Pavement
Pavement
Rock band
Pavement has become one of independent (indie) rock’s biggest success stories—almost against the bandmembers’ will. The California-based group charmed critics and fans alike with their early collections of noisy, intermittently melodic postpunk laced with cryptic, self-conscious lyrics; after achieving fame in the world of independent recording, they were launched into the mainstream with 1994’s Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain. Their ambiguity about large-scale popularity intact, the group—fronted by singer-guitarist Stephen Malkmus—faced reality by exploring the phenomenon of rock fandom in their songs. “Supported by tense, entrancing music that touches on everything from giddy pop and fake jazz to woozy country rock and sinister sonic tightropes,” observed Jason Cohen in Rolling Stone, “Malkmus stares down rock mythology with a look that’s part skeptical squint and part unforced smile. He’s constantly careening between cynicism and sincerity, sarcasm and earnestness.”
“Pavement was originally a pathetic effort by us to do something to escape the terminal boredom we were
For the Record…
Members include Mark Ibold, bass; Scott Kann berg, guitar; Stephen Malkmus (born in Los Angeles, CA; attended college in Virginia), guitar, vocals; Bob Nastanovich, drums; Steve West (joined group 1993); and Gary Young (born in Marmaroneck, NY; left group 1993), drums.
Malkmus and Kannberg performed together in a band in Stockton, CA, early 1980s; with drummer Young, Pavement released debut single, “Slay Tracks (1933-1969),” on own Treble Kicker label, 1989; recruited balance of band; released single “Demolition Plot J-7,” Drag City Records, 1990; signed to Matador Records and released debut album, Slanted and Enchanted, 1992; released Watery, Domestic, 1992; appeared on compilations Born to Choose and No Alternative, both 1993; appeared on The Tonight Show With Jay Leno, NBC-TV, 1994.
Awards: Slanted and Enchanted named album of the year by Spin magazine, 1992;Watery, Domestic named best EP of the year by the Village Voice, 1992.
Addresses: Record company —Matador Records, 676 Broadway, New York, NY 10012. Fan club— 9361 Cole Dr., Stockton, CA 95212.
experiencing in Stockton,” Malkmus told Melody Maker, referring to the rough recordings he and his friend Scott Kannberg put together in their northern California hometown. The two had played together in a band in the early 1980s. Eventually Malkmus went off to college in Virginia; when he came home for a break, he and Kannberg decided to record a single. The studio they chose, Louder Than You Think, was run by engineer-drummer Gary Young, a hard-living 40ish progressive-rock fan who urged them to let him play drums on the songs.
Made Mark in Indie Universe
The result was a 7-inch disc called “Slay Tracks (1933-1969),” an opaque and, according to David Sprague of New York Newsday, “unabashedly sloppy” mini-collection that Kannberg released on a label he called Treble Kicker in 1989. Malkmus returned to school before “Slay Tracks” was issued, but the positive response it generated in the indie universe—and the fact that British cult heroes the Wedding Present recorded a version of one song from it—forced him to think of Pavement as something other than a lark.
Next came “Demolition Plot J-7” and Perfect Sound Forever, which appeared in 1990 and 1991, respectively, on the Drag City label. These releases increased the “buzz” in the music underground about this mysterious band; Malkmus and Kannberg had only heightened the mystique by referring to themselves as “S. M.” and “Spiral Stairs” in the seemingly coded liner notes that accompanied their records. Along with Young, bassist Mark Ibold, and second drummer Bob Nastanovich, Pavement embarked on what Sprague called “startlingly unrehearsed live shows” characterized by what might charitably be called extremely loose renditions of their songs and—more notoriously—Young’s drunken theatrics.
Signed With Matador Records
Young not only grabbed the spotlight during gigs, he also grabbed fans before them, greeting them outside and welcoming them to the show. While his energy was infectious, his prodigious consumption of alcohol was ultimately disruptive. “With Young behind the kit (or often on top of it), Pavement could potentially be really bad,” wrote Spin’s Jim Greer, “and you got a sense watching the band interact onstage that the rest of them found that idea kind of cool.” Yet Malkmus swore to Rolling Stone that the band did not have this attitude. “We’ve gotten these labels, that we’re a slacker rock band and that we don’t give a shit about our live show,” he said. “I can’t remember a time that that’s ever been the case. Usually, we’re really trying hard as we can to be entertaining.”
Among other pursuits, Pavement’s early creations inspired myriad games of “spot-the-influence” among critics and fans; many heard the imprint of British experimentalists like the Fall in Malkmus’s obscurantist lingo and detected more than a hint of New York postpunk giants Sonic Youth in the group’s dissonant guitars and “lo-fi” sound. But Pavement also clearly adored melodic pop, as indicated by the fragments of melody that periodically floated up from the murk. “I’ve always liked [power-pop hitmakers] Cheap Trick and [rock-funk innovator] Prince and [symphonic Top 40 popsters] ELO as much as the Fall,” Malkmus insisted to New York Newsday’s Sprague. Lauren Spencer of Spin proclaimed that Perfect Sound “bubbles over with more ideas than on the last three Sonic Youth albums combined,” and concluded, “Listening to Pavement is like trying to listen to three radio stations at once: One is playing [folk-pop duo] Simon and Garfunkel, one is playing [1960s rockers] the Bobby Fuller Four, and the third one’s just static.”
Pavement had yet to record a full-length album, despite having become one of the hottest independent acts in America. They signed to Matador Records and in 1992, at a cost of only around $10,000, released Slanted and Enchanted. Even prior to its release, the LP was acclaimed as one of the year’s best, thanks to advance cassettes that had the effect of religious icons on the nation’s reviewers.
The authoritative College Music Journal declared Slanted and Enchanted “quite likely the first and last word in American indie rock for 1992,” while Entertainment Weekly’s Gina Arnold found the collection “brimming with beautiful pop songs, soured a bit by the rhythmic clamor of harder guitar rock”; she awarded it an “A-. “Spin named the album the year’s best, contending with characteristic abandon that Slanted “renders any and all competition meaningless.” And the Village Voice ranked Slanted and Enchanted as the second best of 1992. Pavement’s Watery, Domestic EP topped the Voice’s list of the year’s best EPs.
Despite the accolades, the band tended to evince a certain casualness with respect to its musical career; as Malkmus told Option, “We’ve actually spent less than 100 hours on Pavement—playing, recording, and practicing. We’ve had six practices. We don’t even play together as a band when we record. Basically I send the guys into the studio and I sit there with a microphone and sing along and I have an idea of where I want them to stop. That’s where I put the guitar.”
Yet the obvious necessity of treating this enterprise more professionally gradually overtook Pavement’s cavalier “indie” pose; original drummer Young left the band in 1993, exhausted from touring and unsatisfied with his pay. “It made me sad that it couldn’t creatively workout with Gary,” Malkmus reflected to Sprague. “He really wanted to be a rock star in capital letters, but it was clear that he wasn’t emotionally centered enough to handle it.” Steve West, a friend of second drummer Nastanovich’s, replaced Young. Along with Ibold and Malkmus, he took up residence in New York, while Kannberg continued to live in Stockton, and Nastanov-ich made his home in Louisville, Kentucky, so he could attend his beloved horse races. Rolling Stoneexplained, “Geography has made it difficult for Pavement to be well rehearsed.”
1993 saw the release of Westing (By Musket and Sextant), a Drag City CD compilation containing all of Pavement’s pre-Slanted releases. “You could argue that this noise-for-noise’s sake approach is going nowhere,” wrote Spin reviewer Simon Reynolds, “but it’s going there in terrific style, and that’s more than enough for me.” The group also contributed selections to the high-profile alternative rock collections Bom to Choose and No Alternative; their song for the latter pays skewed tribute to rock giants R.E.M., enumerating the cuts—including Malkmus’s “least favorite”—on that group’s sophomore album, Reckoning.
Expectations were so high after Slanted that Pavement’s next full-length release appeared amid a flurry of hype and a full-scale promotional effort by Matador. The band filmed a video, submitted to a press junket, and, in a virtually unprecedented move for a group still occupying the fringe of American culture, appeared on television’s Tonight Show With Jay Leno. The new album, Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain, bowled over critics; Rolling Stone’s Matt Diehl called it “stunning,” and Joe Levy of the Village Voice heartily admired Pavement’s “invigorating noise and, crucially, melodies—and their ability to transform both into warmth at will.”
“American Originals”
Malkmus told New York Newsday’s Sprague, “I guess there was more of a decision to just make songs instead of a noisy, indie-signifying record” and expressed to Melody Maker his hope that people wouldn’t “think this record is too bratty in a wrong way, or too know-it-all, when it was the only thing we could do.” In any event, Crooked Rain devoted much of its content to the phenomenon of rock music as “career”—Malkmus sings the word into a mantra-like mush, which more than one listener has misconstrued as “Korea,” on the single “Cut Your Hair”—exploring the ambivalence and the magic of relating to music not as a professional but as a fan.
Pavement’s rise in popularity led to international tours. Drummer West commented in Musician, “Everywhere we went, from Prague, Vienna, to New Zealand, Australia, and Japan, we always had at least four or five hundred people out to see us, even in the smallest places…. That wouldn’t have happened five years ago. For the Replacements, or even R.E.M. in ’83 or ’84, when they were at our level, to go to Prague, or even to fly to Australia would have been impossible.”
Even after fame hit, though, Pavement remained remarkably independent. Kannberg continues to manage the group from a spare bedroom in his San Francisco apartment, and the members do their own roadie work. In early 1995 the band was working on an LP scheduled for release in April of that year. Musician’s Nathan Brackett noted, “Lack of pretense and the do-it-yourself aesthetic are the order of business in any Pavement enterprise.”
“Pavement are American originals,” remarked Levy in an attempt to sum up the band’s appeal. “There are debts, to be sure, though Pavement acknowledge them with more mystery, style, and humor than R.E.M. or Sonic Youth ever did. “Spin’s Greer, meanwhile, insisted that with Crooked Rain, “Pavement has once again proven that the enduring lesson of punk rock was that not everyone could do it.” The band had begun to transcend cult status to make a stand in the mainstream rock world; what success in this new realm would mean to its members remained to be seen. Malkmus, however, indicated to Melody Maker part of the reason for his explorations of rock culture: “On the one hand, music is just songs and there are good melodies and bad melodies, but there is this whole other side to the music world which is really dirty and not very noble, and which is reflected in consumer society.” He added, “The references [in the songs] to being in a band are just me trying to tell the truth.”
Selected discography
“Slay Tracks (1933-1969),” Treble Kicker, 1989.
“Demolition Plot J-7,” Drag City, 1990.
Perfect Sound Forever (EP), Drag City, 1991.
“Summer Babe,” Drag City, 1991.
Slanted and Enchanted, Matador, 1992.
“Trigger Cut,” Matador, 1992.
Watery, Domestic (EP), Matador, 1992.
Westing (By Musket & Sextant), Drag City, 1993.
“Greenlander,” Born to Choose, Rykodisc, 1993.
“Unseen Power of the Picket Fence,” No Alternative, Arista, 1993.
Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain (includes “Cut Your Hair”), Matador, 1994.
Sources
Billboard, January 15, 1994.
College Music Journal (CMJ), March 27, 1992.
Entertainment Weekly, July 31, 1993.
interview, June 1993; February 1994.
Los Angeles Times, February 13, 1994.
Melody Maker, March 7, 1992; November 28, 1992; March 20, 1993; February 12, 1994.
Musician, January/February 1995.
New Musical Express (NME), July 4, 1992; August 1, 1992; January 9, 1993; April 3, 1993.
New York Newsday, February 15, 1994.
New York Times, December 30, 1992.
Option, July 1992.
Request, May 1994.
Rolling Stone, February 24, 1994; July 14, 1994; November 17, 1994.
Spin, September 1991; December 1992; June 1993; March 1994; April 1994; July 1994; March 1995.
Village Voice, March 2, 1993; August 3, 1993; February 22, 1994.
Additional information for this profile was obtained from Matador Records publicity materials, 1994.
—Simon Glickman
Pavement
Pavement
Rock group
Pavement was one of independent (indie) rock's biggest success stories—almost against the bandmembers' wills. The California-based group charmed critics and fans alike with their early collections of noisy, intermittently melodic postpunk laced with cryptic, self-conscious lyrics. After achieving fame in the world of independent recording, they were launched into wide popularity with 1994's Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain. Their ambiguity about large-scale popularity intact, the group—fronted by singer-guitarist Stephen Malkmus—faced reality by exploring the phenomenon of rock fandom in their songs. "Supported by tense, entrancing music that touches on everything from giddy pop and fake jazz to woozy country rock and sinister sonic tightropes," observed Jason Cohen in Rolling Stone, "Malkmus stares down rock mythology with a look that's part skeptical squint and part unforced smile. He's constantly careening between cynicism and sincerity, sarcasm and earnestness." After releasing their final album, Terror Twilight, the band broke up in 1999.
"Pavement was originally a pathetic effort by us to do something to escape the terminal boredom we were experiencing in Stockton," Malkmus told Melody Maker, referring to the rough recordings he and his friend Scott Kannberg put together in their northern California hometown. The two had played together in a band in the early 1980s, and eventually Malkmus went off to college in Virginia. When he came home for a break, he and Kannberg decided to record a single. The studio they chose, Louder Than You Think, was run by engineer-drummer Gary Young, a hard-living 40ish progressive-rock fan who urged them to let him play drums on the songs.
The result was a 7-inch record called Slay Tracks (1933-1969), an opaque and, according to David Sprague of New York Newsday, "unabashedly sloppy" mini-collection that Kannberg released on a label he called Treble Kicker in 1989. Malkmus returned to school before Slay Tracks was issued, but the positive response it generated in the indie universe—and the fact that British cult heroes the Wedding Present recorded a version of one song from it—forced him to think of Pavement as something other than a lark.
Early Underground Buzz
Next came Demolition Plot J-7 and Perfect Sound Forever, which appeared in 1990 and 1991, respectively, on the Drag City label. These releases increased the "buzz" in the music underground about this mysterious band, while Malkmus and Kannberg had only heightened the mystique by referring to themselves as "S. M." and "Spiral Stairs" in the seemingly coded liner notes that accompanied their records. Along with Young, bassist Mark Ibold, and second drummer Bob Nastanovich, Pavement embarked on what Sprague called "startlingly unrehearsed live shows" characterized by what might charitably be called extremely loose renditions of their songs and—more notoriously—Young's drunken theatrics.
Young not only grabbed the spotlight during gigs, he also grabbed fans before them, greeting them outside and welcoming them to the show. While his energy was infectious, his prodigious consumption of alcohol was ultimately disruptive. "With Young behind the kit (or often on top of it), Pavement could potentially be really bad," wrote Spin 's Jim Greer, "and you got a sense watching the band interact onstage that the rest of them found that idea kind of cool." Yet Malkmus swore to Rolling Stone that the band did not have this attitude. "We've gotten these labels, that we're a slacker rock band and that we don't give a shit about our live show," he said. "I can't remember a time that that's ever been the case. Usually, we're really trying hard as we can to be entertaining."
Among other pursuits, Pavement's early creations inspired myriad games of "spot-the-influence" among critics and fans. Many heard the imprint of British experimentalists like the Fall in Malkmus's obscurantist lingo and detected more than a hint of New York postpunk giants Sonic Youth in the group's dissonant guitars and "lo-fi" sound. But Pavement also clearly adored melodic pop, as indicated by the fragments of melody that periodically floated up from the murk. "I've always liked Cheap Trick and Prince and ELO as much as the Fall," Malkmus insisted to New York Newsday 's Sprague. Lauren Spencer of Spin proclaimed that Perfect Sound "bubbles over with more ideas than on the last three Sonic Youth albums combined," and concluded, "Listening to Pavement is like trying to listen to three radio stations at once: One is playing Simon and Garfunkel, one is playing the Bobby Fuller Four, and the third one's just static."
Released Slanted and Enchanted
Pavement had yet to record a full-length album, despite having become one of the hottest independent acts in America. They signed to Matador Records and in 1992, at a cost of only around $10,000, released Slanted and Enchanted. Even prior to its release, the LP was acclaimed as one of the year's best, thanks to advance cassettes that had the effect of religious icons on the nation's reviewers.
The authoritative College Music Journal declared Slanted and Enchanted "quite likely the first and last word in American indie rock for 1992," while Entertainment Weekly 's Gina Arnold found the collection "brimming with beautiful pop songs, soured a bit by the rhythmic clamor of harder guitar rock"; she awarded it an "A-." Spin named the album the year's best, contending with characteristic abandon that Slanted "renders any and all competition meaningless." And the Village Voice ranked Slanted and Enchanted as the second best of 1992. Pavement's Watery, Domestic EP topped the Voice 's list of the year's best EPs.
Despite the accolades, the band tended to evince a certain casualness with respect to its musical career; as Malkmus told Option, "We've actually spent less than 100 hours on Pavement—playing, recording, and practicing. We've had six practices. We don't even play together as a band when we record. Basically I send the guys into the studio and I sit there with a microphone and sing along and I have an idea of where I want them to stop. That's where I put the guitar."
Yet the obvious necessity of treating this enterprise more professionally gradually overtook Pavement's cavalier indie pose; original drummer Young left the band in 1993, exhausted from touring and unsatisfied with his pay. "It made me sad that it couldn't creatively work out with Gary," Malkmus reflected to Sprague. "He really wanted to be a rock star in capital letters, but it was clear that he wasn't emotionally centered enough to handle it." Steve West, a friend of second drummer Nastanovich, replaced Young. Along with Ibold and Malkmus, he took up residence in New York, while Kannberg continued to live in Stockton, and Nastanovich made his home in Louisville, Kentucky, so he could attend his beloved horse races. Rolling Stone explained, "Geography has made it difficult for Pavement to be well rehearsed."
1993 saw the release of Westing (By Musket and Sextant), a Drag City CD compilation containing all of Pavement's pre-Slanted releases. "You could argue that this noise-for-noise's sake approach is going nowhere," wrote Spin reviewer Simon Reynolds, "but it's going there in terrific style, and that's more than enough for me." The group also contributed selections to the high-profile alternative rock collections Born to Choose and No Alternative. Their song for the latter pays skewed tribute to rock giants R.E.M., enumerating the cuts on that group's sophomore album, Reckoning.
For the Record . . .
Members include Mark Ibold , bass; Scott Kannberg , guitar; Stephen Malkmus (born in Los Angeles, CA; attended college in Virginia), guitar, vocals; Bob Nastanovich , drums; Steve West (joined group, 1993), drums; Gary Young (born in Marmaroneck, NY; left group, 1993), drums.
Malkmus and Kannberg performed together in a band in Stockton, CA, early 1980s; with drummer Young, Pavement released debut single, "Slay Tracks (1933-1969),"
on own Treble Kicker label, 1989; recruited balance of band; released single "Demolition Plot J-7," Drag City Records, 1990; signed to Matador Records and released debut album, Slanted and Enchanted, 1992; released Watery, Domestic, Matador 1992; appeared on compilations Born to Choose and No Alternative, both
1993; appeared on The Tonight Show With Jay Leno, NBC-TV, 1994; released Wowee Zowee, Matador, 1995; released Brighten the Corners, Matador, 1997; released Terror Twilight, Matador, 1999; released Slanted and Enchanted: Luxe & Reduxe, Matador, 2002.
Awards: Spin magazine, Album of the Year for Slanted and Enchanted, 1992; Village Voice, Best EP of the Year for Watery, Domestic, 1992.
Addresses: Record company— Matador Records, 676 Broadway, New York, NY 10012, website: http://www. matadorrecords.com.
Infiltrated the Mainstream
Expectations were so high after Slanted that Pavement's next full-length release appeared amid a flurry of hype and a full-scale promotional effort by Matador. The band filmed a video, submitted to a press junket, and, in a virtually unprecedented move for a group still occupying the fringe of American culture, appeared on television's Tonight Show With Jay Leno. The new album, Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain, bowled over critics; Rolling Stone 's Matt Diehl called it "stunning," and Joe Levy of the Village Voice heartily admired Pavement's "invigorating noise and, crucially, melodies—and their ability to transform both into warmth at will."
Malkmus told New York Newsday 's Sprague, "I guess there was more of a decision to just make songs instead of a noisy, indie-signifying record" and expressed to Melody Maker his hope that people wouldn't "think this record is too bratty in a wrong way, or too know-it-all, when it was the only thing we could do." In any event, Crooked Rain devoted much of its content to the phenomenon of rock music as "career"—Malkmus sings the word into a mantra-like mush, which more than one listener has misconstrued as "Korea," on the single "Cut Your Hair"—exploring the ambivalence and the magic of relating to music not as a professional but as a fan.
Pavement's rise in popularity led to international tours. Drummer West commented in Musician, "Everywhere we went, from Prague, Vienna, to New Zealand, Australia, and Japan, we always had at least four or five hundred people out to see us, even in the smallest places…. That wouldn't have happened five years ago. For the Replacements, or even R.E.M. in '83 or '84, when they were at our level, to go to Prague, or even to fly to Australia would have been impossible."
Even after fame hit, though, Pavement remained remarkably independent. Kannberg continued to manage the group from a spare bedroom in his San Francisco apartment, and the members did their own roadie work. In the spring of 1995, the band released Wowee Zowee. Although many critics and fans speculated before the album's release that the much-anticipated new album might elevate the band to real mainstream success, Musician 's Nathan Brackett noted, "Lack of pretense and the do-it-yourself aesthetic are the order of business in any Pavement enterprise."
True American Originals
"Pavement are American originals," remarked Levy in an attempt to sum up the band's appeal. "There are debts, to be sure, though Pavement acknowledge them with more mystery, style, and humor than R.E.M. or Sonic Youth ever did." Spin 's Greer, meanwhile, insisted that with Crooked Rain, "Pavement has once again proven that the enduring lesson of punk rock was that not everyone could do it."
True to form, although the band had begun to transcend cult status to make a stand in the mainstream rock world, Wowee Zowee kept it firmly in the realm of the underground; the album, embraced by fans, was not well received by critics. Staying out of the mainstream was not necessarily a disappointment to the group; around this time Malkmus indicated to Melody Maker part of the reason for his explorations of rock culture: "On the one hand, music is just songs and there are good melodies and bad melodies, but there is this whole other side to the music world which is really dirty and not very noble, and which is reflected in consumer society."
The group's next album, Brighten the Corners, released in 1997, fared better with the critics, and the band launched a tour of the U.S. and the world, returning to the studio after a hiatus of six months to begin work on what was to become the final Pavement album.
By the time Terror Twilight hit the stores in the summer of 1999, Malkmus and Kannberg were already heavily engaged in solo projects. Terror Twilight got raves in the press, but the writing was already on the wall; at a concert at the end of 1999, Malkmus announced to fans that he was calling it quits. Although the other members of the band and the band's label refused to acknowledge it publicly, Pavement was no more. Matador wowed Pavement fans one last time in 2002 with a double CD, tenth anniversary rerelease of Slanted and Enchanted. Called Slanted and Enchanted: Luxe & Reduxe, the rerelease featured, in addition to the original cuts, many more of the band's best studio and live performances from the early years.
Selected discography
Slay Tracks (1933-1969), Treble Kicker, 1989.
Demolition Plot J-7, Drag City, 1990.
Perfect Sound Forever (EP), Drag City, 1991.
Summer Babe, Drag City, 1991.
Slanted and Enchanted, Matador, 1992.
Trigger Cut, Matador, 1992.
Watery, Domestic (EP), Matador, 1992.
Westing (By Musket & Sextant), Drag City, 1993.
(Contributor) Born to Choose, Rykodisc, 1993.
(Contributor) No Alternative, Arista, 1993.
Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain, Matador, 1994.
Wowee Zowee, Matador, 1995.
Brighten the Corners, Matador, 1997.
Terror Twilight, Matador, 1999.
Slanted & Enchanted: Luxe & Reduxe, Matador, 2002.
Sources
Periodicals
Billboard, January 15, 1994.
College Music Journal (CMJ), March 27, 1992.
Entertainment Weekly, July 31, 1993.
Interview, June 1993; February 1994.
Los Angeles Times, February 13, 1994.
Melody Maker, March 7, 1992; November 28, 1992; March 20, 1993; February 12, 1994.
Musician, January/February 1995.
New Musical Express (NME), July 4, 1992; August 1, 1992; January 9, 1993; April 3, 1993.
New York Newsday, February 15, 1994.
New York Times, December 30, 1992.
Option, July 1992.
Request, May 1994.
Rolling Stone, February 24, 1994; July 14, 1994; November 17, 1994.
Spin, September 1991; December 1992; June 1993; March 1994; April 1994; July 1994; March 1995.
Village Voice, March 2, 1993; August 3, 1993; February 22, 1994.
Online
"Pavement," All Music Guide, http://www.allmusic.com (January 15, 2004).
"Pavement," RollingStone.com, http://www.rollingstone.com/artists/bio.asp?oid=155 (January 15, 2004).
"Pavement: Slanted and Enchanted: Luxe & Reduxe, " RollingStone.com, http://www.rollingstone.com/reviews/cd/review.asp?aid=2045017 (January 15, 2004).
—Simon Glickman and Michael Belfiore
Pavement
PAVEMENT
Formed: 1989, Stockton, California; Disbanded 1999
Members: Mark Ibold, bass (born 1967); Scott Kannberg, guitar (born 1967); Stephen Malkmus, songwriter, vocals, guitar (born Santa Monica, California, 30 May 1966); Bob Nastanovich, drums (born 1968); Steve West, drums (born 1967). Former member: Gary Young, percussion (born Marmaroneck, New York, c. 1954).
Genre: Rock
Best-selling album since 1990: Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain (1994)
Hit songs since 1990: "Cut Your Hair," "Gold Soundz," "Shady Lane"
The off-kilter harmonies and nearly discordant guitar playing of the band Pavement made a huge impact on the mid-1990s independent rock scene popular with college students and disaffected twentysomethings. Under the direction of singer and guitarist Steve Malkmus, the lyrics lean toward the episodic, elliptical, and purposefully obscure. Pavement songs start off in a nearly atonal manner and end in a paroxysm of guitar squalls, with Malkmus occasionally screaming the vocals. The band enjoyed decent record sales on the Matador label, and broke up in 1999 to pursue other interests.
College dropouts Malkmus and Scott Kannberg formed Pavement as a studio project in 1989 and quickly added three members, Gary Young, Bob Nastanovich, and Mark Ibold, to round out the band; Young left in 1993 after their debut release Slanted and Enchanted (1992). Sam West replaced him. Critics and college indie rock fans praised the band for its free-for-all guitar playing and vague lyrics. Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain (1994) followed the debut, and it had a near-hit with the song "Cut Your Hair," in which Malkmus cautions a girl against cutting her hair to impress her no-good, punk boyfriend. The song, with its chorus of "oooh-ooh-oohs" in the background, is goofy and anthemic, yet it reached number ten on Billboard 's Modern Rock chart in 1994. The sprawling nature of the album, from the country rock of "Range Life" and the improvisational, jazzy, space-age tune "5 – 4 = Unity" exemplifies the band's modus operandi: Anything is fair game.
Malkmus told Greg Kot of the Chicago Tribune, "I never felt like we needed to reach 'the next level,' whatever that is. We're doing well at the level we're at." This principled defiance pervades Pavement's songwriting. Examples include the quirky, experimental, eighteen tracks of Wowee Zowee (1995), the melodic and engaging "Shady Lane" from Brighten the Corners (1997), and Terror Twilight (1999), the band's swan song, which surprisingly landed in the United Kingdom Top 20.
Pavement never aimed to "make it big" and they remained firmly within in the lo-fi independent rock world of the mid- to late 1990s. They tossed off songs with a casual but insouciant style, and not without making a mark on American underground music before their breakup.
SELECTIVE DISCOGRAPHY:
Slanted and Enchanted (Matador, 1992); Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain (Matador, 1994); Wowee Zowee (Matador, 1995); Brighten the Corners (Matador, 1997); Terror Twilight (Matador, 1999).
carrie havranek
pavement
1. In geology, bare rock surface resembling a road, e.g. limestone pavement.
2. The floor of a coal seam.
3. In roadway construction, any material spread on the subgrade to distribute load and protect against erosion and traffic wear. The types of material used and thickness depend on the type and use of road. Generally the pavement has four layers. (a) The wearing course is the top layer of the carriageway. It must be durable, impermeable, skid-resistant, and resistant to polishing. On the most heavily trafficked roads the polished stone value (PSV) (see AGGREGATE TESTS) must exceed 60%. The wearing course lies on a surface provided by the basecourse. (b) The basecourse is a layer of gravel or crushed rock (aggregate) of specific dimensions to provide drainage, distribute load on to the road base, and protect against freezing. (c) The road base provides the main load-bearing foundation or ballast and consists of irregular-sized rock aggregate, either bonded or loose. (d) The subbase is a layer of coarse aggregate below the road base. It provides extra support or drainage. In cold climates large pore spaces are necessary to prevent water rising by capillary action, leading to the collapse of the structure after thawing. (e) The subgrade is the rock or subsoil on which the subbase is laid.
pavement
pave·ment / ˈpāvmənt/ • n. any paved area or surface. ∎ the hard surface of a road or street. ∎ Brit. a sidewalk. ∎ Geol. a more or less horizontal expanse of bare rock.PHRASES: pound the pavementsee pound2 .