60 Songs That Explain the '90s - Pavement—“Gold Soundz”

Episode Date: June 23, 2021

Rob explores indie-rock darling Pavement’s critically acclaimed hit “Gold Soundz” by discussing their quirky charm, enigmatic lyrics, and unique fan following. This episode was originally produced as a Music and Talk show available exclusively on Spotify. Find the full song on Spotify or wherever you get your music. Host: Rob Harvilla Guest: Chris Ryan Producers: Isaac Lee and Justin Sayles Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

I'm pretty sure the single most poignant moment of my adolescence was the time I tried and failed a toilet paper, a suburban mailbox after a rage against the machine concerts. This was 1996 Evil Empire tour. I bought the mustard yellow t-shirt with the Evil Empire album cover, the comic book kid on the front, and the words, Fear is your only God emblazoned on the back. I found that message to be profound. I wore that t-shirt the day I moved into my college freshman dorm room. later that fall. My roommate, Gene, also had that shirt. We never wore it the same time. That would have been weird. And Gene said that once he was in a grocery store or something and some old lady started sassing him about his Rage Against the Machine T-shirt. I say old lady. Let me find out she was like 35. And she was demanding to know what fear is your only God meant. And I was jealous of Gene in this moment that I didn't get to be snotty to that old lady. Rage Against the Machine had played at the University of Accraged. Crins Basketball Arena. The Jesus Lizard opened? That was disconcerting. This basketball arena was nicknamed the J.A.R. is short for James A. Rhodes Arena. It is named for Jim Rhodes. Four-Term Republican Governor of Ohio, best known as the governor who sent the National Guard into Kent State in May 1970, four dead in Ohio. The third song, Rades Against the Machine,

played that night, was called Vietnam. If frontman Zach Daleroka addressed this poignant and bitter irony during his incendiary leftist rap rock band set at the James A. Rhodes Arena, I was too dumb to notice. I did like when Zach would jump off the drum riser, right when the drums kicked in and the lights got really bright. Great show, electrifying. You might say radicalizing. And then the after party. The after party consisted of us driving around. Nothing more theoretically dangerous than a carload of radicalized over testosterone to teenagers cruising around the suburbs at 11.30 p.m. or so hunting for a machine against which to rage. No machines were available. Hence the mailbox. My attack on this mailbox was improvised.

Was the toilet paper already in the car? Was this attack premeditated? What did I know and when did I know it? This was a U.S. Postal Service street corner mailbox, one of them giant blue dudes with like the rounded top, a shape utterly uncondusive to the act of toilet papering. It was diabolical. I tried. I tried for like 30 seconds, but it felt like three hours. I like to imagine know your enemy by rage against the machine, blasting from the car radio as my buddies watched me rage feebly against this mailbox. Flacid strings of toilet paper sliding harmlessly off the diabolical rounded top of the mailbox. The struggle was real. The struggle was futile, but the struggle is noble. The struggle was necessary. What did I personally think the machine was when I was 18? What did I think raging

against this machine would actually entail? I'm better off not thinking about it now. I'm better off putting less thought into it now than I put into it then. And all I was thinking back then was, I can't get any toilet paper to stick to this fucking mailbox. I gave up. I got back into the car. We drove off to toilet paper my buddy Jerry's house. Instead, it has to start somewhere. It has to start sometime. What better place than Jerry's house? What better time than now? Except some of Jerry's neighbors were sitting out on their porches, so we couldn't do that either. End of after party. What did I want when I was 18? I wanted excitement. I wanted adventure. I wanted intellectual stimulation. I wanted to be important. I wanted to be cool. I want to know everything.

I want to be everywhere. I want to fuck everyone in the world. I want to do something that matters. Sorry, that's another band. You know what I wanted? I wanted out. Out of the suburbs, out of the malaise, out of my near total ignorance of the world around me. I wanted to go where the action was.

I wanted to be the action. I wanted love or lust. I wanted rebellion. I wanted triumph. I wanted to kick ass and take names. I wanted to be thought of as cool. I wanted to be someone who matters, all of which are American dreams,

all of which are American dreams, all of which are American dreams. My name is Rob Barvilla. This is 60 songs that explain the 90s, and this week we're talking about pavement. Yeah, we're talking about the pavement song, Gold Sounds, because now I'm the dottering old fart in the grocery store, scoffing at the provocative fashion choices of dumb-ass teenagers,

and yesterday I heard, as if for the first time, what struck me this time as the most, profound, most poignant, most lucid and incendiary rock and roll anthem about suburban on wee and escape ever recorded. No, not gold sounds, this one. Box Elder by the Stockton, California rock band Pavement, one of five tunes, tunes and scare quotes, from Pavement's fable debut EP, the self-released Slay Tracks 1939, 1966. No idea what that title's about. Slate Tracks was released on vinyl, of course, in 1989.

Did I hear the song Box Elder in 1989? Fuck no. Had I heard it yet in 1996? Nope. Thank God for college radio, right? But even then, it took me until 2021, until just now, to fully wrap my head around Box Elder

as the perfect encapsulation of my dumbass 18-year-old self, the depth of my suburban malaise, the height of my know-it-all arrogance, the unbridled joy of just knowing that I was going places. And none of the dumbasses I was raging against were going with me. In 1994, the year I turned 16, my top five favorite bands were smashing pumpkins and nine-inch nails, pearl jam, REM, and they might be giants. Weird outlier.

Rage against a machine and Stone Temple pilots probably in the top ten. Things were about to get mad awkward. And that 1994 was the year pavement released their second full-length album, Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain. on Matador Records. That's an indie label. Here we have pavement's commercial breakthrough in scare quotes modest commercial breakthrough. They got played on MTV a little bit. That qualifies in this case as a commercial breakthrough. Anyway, this is when I first heard of pavement. This is all about me, right? The first song on side two of Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain is called Gold Sounds. Yes, side two of the cassette. First song on side two, very important.

That's gold sounds with a Z on the end, not an S. They're trying to undercut the poignance of this song by adding a wacky Z to the title. Don't fall for it. Gold Sounds is a song that taught me that there were other gods besides fear. Mischief, for example. That's a god, right? And we're coming to the chorus now. I keep my address to yourself.

Stephen Malkmus is a little less lucid here, mostly, except in those moments. where he gets extra lucid, and those are the moments that get you, or at least they got me. Here in 1994, this is the moment where pavements start getting light airplay on your more adventurous mainstream alt-rock radio stations. You can find their albums in Midwestern Mall record stores amongst Pearl Jam and Smashing Pumpkins and Allison Chains and so forth. Pavement are praised to the skies by various rock critics whose own coolness and sexiness I may have slightly overestimated in retrospect. And eventually the band wind up on the fabled Lala Poulouse Tour in 1995, alongside Beck and Hole and Sonic Youth, and Shnade O'Connor, and the Jesus Lizard and the like, whereupon

pavement are infamously pelted with mud and rocks by an unruly crowd in West Virginia, pissed off that they're not as famous as Beck or as scary looking as the Jesus lizard. I imagine getting pelted with mud and rocks by unruly West Virginians hurt pavement almost as getting roasted on MTV by Beavis and Butthead. I need to try harder. Yeah, yeah, it's like they're not even trying. Come on, hey, come on. I want you to start over again, and this time try.

In summary, here is the moment where pavement, a clamorous and obscurest and defiantly slapdash, underground rock sensation goes overground and attracts the attention and the ire and the fascination and sometimes even the adoration of millions of uncultured, nirvana fattened, mainstream alternative rock-loving clods. I would like to speak to you today as one of those clods. The less cool, scare quotes, you were when you first heard pavement, the harder they hit you. Now, let's just say I would find myself worshipping Stephen Malkness, but I already worshipped

rage against the machine and Allison Chains. And for that matter, Beavis and Butthead. This is just horrible. If you're going to be horrible at least like, you know, kick-aff, you know, like, like Jesus lizard. I mean, they fuck, but they kick-ass. If you're going to be horrible, at least kick-ass. Put that on a T-shirt. Many fine options available to you if you seek an already cool person's memories of pavements rise from the West Coast noise rock underground, the punk rock of it all, the post-punk of it all.

Stephen Maltmus met fellow singer-gathearts Scott Canberg, soon known professionally as spiral stairs in the early 80s in Stockton, a town they both wanted to get the fuck out of. Stockton, the Akron of California. Is that anything? I don't know. Their first band together, Bag O' Bones, was a new order, Echo and the Bunnyman sort of deal,

a poppy sort of new wave deal, but that flamed out, and soon they were enraptured by thornier stuff. More intimidating English bands, mostly the falls swell maps wire plus slightly more tuneful and less intimidating new zealand bands like the chills and the cleans and the verlains the verlains have got a song called death and the maiden from 1987 that soon will help fuel the pavement jam box elder both melodically and attitudeally so stephen and scott start pavement hook up with an older and cooler and way more volatile drummer

slash producer named Gary Young and put out a few EPs, and Stephen learns that lucidity is a rare and precious songwriting element to be mined judiciously and employed sparingly. On pavement's second EP, 1990s, Demolition Plot J7, the band's first release for beloved indie label Drag City, he served up a tuneful little jam called Perfect Depth. Big guided by voices energy here, speaking of Ohio, or at least the version of guided by voices is not remotely interested yet in appealing to mainstream alternative rock clods. Everybody sing along. A fundamental issue with pavement, a question that will largely determine how you feel about pavement.

Would you describe this song as sabotaged? Is perfect depth a clean and perfect and sincere and lucid pop hit that Stephen has deliberately chosen to obscure in distortion and tapis and tentative mumbling, or are the distortion in tapis and tentative mumbling the whole point of the song? And if it sounds like pop music to you, that's your business and your problem. Are pavement potential rock stars who can't get out of their own way, or are all those sexy rock critics who insist pavement ought to be rock stars the ones in the way? Which part is the signal and which part is the noise?

And as the tunes get catchier, is that signal getting stronger or weaker? In 1991, pavement put out their 30p, perfect sound forever. and Lucid is pushing it. But it's fun to imagine an arena full of buoyantly confused Pearl Jam fans screaming along to debris slide. In 1992, Payment put out their debut full-length album, Slanted and Enchanted on Matador Records.

And here is where the signal forms a more perfect union with the noise. To sexy rock critics, slanted and enchanted, might as well be thriller or the dark side of the moon. Pitchfork's perfect 10 review of the slanted and enchanted reissue was so intimate and rapturous, the guy wrote it out longhand. Triumphant lethargy is your only God, and your God is bestowed unto you two stone tablets, was slanted etched into one and enchanted etched into the other.

Stephen Maltmus is a handsome fellow, a droll and erudite and confrontationally aloof sort. He's really good at scrabble. He's really good at fantasy basketball. He has the slouch to conquer morose, well-read, sex-gumby vibe and physical. of an English rock star, an Olympian shoegazer. One time in a Q&A, Rolling Stone asked him, this isn't even a question. Rolling Stone said,

People say you're arrogant and mean. Stephen very politely responded, it's not true. It's part of the act. The way he did also say, I'm a pretty icy performer. I'm nice at the bottom of my heart, but I like the tough love,

bitchy performer thing. Is the Stephen Maltmus vibe on slanted and enchanted bitchy? Is it tough love? Is it tough? Is it love? Is it lucid? Is it sabotage? Dig Stephen Mottman is howling. I've been crowned the king of id on a song called In the Mouth a Desert. The little drum hiccup there, very important.

Enjoy Gary Young on drums. You won't be around much longer. Dig Stephen Malkmus singing, I was dressed for success, but success it never comes on a way more serene song called Here. Because pavement is nominally somewhat. What of a democracy? Dig Scott's spiral stairs, Canberg, chanting, 40 million daggers on a song called Two States, which is about the Civil War, maybe.

Scott is even less interested in lucidity than Stephen is. But yeah, primarily Dick Stephen Malkma is singing a tender and radiant and bizarrely anthemic song called Summer Babe, not the original single version, the album version, the winter version, on the opening lines of Summer Babe, and the opening lines of slanted and enchanted as a whole, Stephen finds a sort of emotional clarity in the surreal. Everybody sing along, and I'm not even joking this time.

But she waits there in the levee wash, mix in cocktails with a plastic-tipped cigar that is worthy of pension or Bukowski or Hemingway or Nabokhov or Joyce or Proust. Summer Babe is, okay, not the eighth, but the 28th or 29th wonder of the world. It gathers momentum in an uncanny sort of collective euphoria as it goes. By the time this song peaks, you have no idea what original sentiment Stephen is even attempting to sabotage here. But regardless, you've already constructed your entire personal identity just around the way he delivers the word off.

Does he crack up because the song means that much to him? Or because he thinks it's hilarious that this song doesn't mean anything to him. And yet he knows thousands of people will construct their entire personal identities around it, which option would you prefer? Another thing I'm just now realizing in 2021 is that maybe he's not saying don't go there at the end. I don't know what he's saying. It doesn't matter. Summer Babe is the 29th wonder of the world regardless.

So it's the early to mid-90s. And mumbly and standoffish and vaguely euphoric dudes with guitars are abundant and high value. Let's put that another way. Here's the way Stephen Malkmus put it. Music seems crazy. It's shan. Just the other day. That is Cut Your Hair, the first single, the first of theoretically several singles from Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain,

because why not give pavement a shot on MTV and Alt Rock Radio? And Jay Leno's Tonight Show with fellow guests, Drew Barrymore and Harry Shearer, could pavement be the next Nirvana? Absolutely not. But Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain, released on Valentine's Day, 1994, got the proverbial. big push anyways, and thus did cut your hair, invade the living rooms and detachable car stereos of alternative rock-loving knuckleheads nationwide. Cut your hair, by the way, starts like this. And everyone I knew in high school was out, hard pass on pavement based on those seven seconds. That's a disgusted no from everyone I hung out with in high school. That goes

especially for the dudes I spent weekends with, driving around, listening to nine-inch nails, and Marilyn Manson and Toole and Lords of Acid and when there were ladies present, Candlebox. Those guys hated pavement. They would clown me for liking pavement. Do do, do, do, do, do do do do do do do. I was on my own with pavement. I had to be my own man.

I had to forge my own identity. I had to have the courage of my own convictions, which is why I asked my buddy Scott to shoplift Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain, on cassette from our neighborhood super Kmart. I feel terrible about this. I confess. I atone. My sole shoplifting experience.

I assume this was improvised. I was just hanging out one day with Scott at the Super K. And poof, a devil wearing a flannel shirt appeared on my shoulder. What's a super Kmart? It's like regular Kmart, but larger. Music section's back into the right, right, when you walk in. Many in afternoon, I whiled away in that music section, perusing, say, the back cover of Nirvana's in utero,

the censored big box store version where the. song, Rape Me, was retitled Waf Me, and the back cover featured fewer, if any, fetuses. My buddy Scott was a good dude and even better, a bit of a ruffian. I'd cut your hair in my head. I did not have $12 or so to buy Crooked Rain, Cricket Rain on cassette. I had poor decision-making abilities. I asked Scott to boost it for me, and he did, with a giant foot-long plastic holder still on the cassette and everything. Presumably that plastic holder was to deter theft. I apologize to Scott, into Pavement, into Madador Records,

into my mother, into Super Kmart, and to you in that order. But now I had Cricket Rain, Cricket Rain, and I fell in love. And I bumped R.E.M. for my top five favorite bands, and I just bought in, which is remarkable, given pavements visible ambivalence about

dorks like me buying in. Pavement did indeed play, cut your hair on Jay Leno's Tonight Show. And for the occasion, made the song's intro sound even worse. It goes on, Those lovable scamps. Kids, there was a time in recent history when slouchy dudes with guitars were enjoying so much commercial success that they felt compelled to extravagantly handicap themselves. Crazy.

Pavin at this point is a quintet and the quintet that would endure going forward. Stephen on lead vocals, guitar, Scott on guitar and occasional lead vocals, Mark Ibold on bass, Steve West now on drums, and Robert Nastavich on percussion and screamier live vocals and various. general antics. A newcomer to the live pavement experience typically finds Bob supremely irritating for the first five minutes and then thereafter indispensable until the end of time. It's Bob's job, for example, to play the cowbell during Crooked Rain opening track Silence Kid. This cowbell trying very hard to sound self-deprecating and ironic, but no, kids, this was exhilarating, classic rock in real time that was unashamed of itself, even if you were trying hard to act ashamed of it.

It's Bob's job during pavement concerts to scream the chorus to the rowdiest crooked rain song, which is called Unfair, in which Stephen screams, as best he can, on record. There's some dispute on the internet as to whether that line is swinging nunchucks like you just don't care or swinging nachos like you just don't care. Choose your own adventure. At least back in 94 was Bob's job to put. play a little drum kit during Crooked Rain Closer, Fillmore Jive, another exhilarating classic rock and real-time jam, quoted by hundreds of thousands of sexy rock critics the world over.

At the time, we assumed Stephen was joking. So the thing about pavement and my dumb conspiracy to commit theft 16-year-old ass is that as a newly minted pavement superfan, I now experience pavements chronology in reverse. I play Crooked Rain, Cricket Rain on cassette so much that the cassette warps. I buy, with my own money, thank you, their previous album, Slanted and Enchanted on CD, and I love Slanted and Enchanted very much. Summer Babe and also the song called Fame Throa, especially. Though, of course, with apologies to don't steal, there is no moral law, more sacrosanct, than your favorite album from a band is always the first album you heard, and also Crooked Rain is more cowbell. So that settles that. I consider at this point going back farther. I have a vivid memory of

standing in a camelot music at the mall, holding a CD copy of Westing by Musket and Sexton from 1993, a compilation, CD compilation of all the early pavement EPs and loose tracks. I was trying to decide if it was worth, you know, 20 bucks. I'd somehow heard that the song Box Elder was pretty good. There's another song called Spizzle Trunk and a song called Angel Carver Blues, Mellow Jazz, Dosant, in a song called Mercy Snack, Colan the Laundromat. I couldn't work out whether these were pros or cons as song titles in terms of buying this record. And meanwhile, a bro-y football player guy next to me at Camelow Records turns to his friend and says, dude, this record is so hard.

You've got to get this. And I look over and the football bro is holding a copy of the first Rage Against the Machine album. No argument for me. I did not drop 20 bucks on Westing by Musket and Sexton in this moment. I did not hear Box Elder for several years hence. I apologize to pavement for that as well. But even in this moment, and even with my rage against the machine, mailbox toilet paper assault still gleaming on the horizon,

I have already settled on pavement as the band that will define my personality for the next five to ten years. And the reason for that is gold sounds. Gold sounds with a Z. The first song on Side 2 of Crooked Rain, Cricket Rain. I told you this was important. This is the one tragedy about cassettes, no longer being a dominant or even especially prevalent means of listening to music, mixtapes for prospective lovers, especially.

It is a tragedy that we've lost the concept of the first song on Side 2, vitally important spot. Justify my decision to turn this tape over and keep listening. I told you I played Cricket Rain so much that I warped the physical tape. And so first of all, to this day, I prefer to hear gold sounds as it still. sounds on the cassette tape I still have with a ghost Stephen Malkmus singing a ghostly pre-echo of the words go back before the song actually starts. Gold sounds and keep my affect to yourself.

Gold sounds just feels like a love song in an elemental way from the first time you hear it, even if you can't explain the meaning of any individual line in this song. And even if pavement have already trained you to put scare quotes around any sincere, lyrical, or emotional sentiment, you might even pretend to discern in this or any other pavement song. This song sounds to me like a guy deciding in real time to make a love-lorn mixtape for a girl and further deciding to put this song, Gold Sounds, the song he is currently singing in that prime spot as the first song on Side 2. like is it a crisis or boring change the line is it a crisis or a boring change has a very pleasing decades-long time bomb aspect to it does it not you know where you blow right by at the first 400,000 times you play the tape and then one morning you wake up and you're let's be charitable and say 30-something and it occurs to you how many of the crises you struggled with as a teenager were in fact boring

changes. Is this a sobering, devastating realization that even the most magical and traumatic and singular and consequential moments of your adolescence were mundane and lame and boilerplate? Or do you just play the song again? Even though you've already heard it 400,000 times, you hear it in a new way now and you process the scare quotes magic in a new way. And you cling even tighter to the equally vivid memory of that time you and your future college roommate Gene were in sleeping bags on the third floor balcony of a hotel in Myrtle Beach. And maybe that's not the most exotic vacation destination, but the mild roar of the waves nicely intensified the emo mixtape vibe of gold sounds itself. And when the guitar solo hit, the most vulnerable and melancholy and

unabashedly sincere moment on the whole record, it hit you with the force of the ocean itself. I hope you have a song like this on a degrading piece of physical media like this with a guitar solo. a guitar solo like this. Plus one more line that hits you like a tidal wave every time, from the first time to the 400,000th time. Because even if you can only half explain it, you can certainly feel all of it. No, you certainly can't.

By 1996, the year I turned 18, my top five favorite bands in ascending order where they might be giants, pearl jam, nine-inch nails, pavement, and smashing pumpkins. Yes. Yes. Yes. Also, on Crooked Rain, Cricket Rain, there is a disarmingly lovely country song called Rangelife, during which this transpires. How long to kids, they don't have no function. I don't understand what they mean.

This was a whole thing. Sexy rock critics loved it. I did a Smashing Pumpkins episode of this show already and got into it, but only a little bit, because this blood feud on Smashing Pumpkin's front man, Billy Corgan side anyway, this still active blood feud between my number two and number one favorite bands. It struck me even as a crisis-laden teenager as neither a crisis or a boring change. I found it mildly amusing. I thought it was a dickish thing for Stephen Montmes to say, and I think it's a dickish thing for Billy Corrigan to still be grousing about. Pavement put out three more albums after Crooked Rain, then broke up, then reformed in 2010 for a blockbuster reunion,

during which they played the crowds much larger and more boisterous than the crowds. in their heyday. And Billy Corgan groused about that as well, but maybe let's consider quarantining part of the past. As for me these days, my rage has dwindled as the machines have multiplied. It's the damnedest thing. It is enough for me, usually. To revel in the non-scare quotes euphoria, gold sounds has always made me feel and still makes me feel. It is enough for me these days to treat getting older like the crisis that is actually a boring change. And so I self-deprecatingly rage against the dying of the light instead, because that is an American dream too. Our guest today, we are honored to be joined by Chris Ryan, international podcasting superstar, co-host of the

Watch and Music Exists, The Ringers Box Elder, the original Summer Babe. It's Chris Ryan. Wow. Thank you for being here, Chris. Rob, thank you so much for having me. And thank you to all my Azerbaijani fans who make me an international podcaster. It's kind of like how Peter Falk is really popular in Romania. That's that. I just saw that clip. Yes, that's exactly how I think of you is Peter Falk. I can't even walk down the street in Baku. Well, this is going to really push it over the top here. Chris, tell me about the first time that you heard pavement and how cool you were prior to hearing pavement and how cool you became in those first few moments after first hearing pavement. So I was trying to figure this out. I wasn't uncool in high school. My high school experience

was pretty like it was a small high school. I had been in the grade that I was in. We went K through 12. So I had been in like the same class of the same group of people for a really long time for the most part. And it was probably like 45 kids in my class. So there wasn't like a lot of ostracism going on in my school, although I'm sure some people might take me up on that. So pavement didn't really, it wasn't like a benediction where I all of a sudden just became, like started reading John Ashbery poems, like the second I heard pavement. But it wasn't that really, really amazing time in your life if you get a chance to get into underground music and it makes like an impact on you where everything becomes like a secret door or a secret bookcase in a clue game. And it's like you start with one thing and then you open the door and you find out that there's five other things. and those five other things leads you through another door.

And so I just remember falling. I remember falling in love with the band, and I remember falling through this ecosystem of bands and zines and magazines and critics and thinkers, but also just characters and obviously history, because you're trying to piece together, like, how did this band come about? Why do they sound the way they do?

What were they listening to? But it wasn't like, I will Google recommend it if you like. You basically had to piece it together yourself. So that's a long way of saying, I think I heard pavement for the first time by skipping past Unseen Power of the Pickett Fence on the No Alternative compilation. Because I just wanted to listen to Matthew Sweet and Buffalo, Tom, because those were more like... It's a great song. Super, super deformed. That's a great Matthew Sweet song. Yeah. That's a great song, Unseen Power on the No Alternative Soundtrap. But it's a little scabrous. It's a tough task for your first pavement experience. Here's my book report on the discography of R.EM. Right. But realistically, the first time my engagement with pavement as pavement was probably to cut your hair video, if I'm being honest.

You know what I mean? And the thing that was kind of cool back then, and obviously not a very efficient use of time, but you could be experiencing bands on multiple timelines. I know that my introduction to the band as understanding how important they were and were going to beat in myself was in the lead up to and release of Waui Zowie. So I was like spring of 95, senior year of high school, and I was like, I know that this is important. The magazines that I'm reading are telling me that this record is going to be a really important thing for me. But at the same time, I was only then just really starting to unlock and get crooked rain. And at the same time, was aware of the fact that there was a contingent of people out there who thought the band was already bad. Right.

Slanted was the peak. And they were on their downturn already. Stephen Mottmanus once said that he thought they sold out with slanted. He thought it actually ended before with the EPs. That was my question. I came in through Cut Your Hair as well. And I had the sense immediately that like this is a completely different band if you were there at the beginning. If you were there for Box Elder in 1989, right?

Like it's already over for you in a sense by the time they make it to MTV and you're looking askance at all these people who discovered pavement through MTV. I was wondering if you also sensed that divide and pavement fandom between people who were there at the beginning. Isn't that the quintessential experience of music at that time? Like if you were getting into alternative or indie rock or underground music at all, the sensation of arriving at the party and everybody being like, this party sucks was just basically what happened. It happened with Green Day. Nirvana. Nirvana, it happened with, I mean, hell, it happened with like Velocity Girl.

you would just be like, this song's great. And they were like, they sold out, they sold this song to Volkswagen. I'll never like Velocity Girl again. It's like, Velocity Girl had like 11 fans. How many of these people could really feel betrayed by them? But yeah, I did get the sense that pavement was in that moment before explosion and that everybody knew it was sort of bound to happen for them in some capacity. And obviously, I think in retrospect, it kind of never did.

Like they never really broke wide the way and became like the next generation R. am that then just kind of had like a 20 year fertile period. But yeah, like I remember very distinctly being at a party and a guy was like, what do you like? And I was like, oh, I'm really in a pavement thinking that I had like just dunked on him. And he was like, I like their early stuff. I only now. He did not.

He did not say that to you. I like their early stuff because it sounds like the fall. And I exclusively listen to the fall. He said that he was just going to listen to the fall for the rest of his life. this wasn't Andy was it it doesn't like the fall doesn't sound like Andy but I just want to make sure do you think that person followed through

do you think that person is listening to the fall right now if he has you definitely need to do a six part narrative podcast about him because that guy definitely is like basically in the Truman show because I don't want to talk to that guy I'm sorry you had to talk to that guy at all I love the fall but sheesh man okay so what doors does pavement open for you

You fall into this universe. What are the next things, next bands that you get really into as a result? Well, I mean, shows were great back then. And that was also like the way that you would find out about other bands often, even though very quickly in my life going to see opening bands became like a chore rather than a privilege. I think that when I was first going to concerts and I would go see pavement and there would be like four or five bands on the bill, I'd be like, bonus. Like I get to see the strapping field hands now.

Oh, God. That's a young person's game. Yeah, right. And so I remember finding out about a lot of bands through pavement and also through Matador, which I guess is worth mentioning as, that was essentially like you got the call up, maybe not to the big leagues, but to a really good AAA team. And those labels at that time kind of bestowed like a degree to what you were like, well, it's on Matador, so I'll check it out. You know what I mean?

Of course. You had a limited capital to spend on records. And so, like, you had to start somewhere. and I liked record reviews, and I liked buying things that were on the labels that have stuff that I already liked. So there was, to some extent, pavement was the gateway drug to, like, Yolotango

and got it by voices and other bands that were on Matador. And then if you could decipher their often contentious relationship with the music press, pavement was pretty good about mentioning lots of other bands. So even though I did not understand swell maps, I tried. Right. Everybody tries with swell maps. That's an era we all have to go through. But yeah, it's exactly right.

Same with Drag City. You know, same with touch and go. Same with subpop. You know, Matador is just a monolith to me in that time. You know, Cat Power, of course. It was just, these were the coolest people on the planet, you know, pavement on Madador. Yeah, I still remember the address.

I still remember 6-7-6 Broadway because it was just at the bottom of every, I mean, I remember it also from like living in New York and that's where Madador was. But I just remember seeing at the bottom of all. the ads for the records, like in the back of magazines, it would just be like, here's Baddador's Fall release schedule, and it's just 6706 Broadway. And those things just get singed into your memory. The other thing with pavement, though, and I guess this kind of gets into like, you know, what are their songs about and what were they talking about? But that was in and of itself, part of the project of listening to them was deciding which parts of Payton's songs spoke to you

and what those things meant, because I would argue that they're the most popular. band that no one can agree on what the hell they're talking about. I'm with you. I can't think of a rebuttal to that at all. So I'm with you. If you're at a pavement concert and you're sort of like pretending not to sing along because that's not like pavement behavior, but like if you're like, I'm excited that they're playing Elevate Me Later, I bet five people in a row would probably sell you, oh, elevate me later's about this. Elevate me later is about this. And what they're really saying is this is what I felt when I first heard or the 100th time I heard this song.

and there's some weird magnet poetry slash fragmented notebook scribbling that somehow applies only to me. Okay, yeah. Do you think that most pavement songs are about something very specific and Stephen Malkmus will just never tell anyone what that is?

Or do you think that most pavement songs are meaningless and he thinks it's really funny that everyone thinks they're about something? Probably both. They're probably both at the same time. I have such a deeply emotional connection to the lyrics of, pavement and yet have been told over and over again by Malcolmus in interviews that I've read or

I've interviewed him twice mostly about basketball. So I've never really been like, by the way, silent kid to like change my life. But if you look and if he ever gets asked about like, what is this song about like, their songs are about like tennis and the Civil War. You know what I mean? Like they're never about the fact that your girlfriend used to put her foot up on the dashboard of your first car. You know what I mean? Like that, which is the thing

that gets burned into your brain. Smudging your windshield. Right. Exactly. It's that he's writing about like water laws in northern California.

And yet somehow it means everything to you. And it's about how like you're like going to leave like your high school behind in flames or something. Like those, the fact that they're so inscrutable, the act of deciphering them bestows meeting onto them, I think.

Absolutely. So did gold sounds, specifically leap out to you immediately as the song. Yeah. I mean, the two big ones on Crooked Rain that I think people like hang a lot of stuff on are cut your hair because it was like the sellout single that was also like very self-consciously a sellout single and was about selling out. Pretty much. And then range life because it was pre-aggregator clickbeat as a song. Well said. That's exactly it. That's exactly it. It's a blog post about itself. I love.

it. Yeah, and it was very savvy. Like, they knew they were probably, like, they can say, like, oh, we just threw these lines in about Stone Temple Pilots and smashing pumpkins because we couldn't think of anything else to say. But of course, they're going to get asked about that for the next five years. But gold sounds... 25, yeah.

Yeah. Gold Sounds is the one that threads the needle because it is, it is like the perfect pop song that only you understand, I guess. You know, and it's like, there's something very universal and sort of not plain, but very like approachable and kind of

accessible about something like Taylor Swift's out of the woods, you know, which is a specific song is still very clear in its meaning. Right. Gold sounds, it's only clear in its feeling, I think. It's about an aching kind of

nostalgia, but everybody, I bet, has like a different interpretation of what it's about. Right, right. You can never quarantine the past. Right. So you mentioned to me, so drunk in the August Sun, and you're the kind of girl I like because you're empty and I'm empty. Did that jump out at you because you yourself were drunk and empty in the August sun standing next to an empty girl?

Like how specific to your experience? Or I wanted to be. You know what I mean? More aspirational. So like I think I got my driver's license pretty quickly in school. And like when we started like hanging out and going out in Philadelphia, like we would drive to like South Jersey and like go to the. mini golf place.

Then when people started partying, like I was like kind of into it at first, but I would be like three sips of a 22 of Heineken and then just be like, I'm good, man. That'll do. I don't know how much drunken August sun there was in 94 or five, but... Just the right amount. Right. Yeah. If you are in a relationship, even like a nascent one, you're the kind of girl I like because

you're empty and I'm empty. It's different. Absolutely. And it's not a shot. at whoever I was dating at that time, it was like, you're always going to kind of have that sort of like, this is incredibly important and totally meaningless feeling

when you're at that age. Absolutely. Did you ever put that song on a mixtape for a girl? I'm sure I'm guilty of doing that. Yeah. I mean, although I very quickly turned into a total asshole who was like,

I'm going to put Texas Never Whispers on the mixtape. Oh boy. That's a rookie mistake right there. I know. You're overreaching. Here, Why don't you date me? Here's 30 seconds of white noise squall.

Yikes. Yeah. Okay. So you saw a pavement live early on in like real time. I went back and did the forensic investigation here. I saw them in October of 94, I think it was, with GBV opening. And I went back and reread like a guide up by voices database, like the live show database. And it looks like Kim Deal came out.

and sang with guided boy voices at one point. Holy moly. David Kilgore was the first act. So that is the show that I think I first saw pavement. Were they good? I don't remember. I was so overwhelmed to be out of the house. I was like, I can't believe I'm at the Trocadero.

This is so, this is all happening. That's, yeah. I wonder if my car is going to get stolen. What is my dad going to do if my car gets stolen? Absolutely. A lot on your mind. It was like, you had to use the, remember the steering wheel lock? Oh, that was in gene.

There's a lot of like, make sure you do that if you're going to the show. The claw, yeah. Yeah. So, like, I have very vague memories of that. And then I think the first time, like the best show I ever saw them play was when I was, I was living in Boston and worked at. And my buddies, who I lived with also worked at the Middle East, which was a nightclub in Boston. And Pavement played a tune-up show. The week they released Bright in the Corners, they played a tune-up show for like 800 people at the Middle East, which was,

very small for them at the time. And that was, man, I'm standing in front of the monolith right now. They were on stereo. Stereo is a fantastic song. Yeah, and they played Shady Lane, and they played like, they just really like seemed happy to be playing to that small of a club. And that, that was incredible. Did you see the reunion tour, anything from 2010 on?

You know, I don't think I did go to that. I remember every other man I knew in my life went to Central Park. I am shocked. For some reason, I don't think I, did you go to that? I went Williamsburg Waterfront. Okay. I forget, I know it was a chaotic thing where they kept announcing shows and everyone had a lot of anxiety about it.

Like, I remember that moment. I was at the Village Voice and I remember very specifically, the pavement reunion freak out. But I saw them at the Williamsburg Waterfront. They opened with Cut Your Hair. You know, it was this euphoric moment. And it, I had seen them on the Wowie Zowie tour in Cleveland. And it felt to me like a different band, like just a fundamentally different band, playing for a bigger and totally different audience.

Like reunion pavement and real-time pavement were just two different projects. I think it was also like really weird because that happened in 2010 and they were, their sort of prime was 92 to whatever Brighton was. That was like 98, 99 or whatever. 97.98.

That was like the first one where I was like, oh, so this thing from my childhood has ended, or youth has ended, and now come back. It was different. Did you go see Mission of Burma at Irving Plaza when they reunited? I did.

And Mission of Burma is one of those bands where I love the reunion albums more than the original albums. And live, when they played live, I could not feel my face. They were so cool. It was fantastic. Yeah.

And so that was like, Mission of Burma was just like a privilege. I was too young to have ever seen them. They were too small of a band. Like I would never have seen them when I was a kid anyway. I would have been seven. You know,

so probably my mom would not let me go. to a mission of Burma show, but when I saw them at Irving, I was like, I'm so lucky to be alive right now. When pavement reunited, I was like, am I old?

Like, did this happen overnight? Like, are we reuniting bands from the mid-90s now? Yeah, the pixies sort of touched that off, right? Like, the pixies in like 2003,

2004, that was the first, like, let's reunite for Coachella and make like a billion dollars sort of deals. And I feel like the pavement reunion

is where that peaked. You know, And that was the biggest jump in stature that I felt between what it was like at the time in the mid-90s for pavement and what it was like in 2010. They were welcome back like they were Aerosmith. Yes. And it was wonderful. But it was bizarre to me. It was like everybody thought that this was their individual band.

But it was like everybody at the same time. You know, we all got together on the Williamsburg waterfront at the exact same time to celebrate, you know, our individuality. Isn't that so pavement, though, to feel shame? to feel shame about loving something and getting to see it again. That is a purely pavement phenomenon. I don't think I would feel that way about like, I remember,

you remember when Cheap Trick would do kind of like, not even, I don't think Cheap Trick ever actually broke up, but like Cheap Trick would come to town and play three nights and they would do the first album and in color and you would get to go see that. And I remember going to see them

and just being like, that's just fucking amazing stuff right there. Like those guys, I just saw Cheap Trick play play. surrender. I have no compunction about doing so. I lost my mind when they played it. And yet with pavement, I almost felt like I was somehow going against what it meant to like that band to go see them play a reunion show. I don't know. It was bizarre. Do you wear your pavement fandom with pride? Are they like a essential band for you? Yes, they are. And I felt guilty for only getting

into them through cut your hair. I felt like an imposter at the time. But like among my friends in high school, Nobody else liked them. Nobody else wanted anything to do with them. You know, a few people in college, but they seemed smaller to me. Other than reading Spin, reading Rolling Stone, reading the same magazines you were reading, I thought they were much smaller than they actually were just based on my circle of friends, which I think is why the reunion shocked me to the extent that it did. And so I felt bad that I got into them late, but I still felt cool relative to everyone around me.

Right. how much is there potency for you tied up in the secrecy of it? The idea that it's like your thing. It was mine.

It was singularly mine in high school at least. And I mean, I'm sure there were other people at my high school that I just wasn't cool

enough to talk to at the time. But it did feel illicit in that way because I wasn't talking with anybody else about like what I was reading

and spin or rolling stone. I definitely felt out on an island. We should have hung out more in high school. This is what I've concluded from this conversation. Yeah, I don't know.

It's like I remember even when I got to school in Boston, because I was in college for a year in Philly and then I moved up to Boston. And I started out when I was in Boston, I was going to school at night. So I didn't really like make any friends. So like by the time like I was in regular Emerson College, I remember the first time I saw it like I saw a guy wearing a pavement shirt. And I like kind of like walked up to him and I was like,

we're friends now. You know what I mean? It was a really. pathetic kind of mating call for people if they were wearing a band t-shirt. For men of a certain age. Yeah. Yeah. Very few bands have meant as much to me as they did.

And probably very few bands have been as formative for me in terms of like how I think about the world and also how like all these disparate things, whether, you know, because when you look at the cover for Crooked Rain and it kind of looks like a fucked up Rauschenberg and there's like horse racing in jokes on it. and like all the names of the band members are like aliases. And that is how I thought you should interact with culture, that you should like shield yourself from actually making it as accessible as possible. But or maybe not even that, but it's just like,

you'd be loath to do the things necessary to sell yourself. And that has become, that might be like, in terms of like, just the way that I interact with the world, I think that is something it's really hard to explain to people who are younger. and I don't mean this is an insult. It's just difficult to explain, like, everybody shares everything now. Like, that's the whole point is, like, you're just like, I'm sharing how I'm feeling, but I'm also sharing the work that I'm doing, and I'm sharing what I want to be doing,

and I'm all this stuff. And, like, that was the exact opposite of what I was like when I was a kid, or when I was, like, 17 or 18 or 19. It was like the whole point was to find the thing that the fewest amount of people understood or liked. And then that bond that you have with those people over that, thing was unbreakable. Selling out does not exist as a concept in 2021. It's very strange.

Who is your favorite non-Steven-Malkmus member of Pavement? So I always liked Mark Eibald, just because he and Bob obviously had the most fun being in pavement. Right. But I just think Mark had a solid instrument that he played. So I always really enjoyed his presence on stage. And he was like in a... around Kim's when I worked there in New York City on St. Marks and like I think he worked at Great Jones or he was always at. I know that and I don't know why I know that

but he worked at the great Jones. Would you go there after the voice like days? Would you hang out there? That's why. There we go. Because you were probably at the voice right when I was at Kim so like we were in that neighborhood a lot because you guys used to go to Scratcher all the time right? Scratcher was the one yes.

And so I just like and that was another guy who was like playing bass and pavement but was also in a bunch of New York noise rock bands in and around that, like Dust Devils or something. And that was just like you would sort of find out that like, oh, these two guys are in silver Jews and Mark Eibold's in this weird band. And like that was just like a way you would sort of like almost follow a guy.

The way you would sort of track a player who got drafted out of college and then goes to this NBA team, you would sort of do that with like these Indian organizations. Yeah, Mark's always been, he's just so cheerful and loyal. You know, he's like a golden retriever who asked a genie to turn him into a bass player. and like, foof, there he is. You know, I just love looking at him, and he's just so happy.

He has so much fun being in pavement, which you could not always say of Stephen. Like, I love carrot rope as, like, the final pavement song, right? Like, the last song on Terror Twilight, like the swan song for it all. And it's like the goofiest song imaginable, and Mark sings it the goofiest possible way.

And it's the perfect end to them on record and to that era, to the real-time era of pay. Was Crooked Rain something that you loved in its entirety when you heard it immediately? Or was it something that you had to get into song by song or chunk by chunk? I feel like the whole thing sort of landed for me at once. You know, I was, I had the tape and I just turning on silence kid, you know, like just the first 10 seconds, like the throat clearing sort of noise to it. Like I had such a massive dopamine hit just from that, you know, I feel like it did come to me complete.

And I think that as a piece of physical media, that cassette is very important to me. And as a result of it being a cassette, maybe I was more apt to sort of take it in full, obviously. Sure. Like, I couldn't jump around. So like, gold sounds as the first song on side two is like enormously important to me.

Oh my God. That's the way I always think about it now. And so yeah, I think I had the whole thing. I think I only had it on CD, so I don't think about it as sides, but you're right. Like if you start a side with gold sounds. And did gold sounds always kind of like stand out for you on it?

Yes, yes. As you said, like, as you said, like, it's just you, the feeling, you didn't know anything about what it meant, but the feeling was so clear to me, you know, even as like a dumbass, whatever, 16, 17-year-old kid. It's like, oh, these people actually are capable of, like, normal emotions. Do you think that he's, it's a character study for him, or do you think that's about him? Do you even care? I don't.

I try not to care, but of course I care. And I do like to imagine that that's, like, that's, like, that's, like, you know, I'm a lot. like a rare, honest, vulnerable, unguarded moment. You know, you can never quarantine the past is like a hard thing to say like in a totally arch way. Something about the feel of it. Like if I want Shazam for emotions, right? And I just want to like, I just want to hold my phone up to this song and have my phone

tell me what his feeling was. But it just, it feels so distinct from the rest of the record in terms of the distance that he's willing to put between him and the song. There doesn't seem to be any distance on gold sounds. It just sounds so romantic, which is not a word I would describe, like, any other pavement song I can think of. It also has underrated, and I don't even know if you would call it a solo. Maybe it's just the bridge.

No, that's perfect. That's a crucial part of the song. But there's like, I was listening to it today on pretty good headphones, and I was like, are there 35 guitar tracks on this? Like, it's sounds, because you can hear different lines. coming from like the entire spectrum, this entire Sarah spectrum. And I wouldn't necessarily be like, oh, those guys were shredders. Like those guys really had great guitar solos.

He's obviously an amazingly gifted guitarist and really like leaned into that with his solo stuff. But you're at that moment when the guitars kick in for the solo and you kind of are like, what is this song mean to me? What is this song about? And then the guitars actually like just erase the chalkboard because you're just like, it doesn't matter, the song means what these guitars are doing, which is like when you get that with a song, a rock song, it is one of those things where you're like,

I'm levitating. You can't articulate what this feels like. It's their smashing pumpkins moment. That's what it is. I'm sure they would love that. Well, Chris, you and I are going to be best friends now. I think that's the way to do it. Thank you so much for being here.

This has been wonderful. I'm glad we finally got you on here. Thank you so much. Thanks so much to our guest this week, Chris Ryan. Thanks as always to our producers, Isaac Lee and Justin Sales. And thanks to you for listening. And now, without further ado, here's pavement with gold sounds. We'll see you next week.