Pavement: A Concrete Jungle
» Pavement announce second Melb show - October 26, 2009
For years whispers of a Pavement reunion has circulated through the rumour mill, with many fabricated stories eventuating to nothing. Well kids, hold onto your seats… The Dwarf are thrilled to confirm that this time around, the speculation is true.
Iconic American indie – rock band Pavement has announced their long overdue reformation, and will play a number of shows and festivals around the world, including Victoria’s Golden Plains Festival and a string of sold out sideshows. The Dwarf chatted to guitarist and founding member of Pavement, Scott Kannberg AKA Spiral Stairs about their reunion and forthcoming Australian tour.
Pavement fans all across the world have keeled over in astonishment upon hearing the news of one of the biggest reunions of recent times. “When people finally heard that we were getting back together I think a lot of people didn’t believe it”, laughs Kannberg as he chats in a Clifton Hill café. “I think now everybody in the band is pretty keen to play some shows - initially we didn’t realise the response was going to be so big, we just thought we would do a couple of shows here and there, but the response has just gone off!”
For those who are wondering who the hell Pavement is (no, contrary to popular belief, they’re not a concrete walking path one may encounter on a visit to the local milk bar), here is a brief history lesson.
Meeting at the ripe old age of 10 at soccer practice in Stockton California, Scott Kannberg, the black sheep of the neighbourhood and Steve Malkmus, the resident brat, began a long standing friendship.
They began recording together in the mid 80s in a band called Bag of Bones – an outfit that Kannberg describes as a “New Order, Echo and the Bunnymen and REM rip off”. Growing up they had different jobs that both related to music – Malkmus was a college radio DJ and Kannberg worked in a record store.
Both would combine their newfound musical inspirations and later decided to create some studio recordings under the guise of Pavement. This lead to the introduction of studio owner Gary Young, an older, hippie punk rock figure from Stockton who would eventually become the drummer in Pavement. Together they recorded a few debut EPs. With the inclusion of bassist and long time fan of Pavement, Mark Ibold and percussionist Bob Nastanovich in 1992, Pavement became a full-time band.
Pavement recorded their debut album, Slanted and Enchanted, which they distributed throughout the independent music scene on cassette. This would prove to be a successful marketing tactic, with the circulation of the cassette creating much anticipation about the band well before the actual release of the album.
Pavement had attracted a strong cult following for their raw, shambolic and often eccentric performances, with much of this eccentricity attributed to the sporadic and often bizarre on stage antics of drummer Gary Young. The band began a long and gruelling tour upon the release of Slanted and Enchanted.
“We were really young and we didn’t know anything” Kannberg confesses. “We did anything that anyone would ask us to. So if we were asked to play 40 shows in 42 days we just did it. We didn’t know how hard it was. We did everything. We did every interview, we did every photo shoot, we just worked our arses off. That’s all we knew how to do - we all had good work ethics”.
The hard work paid off for the band, with Pavement’s tour extending across the world in promotion of the album. However, it was throughout this time that Young’s increasingly extreme behaviour became apparent. Young was often seen distributing cabbage and mashed potatoes to fans prior to a show, while handy cam footage of the Slanted and Enchanted tour depicts a boozy Young stumbling across stage, doing handstands throughout songs and tumbling off his drum stool.
Although a distraction, Kannberg believes that Young’s on stage behaviour filled a void within Pavement. “He was the show man! At that time we loved the freak element he brought to our show. When we were growing up a lot of bands that we loved had that freak element - the Butthole Surfers were one, they were a weird band, and we just thought that we were another weird band."
Regrettably, intense touring combined with a fond relationship with alcohol lead to the demise of Gary Young, and ultimately Young quit the band. “He had a drinking problem” Kannberg reveals. “Once we started playing a lot of shows he just couldn’t keep it together and it became pretty hard.
We basically had to tell him – for your health you’ve got to quit the band. He realised it was not a good thing. We never realised that after Gary we would continue being a band. We didn’t know what that would be like until we started doing it”.
Gary Young was replaced with old friend and museum security guard Steve West and the band continued to record. In 1994 Pavement released the album Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain, a release that received mainstream success, reaching number 1 in the alternative radio charts, above bands like Nine Inch Nails and Greenday.
“It’s not like we were that famous”. Kannberg modestly dismisses. “We got a little more notoriety in the press and began playing to more people, I guess we never realised how important it was at the time. It was also at a time where Nirvana just happened, so it opened up the airwaves for songs like ours and we could get into magazines that wouldn’t touch us in the past. We never thought of ourselves as famous. We were still playing 40 shows in 42 days and eating pizza and drinking warm beer."
Contrary to debate, Pavement had certainly become a larger and more renowned band, suddenly aligned on festival bills with acts like Sonic Youth, Beastie Boys, Foo Fighters and Beck. This success continued upon the release of their album Wowee Zowee in 1995, Brighten the Corners in 1997 and Terror Twilight in 1999.
However, Terror Twilight would be the final album that the band recorded together, and the band finally decided to call it a day while on a promotional tour of the album. The group's final concert was held at Brixton Academy in London on November 20, 1999.
Kannberg believes that the decimation of the band was due to band members varying interests. “We had been doing the same kind of shit for ten years, and it’s just like a job that you get tired of. We were just getting older. We all lived in different cities, some of us had gotten married and we all had different responsibilities. It wasn’t like we could be the same band. Most bands live in the same city and practice once a week – we never did that. We just got together to do records and play live… that only lasts so long. You get different friends, different activities, and the thought of going on the road for 9 months and leaving stuff behind definitely contributed to the break up."
Ten years on and Pavement has since been hailed as one of the world’s most prominent independent acts – achieving major international success without signing to a major label. However, that was 15 years ago. Does Kannberg believe that a band can achieve the same success nowadays?
“Oh totally. If there’s any time to not need major label help it's today. Distributors come and go, but you’ve got good indie distributers in place in the world where you can get around it. It depends on what type of band you want to be. If you want to be a band that plays stadiums then major labels are probably the only way you can make that happen. But if you just wanna be a cool band and make a living and play small shows and have cool people come to your shows then you can do it. Especially with the internet now, there are so many more marketing angles. Smart bands are using that to their advantage.”
Is Kannberg surprised of the reaction to the news of the bands reformation? “Who knew that in ten years time people would still want to pay money to come and see us?” chuckles Kannberg. “A good friend of mine told me the other day that indie rock is back. Things go in cycles. Bigger bands that are around now are reciting indie rock bands from the 90s as their influences. I think that when somebody talks about a band in an interview, music fans will want to find out what that band’s all about... and then they discover Pavement. And when you discover Pavement you discover a whole new world of possibilities.”
