MMT50 - 238

Meeting Malkmus - a Pavement podcast

jD is back and he's joined by Daniel from Chicago to discuss his Pavement origin story and dissect track number 38.

Transcript:

[0:00] Hey, it's JD here, and I just wanted to throw something down, somewhat of a challenge to all you musically inclined folks out there.

We are going to be doing a pod list again this year, and a pod list is simply a podcast playlist.

It's a pod list. The previous four pod lists have consisted of talented members of our Pavement community submitting songs that they have covered from the Pavement oeuvre.

Pavement adjacent songs are also welcome. So you could do PSOI, you could do Jicks, you could do Malcolm is Solo.

Anything is fair game, truly. So get your band together or grab an acoustic guitar and just play your fucking guts out.

From there, submit the song to me by email and we'll go from there.

So please submit those songs, jd at meetingmalkmus.com, or even better, use wetransfer.com if it's a big WAV file. And WAV files are what I prefer.

That will work out just magnificently. That's what she said.

Podlist 5 coming July 8th. So get those songs in and be a part of something special. Thanks so much.

Now, on with the show.

Track 3:

[1:24] Previously on the pavement top 50.

Track 2:

[1:27] What do you have to say dan from rochester about playbook oh man so um first of all when i i listened to this a lot this week and there's three versions so i did some some deepdiving into comparing the different like studio versions that are out there but the first thing that surprised me was the length is relatively short it's slightly less than three and a half minutesand to me that song always felt like very epic.

Track 3:

[1:58] Hey, this is Westy from the Rock and Roll Band, Pavement, and you're listening to The Countdown.

Track 4:

[2:05] Hey, it's J.D. here, back for another episode of our Top 50 Countdown for the seminal indie rock band, Pavement.

Week over week, we're going to count down the 50 essential Pavement tracks that you selected with your very own Top 20 ballots.

I then tabulated the results using an abacus and a six-pack.

[2:24] Okay, there were only four left, but I was thirsty. see how will your favorite pavement song fare in the ranking you'll need to tune in to find out so there's that this week we're joinedby pavement superfan daniel daniel how are you doing motherfucker uh doing good how are you i am excellent today it's a bright and sunny day out i did a 10k walk it's uh just fantastic itis a good day it's like i'm in chicago and it's uh 50 degrees and so that's like summer so yeah right to have that in february is like just another another planet it's amazing yeah so let's getright into this let's talk about your pavement origin story daniel from chicago i am from a town in the south called montgomery alabama Okay.

And I'm also 45, late Gen Xer.

Discovering music in the early 90s, you really had to try to search out cool stuff, and especially in a shitty town like Montgomery, Alabama. Alabama.

[3:42] There were like only one record store that was independent and you kind of had to like know a person to get there. And.

[3:52] So that's a big part of my origin story is I am from a shitty place.

And the more I get to know pavement, I realize that Stockton is a lot like Montgomery.

It's strip malls and crime and not a lot to do, not a lot of real culture.

So I see that connection now.

When I was a teenager, I was into classic rock like Neil Young and Bob Dylan and Steve Miller Band, I guess, was my intro to what my dad showed me about rock and roll.

But I started 10th grade and I noticed a guy had the iconic pavement sunny side up shirt. Right.

And I said, this guy knows something. He kind of shined with this aura.

And at the time, I didn't know much about indie rock or alternative rock.

But I knew a lot about film.

I was into Tarantino, and that led me to John Woo and other independent film.

[5:17] I knew a lot about beat literature, like Kerouac and Ginsberg, Burroughs.

So we met, and he helped me with the pavement and the Sonic Youth. We traded CDs.

I traded VHS, independent film, with him.

And we eventually started a shitty noise band in his garage.

Oh, that is so cool. Yeah. Yeah. And we talked about Pavement and Sonic Youth, Daydream Nation.

At the time, I think Crooked Rain was the big one, and Wowie was pretty big on our playlist.

List um but i'm really thankful for that meeting and his taste was just um beyond anything of people from montgomery so i that's my story and i i continue to love pavement my entire lifehas been my favorite band and i felt very special uh having them as a part of my life and i i'm not sure who it was that said.

[6:38] I think it might be Mark Arm from Mudhunt Honey said, when you listen to Pavement, you feel smarter.

And I feel like I'm in on some kind of secret.

Yeah. And I feel enlightened when I listen to Stephen Moutmiss and his poetry and his lyrics.

I feel smarter. And coming from a place of like education was not valued and no culture, it meant a lot for me to like have pavement as this kind of avant-garde art band that led me todifferent bigger cities and bigger ideas.

Is so so what was take take me through your experience daniel take me through that so you saw him wearing the sunny side up shirt what was the first spin like like what did you spin firstif you remember i remember and and what was going on in your head when you heard it i got crooked crooked rain crooked rain first and i remember the disc and people these days missout on the artwork of the disc right it's got that layer of like kind of red and maroon art.

[8:01] And i spun it and i was like first off i've never heard uh a vocalist sound like this before right and i was like is he singing or is he like speaking um and they're in the liner notesthere's a picture of like a singer but i always thought it was that that was mouth mess or that was spiral stairs i wasn't sure but it turns out it's like just a random collage um i wasn't sure ifthe the singer was playing guitar or was just like singing.

Wow. Like something from a different world completely. And unlike any music.

[8:46] That i've uh ever encountered even since it's um now i can kind of associate what not miss was doing with like lou reed yes big time uh but at the time it was just like what is thisvocalist doing and then there were parts of the guitar playing it was like kind of dissonant guitar and i was like is are these guitars even in tune like it sounds like noise in some parts but somelodic and others and so melodic and others and that's their secret yeah um.

[9:25] And then i started listening to the lyrics um the first song that comes to mind i wrote on my uh we used to have book covers of paper to cover the book i wrote the entire uh lyrics forstop breathing this is like the most poetic I don't know what he's talking about but I was also I went to it like an art high school and I was in creative writing and I would do my best to tryto emulate in my poetry what mountainous was doing with like his prose or his lyrics right Right, okay.

So he was talking about, I think, stuff around a father-son relationship in that song, and I had struggles with my dad, and as we all probably do.

Sure. And I was like, abstractly, he's talking about stuff that is really hitting home.

And so there were some songs I didn't get at first, like...

[10:39] But yeah we'll talk about some of that stuff later sure okay yeah um so that was your first experience with them and crooked rain what a great jumping off point and just to followup on you know like who's playing what and what are they doing it wasn't like you could tune into mtv at the time and see a great deal of pavement you know and and sort of match it uplike you could with with other bands.

You know, in this case, they were so rarefied.

It would be tough to get your hands on, you know, live footage or anything like that. So that leads me to my next question.

When did you see them live? Did you see them live?

First, my first concert by them was.

[11:28] It must have been early my first semester at auburn university i went uh started uh 97, i went to birmingham alabama at a place called the nick i think that's what it is and so it musthave been september or october of 1997 and it was a like maybe uh, 100, 200 person venue. It was a very small venue.

And me and my two friends from Auburn, we got there nerdy, super early and waited at the rail of the front row.

[12:18] And it turns out that we were right across from Spiral Stairs guitar setup.

Okay. And it was in support of Right in the Corners.

So, amazing show.

I think at the time, what they were doing was they were playing about 15 songs with an encore of three songs. And they played Credence.

Sinister Purpose was their cover that they played.

And they they had their set list on paper plates which i thought was very diy and cool and spiral at the end of the set uh he picked up his paper plate threw it like a frisbee and i caught it soi had the the set list i don't have it anymore but oh damn one time it was in my dorm it was in a collection as i moved around the country of course of course but i wish i had had thatamazing moment.

Probably, I would say it's probably my third or fourth concert ever. Um, and.

[13:35] I went to REM and Radiohead in support of Monster. That was my first.

So it's in good company.

Yeah, I bet. So how did you find like-minded people in uni?

Was it easy or did you have to seek them out like you did in high school?

Or how did you find your compatriots to go to that show with?

This is so funny. uh the first day of english class the teacher asked what what what do we like and get to know you ice icebreaker questions and me and this guy cleave we both put thesame bands we really liked pavement number one lemon heads number two rem number three we we wrote those identically, and it's it's like this uh serendipitous kind of thing happenedwith us and we became, very close friends and at the time he was like really into pink floyd and i said hey man you got to get really back into pavements better than pink floyd so weobsess over our mutual love of malchmas and uh pavement so that that's how that connection happened but other times in my life i've never really found someone who says pavement's myfavorite band and maybe you're my probably my.

[15:04] Like third person i they always seem to be like a french band no one is like so obsessed like i am or possibly you are.

And that's okay with me. Like, this is something, it's very special kind of in this time where everything feels like homogenized.

I'm glad that this is a special thing for a few of us.

Yeah, I think so too. We can unite in that, unite in our solodom.

In our solitude. dude. Um, What's your go-to record these days?

[15:51] Well, it's grown. It's changed over time. Of course. As it should, probably.

I think the most bang for your buck and artistic expression of what they represent is Wowie Zowie.

Sure. Yeah, I can get behind that. It is their version of the White Album in that it is so many different genre attempts.

And it feels loose it feels fun um it's thematically all over the place yeah and, i just it just feels like a real expression of what they were going for as a band yeah i i i'm not sure if it's likethe best album but for me i think it feels like pavement and what they wanted um and the the go-to for me i hope it makes your list is uh grave architecture okay i find that to bequintessential uh a pavement song but yeah Yeah, it's just so all over the place and wacky that I love it.

What do you say we take a quick break and we come back on the other side of track number 38?

Sounds good. All right, cool.

Track 3:

[17:18] Hey, this is Bob Mustanovich from Pavement. Thanks for listening.

And now on with a countdown.

Track 2:

[17:26] 38.

Track 4:

[20:04] Alright, track 38 is Date with Ikea, the first spiral jam on the countdown.

It's the fifth from Pavement's fourth record, Bright in the Corners, after Blue Hawaiian at 50, Embassy Row at 44, Old to Begin at 43, and Starlings of the Slipstream at 40.

Without further ado, number 38, Date with Ikea.

Daniel from Chicago.

Hey. Talk to me about your experience with this song.

Well, it was the first Pavement album that I was able to buy on its release date.

So it has a special place.

It was released, I think it's April 17th, 1997.

97 and i good went to my local mall and walked in and bought this album and, it's a banger it's a really fucking good album and 100% it's it it rocks and this song is a rocker and you feellike there's some shimmering layered guitar going on yeah Yeah. Um.

[21:30] I'm not sure what the song's about. It feels like... Tough to discern.

At the time, I didn't know what Ikea was.

Now I know. I think it's a Norwegian furniture store, wholesale furniture.

[21:50] So now I think I know what the meaning of the song is.

Because I've had a date with Ikea. I bought a house, and I've had to go to Ikea to celebrate needing furniture.

And I remember going to Ikea going, oh, this is what the song is about.

Maybe domestication.

Maybe it's a union.

I like domestication. Yeah. But the lyrics are about a relationship strife.

The actress is always breaking things. That made me think something's going wrong in the relationship or he's annoyed with his partner.

Not sure. But Spiral's songs have always had their own feel to them.

And this feels like a quintessential uh spiral stairs song not what what else does it sound like in those years maybe uh like super chunk like no pocky for kitty, i don't know if you know ofany other bands that might sound like but.

[23:08] No, because it's tough, because his cuts sort of stand alone on a pavement record, because they're so radically different than the stuff that SM does, right?

I think that's what I'm trying to get at, yeah.

[23:24] But lyrically, you can go down the same bottomless pit with both of their lyrics.

I think Malk tends to be, he's got the turn of phrase, right?

He's got the gift for a turn of phrase in a way that Spiral doesn't necessarily have the same horsepower at this stage in the game.

If you listen to PSOI, like that first record, All This Sounds Gas, man, is he firing on all cylinders on that record.

I think so. So that is prime beef.

And I love it. Uh, his two outings on brighten the corners are both, you know, I think they're both a great jumping off point for what you need to get from, from spiral. That's just my take.

I think you're right. Uh, the idea that it can be on the same album and feel so different.

[24:25] Right. And I'm okay with that. Sort of their secret weapon in a way, right i think so i there and i'm in a lot of ways i'm not sure uh spirals influence on what mountainous does that'skind of a mystery i i believe it showed up more on probably slanted and yeah the early stuff yeah the eps off the top i think they were much more collaborative collaborative but i'm likingwhat i hear this this is a rocker this feels like it's got the.

[25:04] Almost like a classic rock feel to it of maybe tom petty in there and the heartbreakers, but um got the sing-along chorus here's the a weird thing about uh the spiral Spiral stuff.

When I would go to the shows, the crowd would cheer so much for Spiral.

It was almost like we were rooting for this underdog.

[25:40] And when spiral was playing his, uh, cuts like mountainous, what it seemed like he didn't know what he was supposed to be doing.

He would not, he wouldn't have a guitar part to it. He, he would just kind of like Panama. I'm playing guitar.

And, but I noticed how much the crowd would get behind, uh, like spirals chance to shine.

Shine so you happen to see any dates on the most recent tour in 2022 i did i saw one of the chicago okay i found that steve was much more uh on board with the spiral stuff if if for lack ofa better term if he wasn't on board in the earlier years and i don't know that i'm i'm prescribing that on him.

I shouldn't, but I sort of am.

And I just feel like they were much more cohesive, like band-wise, this time out.

I saw the same thing, and I think I read in interviews where Mountmess before had seemed kind of apprehensive to put his ball in the pavement court, per se.

He was very much on board with being a band that was reuniting and good vibes in general yeah but at the time i think what you notice about uh.

[27:07] Bright in the corners is oh he's starting to get his own voice mountainous right and it's, it has to feel um daunting to have other people in the band wanting to collaborate whenyou're you're like really finding your groove.

So with Wowie, there's, I think, maybe one spiral cut, Brighton two, but then with Terror zero, you're starting to see, Mount Missus realizing that I have something to say and I want it tobe the singular vision.

[27:53] That's just my take. I add a lot of meaning and interpretation that might not be there.

No, that's what we do with our favorite bands, right?

They add, they give us that to sort of interpret. But I feel like.

[28:09] Mount miss really was hitting his groove and maybe spiral was hitting his groove as well and they just it was a sign that they needed to take some time off hey listen i don't want tomake this comparison too apt but it's interesting to me that having watched the beatles documentary george is shut out of that song and then he immediately rips off all things must passwhich which is a double record, which just shows like how he had all these songs in the bag.

And it's like, how did John and how did John and Paul not include any of his stuff on Let It Be?

And then, you know, 40 years later or 30 years later, you have Terror Twilight, which I think is sorely lacking a spiral song.

Like, I think that there's part of that record that, that, you know, because a lot of people, it's their number five.

And I think it's their number five, because it doesn't sound like a pavement record, necessarily.

It sounds lush and rich, production-wise.

I continue to call it a beta test for Steve's first solo record.

[29:27] It's just interesting to me that it's lacking this something, and I think that something is a Spiral Gem. you might be on to something with that.

And, and I'm, I'm, I'm, while I'm glad they both had a great solo careers, um, it is, it's sort of missing something.

Yeah. So where do you think in terms of the ranking, this comes in at 38, what do you think, uh, is it properly rated?

Is it overrated? Is it underrated? Uh.

[30:02] I'm a little, I've been thinking about this. I think it might be overrated.

If you would have asked me in 1997, I would have said it should be up there in the 30s.

I don't think this has aged for me as well as it should have. I don't know.

[30:25] Nowadays, I listen to Brighton and I go, what's the song three on there?

Oh, he had to ask me that.

I'm cool and underqualified is who I am. I don't have that stuff at my fingertips. No, I've got this.

So if you listen to Transport is Arranged. Okay.

Going right into Old to Begin. Yeah. Those...

It kind of is in between transport and old to begin.

And I feel like those are like way stronger songs.

Like, and also those are songs where Malcolm is really starting to have his own voice.

And it's like very unique rock.

And I think those songs, since I heard old to begin, it's like 44 or 43.

I I think it's I think those two songs Transport and Old to Begin, are better than Date with Ikea so for some reason I'm feeling like.

[31:40] The lack of cohesion of this album, give it a shot, listen to it without Date With Ikea.

It's a different album, and it's an interesting choice by the engineers and the producers to put Date in between those two.

I think it should be ranked lower. I'm sorry, JD. No, that's okay.

That's why I asked the question.

[32:08] Hopefully uh transport somewhere in the top 50 i think that's such a a fucking rocker and it's so heavy at the end um but yeah i would put date and probably in my uh, a little bitlower would it crack the top 50 still i don't think so i if i'm going to be completely honest it's going to be in the lower 50 maybe 60s or 70s okay wow you heard it here here first folks stilllove it chicago still love it though it's one of his children but he just disparaged it uh daniel do you have anything that you would like to plug at all is there anything that you're known foron the internet or oh let me tell you i am a therapist here in chicago and i uh as you can see by my uh many plaques on the wall i'm trained to do uh psychotherapy Therapy in the westernsuburbs of Chicago.

If you know anyone that wants therapy or wants to try it out for the first time, I specialize in anxiety, depression, addiction, and men's issues.

Oh, boy. I ticked a few of those boxes.

[33:26] My greatest hits right there. Yeah. Well, it's been great talking to you, and I really appreciate you taking the time to do this. So thanks for that.

Thank you for having me on. It's my pleasure.

Wash your goddamn hands.

Track 3:

[33:43] Thanks for listening to Meeting Malcomus, a pavement podcast where we count down the top 50 pavement tracks as selected by you.

If you've got questions or concerns, please shoot me an email.

JD at meetingmalcomus.com.

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