Best of the best ofs

“You've been chosen as an extra in the movie adaptation of the sequel to your life”

-Pavement, Shady Lane

Before streaming, I would never listen to best-of albums. The whole exercise always reeked of desperate cash grabs, rehab bills and alimony payments. But when confronted with the tidal wave expanse of albums, re-issues, and rarities uploaded by popular legacy acts, I’ve found that best-ofs can make for a comfortable welcome mat to a revered band I’ve never listened to. 

And now I wonder: is it wrong to prefer a band’s best of to any of their “real” albums? Because for me, Pavement’s best-of belongs in the category of best of the best-ofs. Sequencing the wordy/funny/sullen/full of shit/genius bands’ full spectrum in a non-chronological fashion lets Pavement shine in ways none of their albums have the patience to provide. 

Pavement could do wry word soup poetry, often besting Beck in their ability to make nonsense feel like profound truth. “Empty homes, plastic cones / Stolen rims, are they alloy or chrome?” sings Stephen Malkmus on “Frontwards,” which I think is about how news broadcasts flatten the details of individual tragedies into interchangeable content but might just be about the way the word ‘alloy’ sounds.

Pavement could be observational comedians as well. “Cut Your Hair” is a Seinfeld-like walk through the alternative music scene, each stanza showcasing the shallow nurososis of seeing and being seen at a show. Malkmus sings idle chatter overheard at shows, laughs at a vain classified ads seeking musicians (“NO BIG HAIR”)  and scoffs at the idea of music becoming a “Career! Career! Career!” The song makes me chuckle every time.

But alas, on any given record Pavement can be a frustrating listen. To call their releases scattershot, would be a disservice to the general forward direction of a shotgun blast. The band was famous for using studio time to jam on partially written sketches and just releasing the best takes rather then coming in with “songs” or “a game plan.” As usual, Bevis and Butthead’s review captured a universal truth about the band, demanding that the group “try harder.”

Even though it’s been done before, I’m going to give a quick history of the band because its full of so many hilarious detours and slapstick happenstance that it might as well have been directed by Richard Linklater.

Fresh off four years at the University of Virginia, Stephen Malkmus moved back to Stockton, California where he started a low-key home recording project with amuetur guitarist Scott Kannberg. At college Malkmus had been a DJ for the university radio station alongside David Berman (Silver Jews) and James McNew (Yo La Tengo), and he brought their lo-fi literati aesthetic to his new group. Pavement were wordy and loud and its members went by the mysterious pseudonyms of SM and Spiral Stairs.

Early on the group experienced a series of pratfalls that let them know that the California punk life documented in Penelope Spheeris’ “Decline of Western Civilization” was not for them. Malkmus remembered seeing Henry Rollins pump himself up for a raucous show by squeezing a cue ball with uncaged fury and resigned from angry young man culture. “That's when I knew that maybe I'm just not punk enough," said Malkus to Option magazine.

The band recorded albums drenched in scuzz, alternating between almost-pop sing alongs like “Summer Babe (Winter Version)” and scorched earth feedback jams. Their original drummer, Gary Young, was some 14 years older than the other members. He only joined the group when Malkmus and Kanneburg arrived in his studio to record with no drummer, bassist or, apparently, practiced material to record. Young offered to jump on the drums, and the group jammed out a recording dubbed Slanted & Enchanted, one of the defining records of the 90s, in about a week. 

It’s telling that Young, who was later kicked out of the band because of struggles with alcohol and a tendency to hand out potato salad at shows, was initially the most professional member of the band. 

From there the group wobbled on a wave of underground hype. Malkmus brought his college friend and former MOMA security guard co-worker Bob Nastanovich as a second drummer because Young’s drinking problem caused him to collapse during performances. Malkmus recalls telling Nastanovich that his job was to “keep the beat going if Gary passes out."

Their sophomore effort, Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain is often billed as an attempt by the band to “clean up their sound,” which I suppose is true in a relative sense but the damn thing still opens with 20 seconds of false starts before launching into the shaggy college rock of “Silence Kid.” Its probably their most consistent record but remains an album where you could cut every other song and not miss much. 

(Wonderfully, the record started a feud with Billy Corgan by saying the Smashing Pumpkins had “no function” on “Range Life.” *at this point in the aside the author adopts a nasal voice filled with infinite sadness* Why doesn’t anyone know how it feels to be Billy!)

Then Pavement went off the deep end. Critic Stuart Berman once encapsulated the band’s fractured trajectory by saying “for a band that often seemed be on the verge of a commercial breakthrough, Pavement made all the right moves-- they just did them in the wrong order.” I think Wowee Zowee, the band’s difficult third album is what he’s talking about. A messy series of inside jokes and songs that make the Grateful Dead seem focused, WZ tanked while alienating fans. To quote Rolling Stone’s review: "Pavement are simply afraid to succeed." Malkmus defends the rambling record, but admitted that heavy marijuana usage might have impaired his judgement and motivation at the time.  "I was smoking a lot of grass back then but to me they sounded like hits," he said (delightfully.) 

Pavement were never able to recapture their early momentum and despite some killer songs on Brighten the Corners, they broke up after industry-approved producer Nigel Godrich did not know the names of the non-Malkmus members of the band during the recording of Twilight Terror.

And so: Quarantine the Past distills the arc of a scatter-brained, yet wholly charming band into a single listen. The best-of does work that a normal best-of doesn’t need to do, cherry picking the choicest cuts from a wooly ouvre and helping fans appreciate gems hidden in the 90s excess of hour long albums. The set introduced me to the one good song from Wowee Zowee, “Grounded,” which sandwiches beguiling lyrics between an awesome simmering intro and outro.

Cut Your Hair, Gold Sounds, Stereo, Frontwards, Shady Lane--the hits keep coming until the listener starts to think, were these guys the Rolling Stones of their generation? And the b-sides like “Unfair” reveal the band’s gift for non-sequiturs that are either gibberish or the profound mystic poetry of prophets born to be misunderstood.

On lost classic “Here,” Malkmus mumble-sings: “I was dressed for success, but success it never comes / I’m the only one who laughs at your jokes when they are so bad / And your jokes are always bad / But not as bad as this” and then launches into a gorgeous, near forgotten chorus. 

Turns out the best of Pavement are like the shoots of green that sneak between the cracks of concrete: striving, tangled, and easy to miss.   

Love,

Anand

Oct, 2018