I Will Never Maintain This

(via Scorsese’s Furious Love for Taylor & Burton: The Impossible Casting, Love Letters, Video - Thompson on Hollywood)

So, here’s the thing. Having not been of concert-going age when Pavement last played regularly, I’d never seen the band live but fell in love with their records. Reunion shows always feel a little bit like watching a vh1 special to me, but I was excited nonetheless to fly to Chicago to see, for the most part, Pavement. Like many in the audience I’m sure, my experiences with Pavement have been largely independent- listening to my stereo as a high school and college student and on my iPod during my morning commute in more recent years. Hell, even when I play them on my radio show it rarely evokes a comment from a listener.

I agree with most of what was said in this post- though I did unabashedly tear up during “Here.” Shows like this are just the audience singing along to a record that’s playing in their minds, albeit with a few long pauses between songs. The truth is, the fist pumping and group singalongs had little to do with what was actually happening onstage but was instead a way for many of those in the audience to experience this music with other people for the first time.

airgordon:

Visually, Pavement were slacker corpses being pulled by puppet strings on stage. They were like bloated Elvis, playing in gross parody of their original appeal, an entire crowd of cool dads and college girls listlessly cheering every time Stephen Malkmus flipped his hair or played his guitar behind his back like Hendrix. It was a sloppy, fuzzy, nostalgic modern version of Genesis, filled with limp one-note guitar solos and clean drum fills, an alt Ravinia, a scene the millennials can look forward to when the Postal Service reunite in 2025. God, I hope I never pay $50 to see them. They didn’t play a single inspired note, and it was awesome. I was scoffing every time a group of fists would shoot up next to us at the third, fifth, sixth indistinguishable mid-tempo alternative guitar riff that would kick up and swaying in the fading light to a sluggy version of “Trigger Cut,” humming the melody to the words I didn’t know. It was both deeply embarrassing and very moving to be there. Around us, an immobile crowd sang along in earnest reliving their college years, their primes, their sloppy first kisses at a concert… and the guys in Pavement kept on tuning after every song, only in it for the money, gloriously apathetic about giving a fuck. They did “Frontwards” and it was perfect. They opened with “Cut Your Hair” which seemed like an eff you to the casual fans. I bet when they finished, Malkmus called his kids at home, and they went to sleep by midnight. It was the best concert I ever left disappointed.