PAVEMENT

PAVEMENT AT THE ROUNDHOUSE, CAMDEN – 23/10/22

When I was thirteen I gave my brother a list of records that he could buy me for Christmas. Top of the list, and the one he bought, was Watery Domestic by Pavement. That pretty much changed my life. I had no idea what Stephen Malkmus was going on about, but I knew that it made me feel cool as fuck. Liking Pavement confirmed me, in my mind, as an outsider and a pretty radical dude. No one I knew liked Pavement or had even heard of them. If you played them to your dad, he wouldn’t like it. They would never go mainstream, or sell out. They were a young person’s secret. Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain soon followed, and is still, pretty much, if I had to choose, my favourite album. Cut Your Hair was the first CD I ever bought, back when CDs were like something incredible from outer space. The other bands I liked at the time (Oasis, Blur, Manic Street Preachers) pretty much make me feel sick when I listen to them now, but I’ve never stopped listening to Pavement. I still have no idea what Stephen Malkmus is going on about, but somehow it’s never mattered. 

It’s funny, but when a band has been around for so long, and when they only tour every ten years or so, seeing them confronts you with the ageing process. They look older than they did the last time you saw them and so it reminds you that you too are older; that when you saw them last you didn’t have kids, or a 'career', or a range of mental illnesses. But it also reminds you that, hey, some things haven’t changed: Malkmus is still almost as cool as he thinks he is, Bob Nastanovich still holds it all together with his relentless bonhomie, and Pavement still sound fucking great. I think it was good, now, that they split up, before they produced a string of albums of gradually declining quality, which is what usually happens with bands. Their legacy is preserved like a fossil. The songs are just as you remember them. One after another. Different ones every night. A lot to choose from. Debris Slide. Range Life. Stop Breathin. I have no idea what they are about or what they mean, or if they are even about anything or mean anything at all, but they still mean something, somehow, to me. They remind me of being young, and of getting older, and of feeling good about myself, and of being happy to be alive. It's weird to see a room full of thousands singing along to Grave Architecture like it’s the fucking Foo Fighters at Wembley Arena, but that’s where we're at. A lot of people really like Pavement, enough to fill The Roundhouse four nights in a row. I’m not so much the outsider I really thought I was. Malky introduces the band as film stars – he’s just so off the cuff – so there’s Steve McQueen, Robert Redford, and Mark Ibold is Mark Hamill, and for the first time I notice that he really does look a bit like Mark Hamill. They play for so long. By the end they look really tired. Spiral Stairs’ shirt is sodden. Malky leaves with a limp wave. Even Bob succumbs to a vacant stare or two. I decide I want Stop Breathin played at my funeral. Even though I have no idea what it means or if it is about anything, I decide it is the song of my life. I remember them playing it at Reading ’94. And now tonight. I remember this too. I will remember it. In the future.

Cool

 

Good vibes

In the queue for the toilet I start a conversation with Louis Forster, formerly of The Goon Sax. “I loved your band,” I say. “Oh thanks,” he says. “I saw you supporting Girl Ray just before the pandemic.” “Oh yeah, I remember that. At the Electric Ballroom.” “You’ve split up now, haven’t you?” “Yeah, we have. We should have been supporting Pavement tonight.” “That’s a shame.” “Yeah, well, it was amicable.” “Oh, that’s good. Are you working on anything else?” “Oh yeah, I am.” “That’s good. I look forward to it.” We shake damp toilety hands and off he goes. I feel pleased with myself for making the conversation and not just thinking that I wanted to make it and not making it. That’s progress. Well done, I think, you did well.
 

I wonder why The Goon Sax split up.

There’s a storm outside. It just rains and rains and rains, like it’s the last day of the world.