The other day I was debating who might be the “most influential bands of the 90’s,” which is a more polite way of saying “whose fault are the 00’s (uh-oh’s),” which is awfully unfair to a host of excellent bands. It’s not their fault that popular music fractured into a multitude of sub-genres, or that mass media melted down into niches like blogs and podcasts. It’s certainly not their fault that rock and roll is a highly derivative art form, for they did not choose their followers.
Easily, one of the most influential bands of the 90’s was Pavement. Slackers, shoegazers, ironic smartasses – it’s almost as if they bothered to draw up the blueprints for modern indie sensibilities. But they were too busy getting stoned and covering “School House Rock” songs. A lot of misguided critics and fans expected Pavement to do something Important ten years ago. Following a series of overdubbed home recordings and lo-fi e.p.s in the early 90’s, then band released two excellent long players, which offered increasingly competent musicianship and mysterious, occasionally cheeky, lyrics that hinted at greater depth and empathy. Real voice of a generation shit.
But 1995’s “Wowee Zowee” was a rambling, shambolic mess. Anything resembling a message was lost in the cacophony of genre pastiches and rubbish lyrics. The critics howled in disgust, the casual listeners dropped away and Pavement settled into the comfortable niche of cult artists. Ten years on, “Wowee Zowee” sounds like the band’s greatest artistic statement – precisely by not saying much of anything. It’s just a lot of jamming on good grooves, and occasionally throwing out an interesting turn of phrase. Matador Records continues to reissue Pavement’s albums in deluxe editions that include b-sides, demos and outtakes. The “Sordid Sentinels” edition of “Wowee Zowee” finally places the excellent single “Painted Soldiers” (which was promoted with a funny video of Spiral Stairs firing the other members of the band) on a proper Pavement album. Other highlights include an Australian radio set puts Malkmus on lead vocals for a strangely Lou Reed-ish “My Best Friend’s Arm” in which one can finally make out the lyrics (“Mt. Holyoke is my favorite friend and a college?”) and an acoustic demo of “Fight This Generation” that sounds more sinister than sarcastic.
It should not have come as a surprise that Pavement would settle for cult status. A formative influence on Stephen Malkmus was the ultimate cult band, the Fall. A first wave punk band from Manchester, centered around the prickly personality of Mark E. Smith and his mostly paid associates, the Fall are the kind of cult that brainwashes. The typical Fall song drones on repetitively around a catchy groove while Smith growls and howls something incomprehensible and (if you’re lucky) Brix Smith coos a beautiful harmony. The new(ish) double-disc collection, “50,000 Fall Fans Can’t Can’t Be Wrong” provides the easiest indoctrination into the cult of Mark E. Smith.