold his guitar
Jenny pledged Kappa and she started pre-law
And off came those awful toe rings
Off came those awful toe rings

jenny and the ess-dog is just amazing....almost faganesque

important mistake in the transcription there

Jennifer left for school up in Boulder
And the Ess-dog came to visit when he could

should be

Jennifer left for school up in Boulder
And that Ess-dog came to visit when he could

this stuff makes a difference

lol Whiney, he's talking about the people making fun of you

oh, hahaha!

jenny and the ess-dog is just amazing....almost faganesque

cosign 100%...the thing is, though, by being so good it kind of pushed me over into mrs. aerosmith's camp on the malkmus question. I mean you listen to this and vanessa from queens and you think, no dude, I'm not saying you have to make every song the album's pop hit, but fuck, you have the capacity for at least four of these per album I'd guess. fuckin, "the hook." that is incredible writing. I really do blame english departments here, it's hard to emerge from one of those with the real ambition that says "yeah...I'm just gonna swing for the fences"

what?
it will take 1 month before i get to know the right answer?
how could i live that long without that crucial knowledge?

pretty sure malkmus was a history major, fyi

I don't know – Mr. Malkmus has been recording "focused" songful albums for more than twelve year: "songs" outnumber "jams" since Brighten the Corners.

I dunno, I still don't get it. This stuff is just so... Collegiate. So fake-deep. So "I wrote these lyrics in Freshman comp class." Just this endless semi-sarcastic observational tone like you know, J.D. Salinger seems really deep when you're 19 but starts to seem a little empty after a while.

Like, I hated College Rock even when I was at college, and Pavement are pretty much the archetypical 90s College Rock College Radio band.

I can't even.

Thankfully his melodies are first-rate then.

Malkmus has followed the trajectory of most young men with guitars: he's an observant wise-ass who is shocked when he falls in love. He still interests me because he's past the point at which being in love no longer qualifies as a novelty.

The only thing interesting about those lyrics is "post class-a" because it's anglophilic and is lost on most Yanks.

rattled by the rush feels like an ODB song maybe slowed down a little. it's coming out in the same slurred-rap and lyrics like 'drowning for your thirst' maybe needs the menace of wutang to be brought into full expression.

^^^ trying to get whiney to go off, I see you workin phil n

i'm being serious! that song is a few 909 drum samples away from a club hit. pavement bring the ruckus.

aerosmith - when "pig lib" was released, there was a special edition bonus CD with like 4 tracks..one of which was "Dynamic Calories" about an ill-fated new wave band that might be up your alley in the more story-song jenny and the ess dog vein:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NebD8SKEJgg

aerosmith what do you think about "out of reaches" from the newer one

you are totally otm in your lat few posts btw

yeah, some of that more storytelling-y stuff malkmus does is ray davies-ish almost.

& i'm glad someone is sticking up for the s/t malkmus album -- as good as anything pavement did, i think.

yeah that album is fantasic

"Dynamic Calories" is my favorite Malkmus solo song, no joke.

aerosmith what do you think about "out of reaches" from the newer one

dug that last one a lot but never really got deep enough with it to talk about it song by song - when I get home I'll remedy that, I'm in the mood for some of this stuff

xpost Mostly b/c it sounds like the Sea and Cake, though, lol.

"Gardenia" is top ten Malkmus.

hey that "dynamic calories" is great btw, fuck yeah, hadn't heard that - so inspiring when somebody leaves a song that good off the proper album and makes it a hidden-treasure kinda deal

that whole bonus pig lib ep is great -- "old jerry"!

more irrelevant youtubes. nothing insightful to say about this except it's just another great pretty jangle-rock song in the vein of Gold Soundz, though I like this song more. In fact this may be my favorie song of S.M.'s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0z6z1TM-dk4

That last album had a couple of runny jams too many, but I loved the mix (especially the drum sound).

i like the runny jamz, but that's just a matter of taste, i think.

dont care enuff abt this band to get worked up about them, see how they are 'singular' enough for others to be into it, end communication

great thread

go back! to those gold soundz
and keep my eyes open... and
ness ness ness ness
hopeful, so hopeful
and we're coming to the chorus now!
keep my eyes open....
ness ness ness ness ness ness ness
right now

just came back from pavement show and can report that hundreds and hundreds of people in Milwaukee can sing "Gold Soundz."

also, "you get the impression they could make a really focused, excellent, smart album with kick-ass melodies"

??? I feel like Pavement did this again and again -- not sure where people are getting this sense of them as some kind of postmodern winky about-rock project. If they were ever that, it ended sometime before Slanted and Enchanted was recorded. After that, the point of their songs is to be songs.

Also, all Jicks albums are dull and Karen D.T. is wrong about Salinger too.

I have spoken!

i haven't read this thread (yet) but i voted yes. however, "gold soundz" is one of my least favorite pavement/malkmus songs.

rly like malk's solo stuff, esp pig lib and the last one, am totally ready for a new record by him.

Colbert to SM last night: "I'm not sure if your lyrics are ambiguous"

igtt 8/10

9/10

fuck 10/10 hats off

i've never seen malkmus look that uncomfortable/flustered in an interview, colbert was sucking the cool right out of him. seemed beat when pressed for a clever response, like all he could do was contort his face into this painful smile as a defensive maneuver and run time off the clock. body language revealed a man trapped in a lie, especially when explaining the reunion with "because it's fun?"

Yeah that was a shit interview, Malkmus was like a deer in headlights. And his "tuneless" singing, come on, motherfucker, you've been doing this for ~20 years, don't pretend you can't sing those notes on tune. Asshole.

colbert should've held a gun to his head imo

"smugness, meet sweetness"

this thread actually has me listening to malk more than i have in a long time, between the love of jenny and the ess dog and the first album and tyler's acoustic boots.

whiney sometimes your indie rock murder fantasies just spread love whether you want them to or not

ha, me too -- i've pulled out all of the malkmus solo stuff + other bootlegs, etc in the past week or so.

SM's stab at sass was saying their chief influence was Reagan, which was a perfect straight line for Colbert.

has he been reading ILX for the last sixteen hours?

nice piece in ny mag here: http://nymag.com/daily/entertainment/2010/09/pavement.html

and while we're at it, a nice recording of the brooklyn show: http://www.nyctaper.com/?p=3964
wonder how many guns were being wielded during gold soundz.

wait how were pavement the "secret" kings of the 90's? ugh, that profile.

Somehow, along the way, this much-loved indie staple’s reputation started to look a touch more like what Robert Christgau called them thirteen years ago...

For this sentence not be some ridiculous moebius strip, shouldn't there be some intimation of how and where they WEREN'T perceived this way?

Somehow, along this way, this group became perceived as they were perceived.

Nabisco not OTM?

yeah there are a couple of horrific paragraphs in there

somehow, a band loved by critics became some sort of critical favorite

(A style dates quickly; an ethos can linger.)

^^Not sure how you could ever tell me the difference between Pavement's "style" and "ethos."

somehow, a band universally loved by EVERYONE at my college radio station went on to be loved by all sorts of people who used to work at college radio stations

breaking: beloved band still beloved

Legends get bigger when they disappear for a while. (See also: Beatles, 2Pac...

waaaaait a second. when is he talking about? 2pac didn't really disappear till about 2004 iirc [via endless posthumous releases]. has his legend got bigger or is this just bs?

2Pac did a pretty shitty job of disappearing as far as dead guys go, IMO.

tragically, a band that could once play the Tonight Show is now reducing to appearing on Jimmy Fallon.

I agree that the piece could've conveyed a better sense of how the band's reputation had changed over the years. (Has it, or does their reunion merely occasion a lot of chatter that serves to solidify a reputation that had never really faltered?) The fact that they became a big deal in spite of their ethos is no truer now than it was when the band broke up, and their latter-day canonization doesn't seem particularly surprising to me.

xpost reduced, rather

Did they just cut out the contrast between now and then? Honestly the piece reads like it's starting in progress.

wow I hate music writing

or rather writing that's obsessed with image and who means what when

(except when it's done well, once every 20 years or so)

Morbs OTM

If someone started singing Pavement's 'Gold Soundz' would you put a gun to their head and tell them to stop?

tell them to stop breathin

this band was canonized from S&E on - pretending like they weren't (or that they are somehow MORE popular/revered) now is ridiculous. the vast majority of the listening public still doesn't care about them, and they never will.

like, they have critical consensus, a rabid cult, and a fair amount of discernible "influence" - none of that has really changed

or rather writing that's obsessed with image and who means what when

Nothing wrong with this. Personally, I find questions of how and why reputations change (whether it be in music, film, or baseball) fairly interesting. It need not be opposed to writing about the intrinsic features of the thing itself.

I think y'all are underestimating the extent to which, for a more general rock audience (and, evidently, magazine people), the past year has looked like some kind of ratification of the band as important. (Partly because a disproportionate number of their fans grew up to be the people who now get to ratify such things.)

(I mean, hell, isn't this whole thread basically asking why Pavement are now being treated with an "importance" that kinds outstrips how meaningful they were to people in the 90s?)

this band was canonized from S&E on - pretending like they weren't (or that they are somehow MORE popular/revered) now is ridiculous.

― do you feel me? somebody, feel me (Shakey Mo Collier), Tuesday, September 21, 2010 2:42 PM (10 minutes ago)

They were canonized BEFORE S&E was released. The white-hot Spin review of the unmastered running edit came out 6-9 months before the eventual official Matador release iirc.

idk i can see where nabisco's coming from here... i was pretty surprised my friends were as psyched abt the reunion tour as they were since it seemed liked they'd stopped caring by the time they were touring terror twilight or whatever

They were canonized BEFORE S&E was released. The white-hot Spin review of the unmastered running edit came out 6-9 months before the eventual official Matador release iirc.

ah that's right - that was the review I was thinking of, forgot it was early]

yr my fact checkin cuz

still think that Spin review of S&E is the best thing ever written about them

I think y'all are underestimating the extent to which, for a more general rock audience (and, evidently, magazine people), the past year has looked like some kind of ratification of the band as important.

This is absolutely true. But I don't think it's particularly unexpected or counterintuitive or anything.

Everyone I know here who's going to the Atlanta show was too young the band's first time around.

huh, looking around at the crowd in Denver, i thought that *everyone* there must've seen them in the 90s.

I think y'all are underestimating the extent to which, for a more general rock audience (and, evidently, magazine people), the past year has looked like some kind of ratification of the band as important.

Huh. General Rock Audience--do you mean like Rolling Stone? I see lotsa stars here

http://www.rollingstone.com/music/artist/album/news/artists/8865/55807/55876

weird that that review is not online. that was why I got the album in the first place (I was fresh outta high school)

These are friends a few years younger than me who learned to love them after hearing songs burned on CD-R's since 2000. As for the kids at the college radio station, Pavement's as much a staple as Derek & The Dominoes on AOR stations; they never went away.

Huh. General Rock Audience--do you mean like Rolling Stone? I see lotsa stars here

That's a reappraisal, isn't it? Not the original scores.

Shakey it's here: http://books.google.com/books?id=3_7wN22l43MC&printsec=frontcover&rview=1&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q=slanted%20and%20enchanted&f=false

xpost -- Yeah, no, not remotely counterinuitive -- I mean, when Christgau called them the finest band, he was talking about critical reputation, basically, and they followed down exactly the line you'd think. (What I'm basically saying here is: that line is not as obvious or uninteresting to everyone as it is to, like, us, you know?)

That's a reappraisal, isn't it? Not the original scores.

probably, but the idea that this band is suddenly seen as important (and "ratified" as such) when all they did was reunite so that Bob could pay off some debts and the rest of them could make some $$ is kinda laughable. i mean, what's changed in the past year besides the fact that they're playing some shows? they haven't written any new material. i guess journalists need something to write about.

that SPIN review really is great - weird how much of it I remember word for word

speaking of that review, this is cool: http://herjazz.org/post/1138649970

http://62263_10150253642040034_772925033_14627120_6094606_n.jpg

oops didn't work -- click on the link

If someone started singing Pavement's 'Gold Soundz' would you put a gun to their head and tell them to stop?

― samosa gibreel, Tuesday, September 21, 2010 2:35 PM (44 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

tell them to stop breathin

― Mr. Que, Tuesday, September 21, 2010 2:36 PM (42 minutes ago) Bookmark

shoot the singer

just some tuff dudes think baot shootin indie rock bands

If someone started singing Pavement's 'Gold Soundz' would you put a gun to their head and tell them to stop?

― samosa gibreel, Tuesday, September 21, 2010 2:35 PM (44 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

tell them to stop breathin

― Mr. Que, Tuesday, September 21, 2010 2:36 PM (42 minutes ago) Bookmark

shoot the singer

― like a musical album. made by a band. (fucking in the streets),

and remind them westie can drum

pavement important? i'm not sure i know too many people who give a shit about them at all.

for a more general rock audience (and, evidently, magazine people)

ehhh who cares about a rock audience. and magazine people = indie kids ime, so are even more irrelevant. maybe pavement are important to that small niche but let's not pretend they're important to anyone else.

just saw the colbert appearance...wtf happened to spiral stairs? he looks about 260. So sorry to see these dudes just not into it at all. What a letdown

lex OTM I gotta say

altho obviously the "rock audience" in general is pretty big so no need to be so dismissive of it

yeah it's just that thing AGAIN where people conflate "important to indie/rock audience" with "important to all music fans and across pop culture and to everyone" - are pavement even a crossover band to fans of other genres?

of course not

they should have nudged out soundgarden for that slot on judgment night sdtrk.

lex,

they are important enough for you to get all riled up! dude, smoke a bowl and listen to some jam bands brah.

Shasta out

^^^^^^

. (What I'm basically saying here is: that line is not as obvious or uninteresting to everyone as it is to, like, us, you know?)

nabs, they've always been critically revered, always seen as the head of their class. the only thing you list that they didn't accomplish in the 90s is their Central Park stay, which while impressive (though I doubt they would have sold out 10 shows if they hadn't been sold long before a tour was announced) hardly proves their mainstream status, so much as their continued appreciation by college music types a la the Pixies. If you wanted to show how their status has improved, you might have chosen to note what their status has improved from.

(tbf, i don't know for sure that they had a GQ profile in the 90s, but I dont recall such things being out of their grasp.)

and as for this (I mean, hell, isn't this whole thread basically asking why Pavement are now being treated with an "importance" that kinds outstrips how meaningful they were to people in the 90s?)

this thread is really a lot more about "Gold Soundz" being treated with an exaggerated importance, pretty sure "cut your hair" or "summer babe" would have been given a relative pass.

If The Replacements reunited, played bigger shows than before, got in GQ and topped a Pitchfork list, would they become the "secret kings of the eighties" rather than an underground fave with decent catalog sales?

I find questions of how and why reputations change (whether it be in music, film, or baseball) fairly interesting.

Reputations in all those spheres are made by media/PR whims and, usually, an uninformed majority, who suck.

Re "Gold Soundz" on Colbert, Ibold's simian stance and tics never fail to make me chuckle.

I could be
A household word
Can I call you
on the phone?

Is U2's career span too long for them to be considered The Finest Band Of The Nineties? Cuz not only do they have best-of comps, Time covers and stadium tours, Achtung Baby did just top SPIN's superbestest albums of SPIN's existence.

Achtung is flawless/classic/format-defining, but, uh, Pop? Zooropa? "Lemon"?

And this fucking catastrophe right here:
http://www.canadanne.co.uk/images/welcome.jpg

They're far from my pic for best band of the nineties, just noting they kind of obliterate Pavement in all the criteria Nabs' uses in his nymag post.

haha I'd probably vote for Weezer or Urge Overkill

Croup, I'd actually say that yeah, for lots of people, the Replacements officially became 80s "legends" during some hindsight point in the 90s, which is about the kind of thing I was tasked to talk about with Pavement here. (U2 or Nirvana would be the not-as-secret rock royalty of the 90s, right?) But yeah, I guess it seems like something misfired or gotten lost between the more general-audience premise they had and how the post's come across...

i gotta say i agree that w/ a lot of bands like this time has a certain magnifying power effect on their stature & following

yeah, sorry to gratuitously henpeck, its not like I don't think the Pavement cult has expanded over the last decade. It's just that the post seems like some "we did it!" victory lap for accomplishments every cult band and their mother are enjoying (on relative scales) right now.

does it make a difference that Pavement didn't flame out as feebly as the Mats did?

(I know All Shook Down has its defenders -- like you, croup -- but still)

were there any 90s bands that could plausibly have competed with Pavement for the "Secret Kings Of The 90s" title? Cuz it feels more like they retained their royalty (which they're cashing in now) rather than that they posthumously achieved it.

xpost haha oh even if I like eight songs on that thing they still went out like suckers.

PJ Harvey?

Sonic Youth?

Harvey def, though I think SY settled for elder status by Experiment

SY returned to cult status from Washing Machine onwards -- their late nineties records definitely got minimal promotion (I heard "Hoarfrost" on my college station real late at night once; never heard it again).

no and no. sebadoh was a maybe but ppl were so sick of that band by the end. yo la tengo never seemed to matter as much, fugazi didn't inspire the dorky warmth. pavement definitely the r.e.m. of the 90s, i just don't think there was a 90s equiv to husker du, replacements, sonic youth to provide a mays to their mantle. unless...wait...GBV?

I thought of GBV but they were loathed just as much.

maybe in terms of placement pavements = r.e.m., sebadoh = husker du, superchunk = replacements, yo la tengo = feelies, gbv = meat puppets, fugazi = minor threat, jesus lizard = black flag, stereolab = sonic youth, sonic youth = talking heads, pulp = smiths, manic street preachers = wonder stuff, the sea and cake = let's active

urge overkill = timbuk 3

the 6ths = golden palominos

lol to uo

luna = go-betweens

who was the lone justice of the 90s?

who was the mary's danish of the 80s? or is it who was the mary's danish of the 90s? when was the poi dog pondering of mary's danish?

who was the lone justice of the 90s?

jayhawks? mavericks?

Juliana Hatfield? PJ Harvey?

woah I completely forgot about poi dog pondering until just now

xpost BELLY?

Iris DeMent?

does it make a difference that Pavement didn't flame out as feebly as the Mats did?

(I know All Shook Down has its defenders -- like you, croup -- but still)

nobody much liked Terror Twilight, though!

Not exactly true...most of its grades were in the A-/B+ range, with no Don't Tell Me a Soul preceding it.

*Don't Tell a Soul

All Shook Down got pretty good reviews when it came out, right? iirc Paul Westerberg was Rolling Stone's Critic's Pick for Songwriter Of The Year in like 1991.

the fact that Pavement reunion gets 5 nights in New York and multi-platinum, Billboard-charting band Faith No More gets two nights for their reunion is at once befuddling, hilarious and sad

especially since I can't type enough >>>>s for how much FNM >>>>> Pavement

Did FNM announce the shows months before a national tour? Cuz I think for Pavement had something to do with it seeming like a mega-event with no promise of more to come.

xpost didn't you say that on this thread already?

ha, i might of.

but also, Pavement did announce th fifth show long after this was old news and ppl still went to it

yeah but those CP shows sold out in minutes, which out-of-towners unsure they'd get a chance to see them probably helped with. The possibility there'd still be enough hipsters in Brooklyn without tickets (or angry challops about FNM) wasn't too unlikely.

I have no desire to see Pavement live, fwiw. Still love the first three albums, but never was under the impression they were transcendent live even then.

A couple months ago I bought a ticket to the Austin show... I mean, I like Pavement *alright*, but the show sold out, prices went up, and I sold that shit for $80 on Craigslist. Bought tix to see Fennesz and Big Boi instead, and still have $40 left over.

there was a thing on the voice website abt how many spare tix there are to those reunion shows

In New York, at least... Austin tickets are still going for 2x face value.

Pavement would be a Billboard-charting band in today's climate.

who was the lone justice of the 90s?

Veruca Salt

which out-of-towners unsure they'd get a chance to see them probably helped with

definitely. there's a ton of people on Craigslist who are like "I'm in Boston and bought before they announced a show here, will FedEx you the tix"

there was a thing on the voice website abt how many spare tix there are to those reunion shows

friend who went last night said tickets could be had outside the show for $10. for that price I might try to go Thursday. (already have tickets for Friday and am going to that one for sure.)

gbv and sebadoh didn't connect with the gen behind them the way pavement did, or belle & sebstian did, or NMH did. PJ Harvey was a feted 90s star then and has faded slightly for some reason. Sonic Youth aren't tied to a specific decade enough for the title, they are just flatout the "secret kings/queen of U.S. rock" of the past few decades.

NMH is the biggest cult act of the three-- people would be more apeshit excited over Mangum coming back to play those songs than anything in this vein-- Pavement is the consensus builder, and B&S arguably shifted indie more than any of them. Looking at the 90s from the POV of today, those three are the potential candidates for "secret kings/queens" of the decade. You could construct a reasonable argument for any of them.

NMH is way more obscure than Pavement have you ever looked up their sales numbers

PJ Harvey was a feted 90s star then and has faded slightly for some reason

she seemed headed for a mainstream breakthrough with stories but has headed for the ditch since

NMH didn't significantly "connect with the gen behind them" until Pfork started licking Mangum's balls, really. Pavement and B&S would both be "big" indie acts without Pfork; NMH, though, I'm not convinced.

she seemed headed for a mainstream breakthrough with stories but has headed for the ditch since

this is a really terrible way of assessing PJH's career! she thankfully went back to making great music after the decent but ominous direction of stories, more like. smh @ "ditch"

it's a Neil Young quote, lex – it's not a dis.

Young used it himself to taxonomize his less popular albums.

yeah, no offense to Uh Huh Her or White Chalk intended, unless she thought piano ballads would finally conquer that Lilith market share

i know more people who would jump at a NMH reunion than a pavement one, but that might just be an age thing. i did notice that 'aeroplane' seemed to have some sort of surge in popularity as a indie touchstone during the 00s and well after its release. i dunno if that's a byproduct of the merge reissue or the pitchfork list naming it #4 of the 90s or the general ascendency of indie or what else

NMH is way more obscure than Pavement have you ever looked up their sales numbers

most-loved not biggest then; the intensity is greatest

NMH didn't significantly "connect with the gen behind them" until Pfork started licking Mangum's balls, really. Pavement and B&S would both be "big" indie acts without Pfork; NMH, though, I'm not convinced.

impossible for this to be true. when would this have meant to have happened? thanks to the original 90s p4k LP list, which would have gotten, what, all of 5K readers at the time? NMH got its cult audience in the first half of last decade. By the time the LP was reissued and Mark reviewed it in late 2005, it was already massively beloved.

You guys completely underestimate that record then. It is the best-selling 33 1/3 book I believe. It won the emusic readers poll-- that and Fun. These are puny, outlier metrics but hey every little sign of how people feel about something matters. I reckon if P4k ever ran a readers poll, it would be #1 there (in part bcuz it wouldn't suffer from vote-splitting between a catalog). But this shit just didn't happen because p4k told people to think that way, and even if it did the intensity that people feel for that record is off the charts.

"that and Funeral placed well ahead of any other records fwiw" (clipped a sentence there)

It is the best-selling 33 1/3 book I believe.

are you seriously using this is a metric

its a fine metric! the fact that it sells more the Guns N Roses and Nirvana really means something

yeah, the NMH thing was a totally grassroots crescendo that has befuddled me for years. I think it's just one of those hand-me-down records that benefitted wildly from the file-sharing generation passing it around. Same can be said for Talk Talk's Laughing Stock.

I forget the exact sales figure cited in that book but it's pathetically low, like in the low 10s of thousands iirc

also lolz personal note I was playing guitar with some younger indie-ish women (all in their 20s) last year and broke out one of the songs from Aeroplane and not a single one of them knew it. which surprised me.

the fact that it sells more the Guns N Roses and Nirvana really means something

this is a joke right

dude i have read like 5 threads so far today and on all of them you're doing the same "oh my god you can't be serious" schtick

come up with some shit to say

(i totally have an irrational hate for nmh fwiw)

this is a joke right

― do you feel me? somebody, feel me (Shakey Mo Collier), Wednesday, September 22, 2010 1:25 PM (6 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

do i have to spell this out for you with numbers or are you going to insist on being a faux-naive, faux-incredulous dipshit some more?

REALLY I MEAN REALLY REALLY REALLY I MEAN RTEALLY RELLAYUWL>!>!>

it's just that there's a million books about Nirvana and GnR and afaik that's the ONLY book about NMH is it really any surprise that a bunch of indie nerds would swarm on that?

It's one tiny snapshot of something, but it's an indication that the intensity of feelings of the NMH cult is very strong; for whatever reason, however you'd like to take away from it, that cult LP inspired more people to buy a book about it than anyone else in that series.

Or we could fuck the metrics and I could say "trust me, that LP is hugely beloved-- it would be my guess to win a p4k readers poll, etc" but that's not useful either; the 33 1/3 chart is just one tiny place in which its legacy has raised its head in surprising ways.

fwiw, again it's a tiny tiny tiny thing, but by May 2001, it placed in the top 10 of the ILM all-time poll, so yes, ilxor, this shit was happening already.

don't most artists have their super-devoted fan cults though, what makes NMH particularly special?

he intensity of feelings of the NMH cult is very strong

not denying this at all. Pavement cult's feelings are similarly strong it's just that Pavement got wider exposure, was around longer, had opportunities to make more of a dent in nat'l media exposure (MTV videos! lol). I don't think NMH's cult is at all on the scale of Pavement's, that's all I'm saying.

don't most artists have their super-devoted fan cults though, what makes NMH particularly special?

timing mostly. I don't think they're particularly special. I'm sure you'd hate them lol

mangum has that "mystique/hermit/barely ever plays live" thing going for him -- a lot of his biggest fans probably didn't get to see him the first time around. but i don't think a nmh reunion would be bigger than pavement, really. is that what we're talking about? sure, some people would get crazy excited about it...and anyway, what are the chances of mangum going on some extensive world tour?

I think the biggest NMH fans are much more obsessed with their favorite band than the biggest pavement fans are. This is mostly anecdotal observations on my part though.

also lolz personal note I was playing guitar with some younger indie-ish women (all in their 20s) last year and broke out one of the songs from Aeroplane and not a single one of them knew it. which surprised me.

just wanted to add that this particularly surprised me because this was a group of women who knew Devendra, the Shins, Belle and Sebastian, etc. You'd think they would know NMH but they didn't. it was odd.

otoh they had never heard Ziggy Stardust either so I dunno... kids today...

My friends in Athens around when Aeroplane came out got evangelical about NMH in a way I'd not seen since Nevermind, to add more anecdotal evidence. I remember learning about them in a Chicago Sun Times end-of-year list, when On Avery Island placed. I couldn't find that record in any store where I was living at that time (the greater Chicagoland area isn't so great) but it was easy to find Aeroplane on its day of release.

don't most artists have their super-devoted fan cults though, what makes NMH particularly special?

it's more intense, due in part to the guy disappearing and in part to the way feel and react to what they consider very personal, homespun music. I'm not even a big fan of this band, so I'm not the best advocate for the "why" but it's a perfect storm of lost classic, lost "genius", raw and emotionally naked music, a mix of doing something both very emo but also difficult for everyone grab onto (i.e. the cult will never be fully penetrated by the "wrong" people), the romanticizing of the man making the music that accompanies this sort of stuff (too beautiful for this world etc etc blah blah); that's how I read it from the outside anyway

I just remember the one time I saw them being okay enough. But that was it, it was just okay enough!

i really wanted to do a thread about internet-gen slow-burners, when cult favorites slowly grew into these totemic, iconic legends after everyone passed em around for a decade or so:

Neutral Milk Hotel - Aeroplane
The Wrens - Whatever their album is called
Talk Talk - Laughing Stock
Electric Wizard - Dopethrone
Sleep - Jerusalem

Trying to think of the hip-hop equivalent. Maybe KMD and Odd Squad?

The Wrens - Whatever their album is called

Here I am hoping it was actually called that...

In the Aeroplane also placed 1st in Magnet's best of 1993-2003, as discussed in the thread Magnet Magazine: "Black people do not exist".

"this band has obsessed fans" is totally meaningless as a gauge of anything. EVERY ACT has obsessed fans, right down to the shittiest little one-hit wonder from 10 years ago that you thought everyone had forgotten. scratch the surface of the internet and you'll find the crazy obsessives.

and even going by acts with notoriously obsessed fans, NMH are hardly alone.

xp but aren't those positions fairly common for obsessed fans? arcane and endlessly involving music, personal catharsis that makes the fans feel like the artist is ~speaking to them~, a genius that was mostly lost on the world at large...idk, if i saw that paragraph in isolation i could probably guess at at least 10-20 artists off the top of my head that you could be talking about, minus the "guy disappearing" bit. actually with that i'd probably assume it was the dude from the manic street preachers (now THOSE fans are terrifying, and i speak as someone who's encountered tori amos fans) (and yeah how exactly would NMH be more special than the manics or tori, whose fanbases are legendarily mental?)

the xp was to scott

Meadowlands (xpost re: the Wrens)

I have never heard that album

Was Aeroplane really a slow burner? At one of those last shows at Lounge Ax (the last night, I think), early 2000, Jeff Tweedy fronted a covers band with Scott McCaughey & they covered "King of Carrot Flowers Part 1", & the place erupted. maybe that's just lol hipsters circa 2000 but it wasn't like they were picking out some obscure gem.

if the question is would Neutral Milk Hotel sell out five nights in Central Park I'm thinking no

i have a lot of friends who are music nerds to some degree, and most of them have aeroplane in their collections but probably only 1 or 2 listen to pavement. these are all people in their early 20's though, myself included, so we were not quite at nascent-music-fan age during pavement's heyday, which is a big part of it i suspect. NMH is definitely reaching a different audience, one which i suspect overlaps with 00s indie touchstones like the arcade fire more than it does with 90s ones like pavement.

only 10,000 people bought in the aeroplane, but each one of them went on to form Arcade Fire.

Well, Win Butler has stated that he signed to Merge largely b/c of NMH.

As usual this depends on your scene. I mentioned in another thread that as a deejay at my college station in 1998-2000, I have no memory of handling a NMH album (it's entirely possible I heard a song but it was never identified). I hadn't even heard of them until I read a PFM list from the early or mid part of the decade.

if the meadowlands has a cult following anywhere near the order of aeroplane or laughing stock, i haven't seen any sign of it... solid album though!

Was Aeroplane really a slow burner?

I worked in college radio when those records came out, people liked Avery Island and then when Aeroplane came out they liked that too but I didn't know anyone who was rabid about it. NMH was just one of many bands in that scene. Olivia Tremor Control or whoever else you want to name seemed like almost as big of a deal to me. I think the fact that there is a cult around that record was a slow burn, yes.

xpost - also yeah depends on your scene

i haven't heard any of those "slow burn" albums except the nmh record.

but yeah the elephant 6 thing had its heyday right around 97-98, right? that's how i remember it at my school. i think nmh rose above the rest because of the live show.

alfred otm, and that was my experience too (shift the years a bit, and university paper instead of radio). i'm still not sure i've actually heard NMH, and i'm pretty sure i don't know any particular fans (at least not so much that they ever get mentioned).

xpost you should listen to Sleep and burn one slow, tbh

I'll readily admit I was not familiar with Olivia Tremor Control and Apples in Stereo as part of a 'scene' (i.e. Elephant 6). It's one of my lacuna. I probably glanced through the essays in SPIN or AP.

another pointless anecdote: my freshman year roommate in college who was a fratboy hardman type of guy who listened to alt-rock/radio rock knew who NMH was (but didn't like them)

if the meadowlands has a cult following anywhere near the order of aeroplane or laughing stock, i haven't seen any sign of it... solid album though!

I thought Seacaucus was the slow-burner and Meadowlands the long-awaited follow-up (admittedly long-awaited by a pretty small cadre of Pitchfork types compared to NMH et al).

Okay, re: the ILM all-time poll of 2001:

10. Velvet Underground - Peel Slowly and See (box set)
9. Neutral Milk Hotel - In An Aeroplane Over the Sea
8. Beach Boys - Pet Sounds
7. Joy Division - Unknown Pleasures
6. Public Enemy - It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back
― fred solinger, Tuesday, May 15, 2001 8:00 PM (9 years ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

let me respond by saying four words.
neutral. fucking. milk. hotel.

likely the biggest surprise on the whole chart...or is it?

― fred solinger, Tuesday, May 15, 2001 8:00 PM (9 years ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Who are Neutral Milk Hotel? Never heard of them in my life.
― Johnathan, Tuesday, May 15, 2001 8:00 PM (9 years ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Who the fuck are Neutral Milk Hotel? Please clue me in. Well, I guess I technically KNOW who they are since I had to buy their records into the shop I once worked at. One copy of that record gathered dust in the bin for nine months and I returned it to the distributor. And this particular shop sold a great deal of tier three indie bands.
What's number one, Sentridoh? Sean Lennon? I'm cleary missing something here. Either I really missed the boat on New Model Hotel or there's a C-O-N-spiracy.

― Andy, Tuesday, May 15, 2001 8:00 PM (9 years ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

was there a C-O-N-spiracy?

btw pavement were v. good last night, though spiral seems to have been replaced by a stephin merritt impersonator

I always wanted to like Elephant 6 stuff more than I did. It sounded great on paper. I even remember reading the liner notes of Olivia Tremor Control's Black Foliage right after buying it and being like, "Woodwinds? Bells? Tape manipulation? OMG I'm gonna love this." I think I wasn't prepared for it to sound so indebted to the '60s, though.

yeah, reviews of E6 stuff always made it sound amazing. it might've been that most of those bands had lead vocalists who should never have been lead vocalists.

*the problem might've been* is what i mean

That's precisely what turned me off about all of them.

if the Malkmus critics think he can't sing/project, they should listen to Elephant 6 stuff.

it is crazy that a dozen years later, the big E6 band is OF MONTREAL. Good lord, they were horrible when they first appeared. i wonder if young of montreal fans are digging into that scene much?

^^ this. xp

agree that most E6 stuff was better in theory than in execution. NMH is the best of the lot just cuz it seemed to have the most actual emotional heft of the lot, but even then some of those songs on Aeroplane are painfully underdeveloped. Magnum had the best melodic sense of all the E6 songwriters. There's some Apples stuff I like okay but Schneider really annoys me in general.

I said of the lot a lot a lot

i think they're popular because they stopped sounding like shitty Elephant 6

it is crazy that a dozen years later, the big E6 band is OF MONTREAL. Good lord, they were horrible when they first appeared. i wonder if young of montreal fans are digging into that scene much?

so true that first album is so painfully bad. uber twee awfulness. was suspicious of their revival, still can't say I actually enjoy them for the most part.

This may be Whiney's worst thread which is saying a lot!

yeah, i don't like their latter day stuff very much either, but errrr, they have *improved* xpost

Shasta, you're on my balls more than Lamp these days, whats your glitch

get off the whiyznick?

This may be Whiney's worst thread which is saying a lot!

x2

http://knowyourmeme.com/i/000/052/812/original/Deal_with_it_dog_gif.gif?1275684729

off to the hug it out thread with all of you

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n-cqcFCL-l8

^ cheer up guys, it's a ska punk version of Gold Soundz

the gunman was so shocked at this rendition he dropped his gun and forgot to pickitup pickitup pickitup.

http://twitter.com/camilledodero/status/25058806750

do you guys ever listen to gold soundz and think "yeah man im such a social retard but man only ignorant people leave the house, fucking alpha male jerks, god bless pavement"

http://s-ak.buzzfed.com/static/enhanced/terminal01/2010/5/27/13/enhanced-buzz-17114-1274983077-0.jpg

OMG people, Pavement was so good at Central Park Summerstage this evening. Holy mackerel!!!

something overlooked in the discussion of what makes NMH important in the 90s is christianity. i'm not saying that they were a christian band, exactly, but it seems to me that mangum put across a kind of deep, personal-and-yet-universal spiritual yearning in his music that's been influential on american indie in the 21st century. most notably reflected in the arcade fire and sufjan stevens, picking up on a thread first previously down by sunny day real estate and maybe sebadoh (?). carrying forward from the likes of U2 in the 80s/early 90s? i dunno...

this kind of spiritual outreach from within indie rock seems to have been very successful in the long run, allowing indie to move beyond the leftie/arty/anti-authoritarian model dominant in the 80 -- domesticating it, making it safe for (largely christian) america in general. want to throw in like the microphones/mt. eerie and bright eyes, but i don't know their material well so this may be unfair. i say this because i've known several idealistic young christians (youth pastors, etc.) who've been really, really into indie music over the last 20 years or so, and they've tended to hold fast to this particular strain. yearning, impassioned, spiritual yet conflicted.

"a thread first previously down by" probably = "a thread previously laid down by"

just guessing...

pavement doesn't really fit in with this, thus they perhaps seem an artifact of a previous, less evangelical brand of indie. stoned, sardonic, not even touching on the deep feeling industry.

Pavement had enough romantic-sounding ballads to "touch" on it, at least.

They were never huge, but I think Pedro the Lion was a notable figure in indie rock's late 90s move toward Christian themes. David Bazan was just explicit enough about his Christianity for the music to strongly appeal to indie-leaning Christians I knew in college, but not so explicit that it ever seemed like "Christian rock."

it is crazy that a dozen years later, the big E6 band is OF MONTREAL. Good lord, they were are horrible when they first appeared.

That's a great theory, contenderizer. Hadn't thought of NMH in those terms before.

yeah great post....i know exactly what you're getting at, a certain youth minister earnestness...
(i grew up middle of the road lutheran i remember playing bass in jr high at a "rock mass" haha)

i supposed the logical conclusion was arcade fire being a huge band

sunny day real estate and maybe sebadoh (?)

Sebadoh was earnest and emo but not particularly spiritual imo

It's a good point, but singling out U2 suggests a related but distinct idea: that NMH were a the late 90s/early 00s version of the "big music". So much of 90s rock was emotionally distant or closed, so even erstwhile arena bands like Smashing Pumpkins wanted to drive you away as much as lift you higher. And Pavement never seemed open or generous to me. Ditto for Radiohead and the other Brit contenders at the time (eek, Travis, e.g., and James a few years earlier) though I think The Bends is still a landmark to a certain kind of young rock fan b/c it's big & not as cold as their later work. So NMH seems to have filled this role (the horns etc. giving it a home-worn orchestral grandeur needed for the Big Music).

yeah, i mean, most indie rock bands from the early 90s weren't really about "communal" experiences in a live setting ... witness the dud sonic youth/pavement lollapalooza bill.

This is why I like Arcade Fire despite myself. The earnestness, the hugeness, the vague spirituality, the absolute humourlessness, the echoes of the Waterboys and Springsteen at his corniest - I should really hate them and I'm not entirely sure why I don't.

they are totally "on the darkside" by the beaver brown band

Mercury Rev and Flaming Lips seem to be fairly obvious examples of communal big music indie.

But maybe they weren't indie enough?

The Lips didn't turn that way until 1999, though, & they didn't tour that way until 2002 iirc (w/ Modest Mouse)

but rev and the lips didn't really get to that point til the late 90s, right? Deserters Songs, Soft Bulletin, etc. can't remember when those actually came out, but 98-99, i think. xpost yeah

The Lips toured Soft Bulletin like that - balloons, etc - in 1999/2000. But they have a sense of humour and a psychedelic quality and an overt rejection of religion which I think puts them in a camp of their own. Depends how broadly you want to categorise this trend I suppose, but Wayne Coyne's very good at deflating grandiose earnestness - his own and others'.

The earnestness, the hugeness, the vague spirituality, the absolute humourlessness, the echoes of the Waterboys and Springsteen at his corniest -

this is pretty much exactly why I DO hate the Arcade Fire

Well yeah. But I like it when bands I should like or dislike in theory have the opposite effect on me. It suggests there's some intriguing, elusive quality in there which overrides my usual prejudices.

Scott, "the gen behind them" wasn't subject to daily internet broadcasts of those bands' worth from a disproportionately-invested group of taste-makers. If PJ Harvey and seBADoh and whomever else have "not connected" with that base, it's in large/r part because said base is not being told they should. Versus, say the fucking Wrens.

To your point, Sonic Youth came untethered from the argument about 1997 and have just floated around as alt-ether in the Iggy sense, but NMH, B&S and Pavement's place in these discussions is not due to some enduring base. It's because the dialog of pop has descended into brand advocacy, and you are defining them as canon.

[Arcade Fire] are totally "on the darkside" by the beaver brown band
They're barely the Outfield.

if arcade fire has a song as good as "your love" i haven't heard it

NMH, B&S and Pavement's place in these discussions is not due to some enduring base. It's because the dialog of pop has descended into brand advocacy, and you are defining them as canon.

Can't really speak for the two US examples but, even though I don't much care for them, I recall how B&S accrued a following from basically the beginning, well enough to say that this post is str8 garbage - I realise the actual content of it was of secondary importance to the chance to take a swing at a P4K head, but even so

I'm not purporting to speak for the English experience of Belle & Sebastian, which I've always sensed went as you describe. But I didn't invoke them here, and I can tell you they were a complete flash in the pan in the United States, despite endless media coverage. It is not entirely a Pitchfork issue; the "you" in my comment is the taste-making class. B&S were served by much larger media forces than Pitchfork in the 1990s.

This whole last stretch of posts has probably summed up exactly why the Arcade Fire (and NMH and modern indie-as-such) leaves me cold, so like Dorian I'm rather glad for the clarity. I strongly suspect timing had something to do with it -- the closest I got to a 'big music' phase in the sense Dorian refers to was 1987-88, and then Rattle and Hum came out, effectively killing it stone dead in any sort of unironic sense. My first real total arena level show after that was Depeche in 1990 and while it was communal it was pitched and received in a much different context.

Combine that with my take on lyrics and it's little wonder I see all the emphasis on speaking-for-a-generation-or-whatever hoohah AS hoohah.

Ned, come on, "God Part II" and "Hawkmoon" were deep cuts.

wait who has a song called Hawkmoon, U2...?

(always on the lookout for random Moorcock refs haha)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u2zqx1vYAOc

Now this thread's moving.

Moving where?

The Suburbs

Oh, I don't mind arena rock per se – I mind when bands start recording as if they needed to reach Section T, Row 32.

sightlines in section t kinda suck tbh

arcade fire are absolutely descended from the big music (esp. ocean rain) but i don't hear it so much with NMH. i'm trying to think of similarly appropriate pre-90s touchstones for aeroplane but everything seems to have a tenuous dave q-esque connection at best

the connection isn't the sounds/stylings of arena-rock it's more of a vague thematic similarity - the yearning, earnest, a bit of willful naivete. (Bright Eyes also fits here. Jeff Buckley too).

as far as pre-90s antecedents for NMH, I can't really think of any in the 80s off the top of my head, but there's plenty of stuff from the late 60s/early 70s that figure in.

earnestness

something overlooked in the discussion of what makes NMH important in the 90s is christianity. i'm not saying that they were a christian band, exactly, but it seems to me that mangum put across a kind of deep, personal-and-yet-universal spiritual yearning in his music that's been influential on american indie in the 21st century. most notably reflected in the arcade fire and sufjan stevens, picking up on a thread first previously down by sunny day real estate and maybe sebadoh (?). carrying forward from the likes of U2 in the 80s/early 90s? i dunno...

...and the Violent Femmes maybe? NMH always reminded me of them a little sonically, but Gano always had that Christian side to him too especially on Hallowed Ground (there's also a sense of playfulness with history on that record as well, that NMH share).

also Gano was funny

NMH is kinda humorless

Gano got unfunny very quickly though.

How can you say that, the guy is classic:

"* The Femmes were eating at Spanish restaurant Mallorca in Ohio. When the desserts came Gano was appalled to discover that his flan was a lighter shade of brown than the flan of manager Darren Brown. Gano summoned the waitress who told him there was nothing she could do, it was the last flan. Brown made things OK by trading flans with Gano. "

^I've eaten there, it's in Cleveland.

Save the last flan for me.

the connection isn't the sounds/stylings of arena-rock it's more of a vague thematic similarity - the yearning, earnest, a bit of willful naivete. (Bright Eyes also fits here. Jeff Buckley too).

as far as pre-90s antecedents for NMH, I can't really think of any in the 80s off the top of my head, but there's plenty of stuff from the late 60s/early 70s that figure in.

― pay to the order of Iron Balls McGinty, $1 and 9 cents (Shakey Mo Collier), Thursday, September 23, 2010 9:51 AM (5 hours ago) Bookmark

yeah, this makes sense. one of the defining characteristics of NMH, to me, is how an intense quality of emotional frailty/brokenness is tied to hugely emotional, even cathartic music. the frailty is most clearly present in the lyrics, but it's also reflected in the singing voice, the recording, even the tunes themselves. like a lot of indie over the past 20 years, NMH seemed to fetishize (or at least to sentimentally prize) a quality of human weakness. that's the sense in which i tie them to early sebadoh at one pole, radiohead at another in describing a certain swath of semi-recent indie rock. this fascination clearly separates NMH and their fellow travelers from 80s "big music" (which tended to be more triumphalist about human nature & identity).

shakey mo OTM about precedents in 60s/70s music. thinking of simon & garfunkel, neil young, etc.

yeah Neil is the real obvious one - whiny voice, simple songs (altho not always, in Neil's case), freewheeling associations + dreamy imagery, super emotive material

I first reead about Aeroplane from glenn mcdonald's blog The War Against Silence, sometime prolley in 98 or 99. I still haven't heard the whole album, but I downloaded Holland 1945 off of Napster in 2000. I rememeber it was the same night I first heard The Clean.

ever since then H45 has been one of my favourite songs (along with Point That Thing Somewhere Else &-I think-Getting Older)

http://herjazz.org/post/1210508043

For those who are interested, what sounds like most of their 2nd ever show, at Maxwell's in 1990. Lovin the pre-Slanted pavement

that show is pre-Ibold with Rob Chamberlain on bass.

"gold soundz, there was gold soundz, everywhere gold soundz" BANG

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

oh boy!

"Go back! To those gold sounds!" is all I know. Is that enough?

yes

Wow.. a lot has happened since this poll opened.

And P.S. the title of the poll doesn't necessarily say you have to know every word or else you're dead... It could just mean "can you sing an approximation of the vocal melody" which I can do, so I'm voting life.

Go back to those gold sounds
And keep my advent to yourself
Because it's nothing I don't like
Is it a crisis or a boring change
When it's central, so essential,
It has a nice ring when you laugh
At the low life opinions
And they're coming to the chorus now

I keep my address to yourself 'cause we need secrets
We need secrets -crets -crets -crets -crets -crets back right now

Because I never wanna make you feel
That you're social
Never ignorant soul
Believe in what you wanna do
And do you think that is a major flaw
When they rise up in the falling rain
And if you stay around with your knuckles ground down
The trial's over, weapon's found

Keep my address to myself because it's secret
'Cause it's secret -cret -cret -cret -cret -cret -cret -cret -cret -cret -cret -cret -cret -cret back right now

So drunk in the August sun
And you're the kind of girl I like
Because you're empty and I'm empty
And you can never quarantine the past
Did you remember in December
That I won't eat you when I'm gone
And if I go there, I won't stay there
Because I'm sitting here too long

I've been sitting here too long
And I've been wasted
Advocating that word for the last word
Last words come up all you've got to waste

Go back to those gold sounds
And keep my advent to yourself
Because it's nothing I don't like
Is it a crisis or a boring change
When it's central, so essential,
It has a nice ring when you laugh
At the low life opinions
And they're coming to the chorus now

I keep my address to yourself 'cause we need secrets
We need secrets -crets -crets -crets -crets back right now

Because I never wanna make you feel
That you're social
Never ignorant soul
Believe in what you wanna do
And do you think that is a major flaw
When they rise up in the falling rain
And if you stay around with your knuckles ground down
The trial's over, weapon's found

Keep my address to myself because it's secret
'Cause it's secret -cret -cret -cret -cret -cret -cret -cret -cret -cret -cret -cret -cret -cret back right now

So drunk in the August sun
And you're the kind of girl I like
Because you're empty and I'm empty
And you can never quarantine the past
Did you remember in December
That I won't eat you when I'm gone
And if I go there, I won't stay there
Because I'm sitting here too long

I've been sitting here too long
And I've been wasted
Advocating that word for the last word
Last words come up all you've got to waste

Go back to those gold sounds
And keep my advent to yourself
Because it's nothing I don't like
Is it a crisis or a boring change
When it's central, so essential,
It has a nice ring when you laugh
At the low life opinions
And they're coming to the chorus now

I keep my address to yourself 'cause we need secrets
We need secrets -crets -crets -crets -crets back right now

Because I never wanna make you feel
That you're social
Never ignorant soul
Believe in what you wanna do
And do you think that is a major flaw
When they rise up in the falling rain
And if you stay around with your knuckles ground down
The trial's over, weapon's found

Keep my address to myself because it's secret
'Cause it's secret -cret -cret -cret -cret -cret -cret -cret -cret -cret -cret -cret -cret -cret back right now

So drunk in the August sun
And you're the kind of girl I like
Because you're empty and I'm empty
And you can never quarantine the past
Did you remember in December
That I won't eat you when I'm gone
And if I go there, I won't stay there
Because I'm sitting here too long

I've been sitting here too long
And I've been wasted
Advocating that word for the last word
Last words come up all you've got to waste

Go back to those gold sounds
And keep my advent to yourself
Because it's nothing I don't like
Is it a crisis or a boring change
When it's central, so essential,
It has a nice ring when you laugh
At the low life opinions
And they're coming to the chorus now

I keep my address to yourself 'cause we need secrets
We need secrets -crets -crets -crets -crets -crets back right now

Because I never wanna make you feel
That you're social
Never ignorant soul
Believe in what you wanna do
And do you think that is a major flaw
When they rise up in the falling rain
And if you stay around with your knuckles ground down
The trial's over, weapon's found

Keep my address to myself because it's secret
'Cause it's secret -cret -cret -cret -cret -cret -cret -cret -cret -cret -cret -cret -cret -cret back right now

So drunk in the August sun
And you're the kind of girl I like
Because you're empty and I'm empty
And you can never quarantine the past
Did you remember in December
That I won't eat you when I'm gone
And if I go there, I won't stay there
Because I'm sitting here too long

I've been sitting here too long
And I've been wasted
Advocating that word for the last word
Last words come up all you've got to wastes

Go back to those gold sounds
And keep my advent to yourself
Because it's nothing I don't like
Is it a crisis or a boring change
When it's central, so essential,
It has a nice ring when you laugh
At the low life opinions
And they're coming to the chorus now

I keep my address to yourself 'cause we need secrets
We need secrets -crets -crets -crets -crets -crets back right now

Because I never wanna make you feel
That you're social
Never ignorant soul
Believe in what you wanna do
And do you think that is a major flaw
When they rise up in the falling rain
And if you stay around with your knuckles ground down
The trial's over, weapon's found

Keep my address to myself because it's secret
'Cause it's secret -cret -cret -cret -cret -cret -cret -cret -cret -cret -cret -cret -cret -cret back right now

So drunk in the August sun
And you're the kind of girl I like
Because you're empty and I'm empty
And you can never quarantine the past
Did you remember in December
That I won't eat you when I'm gone
And if I go there, I won't stay there
Because I'm sitting here too long

I've been sitting here too long. . .
And I've been wasted
Advocating that word for the last word
Last words come up all you've got to waste

Go back to those gold sounds
And keep my advent to yourself
Because it's nothing I don't like
Is it a crisis or a boring change
When it's central, so essential,
It has a nice ring when you laugh
At the low life opinions
And they're coming to the chorus now!

I keep my address to yourself 'cause we need secrets
We need secrets -crets -crets -crets -crets -crets back right now

Because I never wanna make you feel
That you're social
Never ignorant soul
Believe in what you wanna do
And do you think that is a major flaw
When they rise up in the falling rain
And if you stay around with your knuckles ground down
The trial's over, weapon's found

Keep my address to myself because it's secret
'Cause it's secret -cret -cret -cret -cret -cret -cret -cret -cret -cret -cret -cret -cret -cret back right now

So drunk in the August sun
And you're the kind of girl I like
Because you're empty and I'm empty
And you can never quarantine the past
Did you remember in December
That I won't eat you when I'm gone
And if I go there, I won't stay there
Because I'm sitting here too long

I've been sitting here too long
And I've been wasted
Advocating that word for the last word
Last words come up all you've got to waste

Go back to those gold sounds
And keep my advents to yourself
Because it's nothing I don't like
Is it a crisis or a boring change
When it's central, so essential,
It has a nice ring when you laugh
At the low life opinions
And they're coming to the chorus now

I keep my address to yourself 'cause we need secrets
We need secrets -crets -crets -crets -crets -crets back right now

Because I never wanna make you feel
That you're social
Never ignorant soul
Believe in what you wanna do
And do you think that is a major flaw
When they rise up in the falling rain
And if you stay around with your knuckles ground down
The trial's over, weapon's found

Keep my address to myself because it's secret
'Cause it's secret -cret -cret -cret -cret -cret -cret -cret -cret -cret -cret -cret -cret -cret back right now

So drunk in the August sun
And you're the kind of girl I like
Because you're empty and I'm empty
And you can never quarantine the past
Did you remember in December
That I won't eat you when I'm gone
And if I go there, I won't stay there
Because I'm sitting here too long

I've been sitting here too long
And I've been wasted
Advocating that word for the last word
Last words come up all you've got to waste

Probably would have to shoot you anyway if you sang it that many times

go back to those gold soundz
and keep my accent to yourself
because it's something that i don't like
is it a crisis or a boring change
do you remember in december
it has a nice ring when you laugh
at the low life opinions
and we're coming to the chorus now

keep my address to myself because it's secret (cretty cret etc)

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

holy hell has anything gotten that many votes???

people actually know this song?

Pavement be pulling crowds.

I'm not even sure I voted.

seems like this particular poll was crucial for ilm, everyone felt obliged to pitch in his vote
(I voted 'yes' ofc, it's just a nice song, some people hate it way too much)

http://politicalmaps.org/wp-content/uploads/2007/11/1-2004-by-state.png

haa

lol alfred

jesus christ that is an absurd amount of votes

ok not my style to complain about low participation in a thread I started but can I just

Best Above The Law Album

I dig Pavement fine but 3 votes in the Above The Law album poll vs. this is just sad

this one did have an inneresting title tho, and I think that brings in the votes

wait, aerosmith, are you actually going on an indie rock thread to complain no one cares about a rap act you love or is this ironic

whoa late pass for me but when did the code that converts a thread url to the thread title kick in? all this time I've been coming w/the left bracket url= etc when all you gotta do is paste the thread's url and it gets converted to a neat link. thanks whoever did that!

xp I am actually going on an indie rock thread to complain that no one cares about a rap act I love, yes. if anybody needs me I'll be on the Waka Flocka thread castigating everybody for not listening to Look Blue Go Purple

oh man i haven't listened to look blue go purple in a minute

they were ok

this one did have an inneresting title tho, and I think that brings in the votes

^^

If this was called "Could you sing Pavement's 'Gold Soundz'?" it would've gotten maybe half as many votes.

the threat of a gun to your head really brings out the votes eh

whoa late pass for me but when did the code that converts a thread url to the thread title kick in?

pretty long time now!

like six years at least i think

yeah that's been around like... a really really long time

haha - never knew either that you didnt need to type that code! might start linking to threads more often then