Pavement

Certain Songs #1480: Pavement – “Trigger Cut/Wounded Kite At :17”

March 13, 2019 by Jim Connelly

Album: Slanted and Enchanted
Year: 1992

“Electricity . . . . and lust!”

That said, if I was forced at gunpoint — and please don’t, mmm-kay? — to choose my favorite song from Slanted and Enchanted it would absolutely be “Trigger Cut,” which is stuffed with wall-to-all hooks, and remains endlessly surprising even all these years later.

It was also kind of confusing to me — often my default mode when first encountering any new Pavement material — because to this day, that whole “Wounded Kite At :17” makes so little sense that it’s probably a joke that even Stephen Malkmus probably doesn’t remember the origin of. I mean, there is a little instrumental doo-dad tacked onto the end of the song, and it might be called “Wounded Kite,” why not? But it’s of course at 2:49, not :17.

Certain Songs #1479: Pavement – “Summer Babe (Winter Version)”

March 12, 2019 by Jim Connelly

Album: Slanted and Enchanted
Year: 1992

“Every time I sit around I find I’m shot”

This is where I came in. Despite the fact that Pavement hailed from only about 100 miles or so north from Fresno — making them the greatest band to come from the San Joaquin Valley (sorry, Miss Alans) — I hadn’t heard of them until the critical buzz surrounding Slanted and Enchanted hit like a truck barreling down Highway 99.

That might have been different had I still been at KFSR — those early EPs probably made it there — but I left the radio station in 1989, and spent the next couple years slightly less focused on discovering new music until 1991’s insanity dragged me back to it. So while Slanted and Enchanted came out in April of 1992, I didn’t get around to buying until that awful July, probably based upon Robert Christgau’s review in The Village Voice, and without having heard a single note they’d ever made.

Certain Songs #1478: Pavement – “Debris Slide”

March 11, 2019 by Jim Connelly

Album: Perfect Sound Forever EP
Year: 1991

“Ba-ba-ba-da-ba”

Let me admit something right up front: I didn’t buy any of Pavement’s three early EPs when they came out, so I didn’t actually hear “Debris Slide” until said EPs were helpfully collected in 1993 as Westing (By Musket and Sextant), but I’ll swear on a stack of remaindered copies of Douglas Coupland’s Generation X that “Debris Slide” is kinda where Pavement became Pavement.

It’s the first time where their unique combination of noise & melody, chops & looseness, and smarts & disinterest first coalesced into to the sound that ran me over like a fucking truck on Slanted and Enchanted.

Medialoper Bebop Episode 26: Washing Your Mouth Out With SOPA

December 20, 2011 by Jim Connelly

The week, Kirk, Jim & Tim take a look at the Stop Online Piracy Act, and how its destroy-the-net-to-save-it approach towards internet piracy (or “piracy,”) threatens pretty much the entire internet as we know it.

Thank the gods that the United States House of Representatives is on the case!! (05:19 – 13:29)

Meanwhile, Louis CK (whose name I inexplicably mispronounce) shows exactly how stupid the screams of “piracy is killing our business” are by releasing a DRM-free, consumer-friendly concert. (13:31 – 24:22)

Then, it’s my latest Barry Bonds theory: he’s the Gaius Baltar of MLB! (24:23 – 27:06)

Finally, what’s in my mix? Real Estate, Wild Flag and a great single by Yuck. (27:07 – 30:36)

All that, and pot-smoking raccoons!

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 40:43 — 55.9MB)

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