Good Night To The Rock n' Roll Era
-
Artist:
-
Album:
-
Track:
You may want to push play on the mixwit tape before starting this. Tracks missing from the mixwit are Newark Wilder and Fillmore Jive .
I had been listening to Pavement's Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain which I believe to be their finest album, and couldn't help but feel the bands exhaustion. It's a rock n' roll wake of sorts. A wake that had to this point been in progress for about 15 years. It is road weary and ready to sleep in it's own bed after traversing the country, supporting other bands. It's a road document. I don't know what the book "Our Band Could Be Your Life" is about (well, that's a half truth, I do know it's about Rock n' Roll), but this could easily be the alternate title for this album. This album is so beautifully textured with dissonance - like a '57 Thunderbird with rust spots and mismatched tires. This is broken down rock n' roll, rehabilitated, resuscitated for our own needs, and put back on the road as is. We find beauty in the simple function of these things we put the work into to make them run, and we are sometimes just thankful that they are still running, and in that we see the magic.
Perhaps Crooked Rain , is just a perfect snapshot of it's time. 90's apathy brought on by the disappointment of idealism our youth once held. Gen - X were labeled "slackers" by the boomers for failing to exhibit the traits that made them so special. Or at least they always seemed happy to remind Xer's just how much "more involved they were at our age". Never mind that many of them compromised their values and re-instituted the false values of suburban up-bringing that begat the Slacker. This was a generation of Llyod Dobler's, not wanting to be like their parents, but at the same time exhibiting the same wariness toward authority and society that the system was "fucked". Xer's were just more comfortable with it.
Some time after 2010, there will inevitably be a resurection of all things 90's. Kids will flock to the kitsch aspects of Hammer pants and Cross Colors. Commercials and movies will start plundering the vaults and the innevitable compilations of 90's music hits will be reissued. Missing on these will be any refference to Pavements part in re-interpreting what the 90's was. While the masses will flock around grunge style with a wink and a nod of knowing somethings dumb in hind sight, but loving it anyway, the sheer nineties-ness of a band like Pavement, or for that matter an album like Crooked Rain Crooked Rain will be under their noses, and ignored in favor of the flash.
CR,CR represents everything that 80's post-punk college rock was building up, and pardon the pun, paving the way for the indie revolution. The indie revolution of the 90's that we are just now seeing boom in the new distribution model the internet has made possible, was a road wearily traveled by bands like pavement. Indie sensibility was not only about trying to right the wrongs that the boomers inflicted on the record industry, where they canabalized that which they loved. Xer's were trying to resusitate that which they loved, a rock n' roll that had died, or at least been on life support since 79. Where the boomers said "Fuck The System," shortly before joining it, the Xer's said "The systems fucked, I'll just do it myself!"
Perhaps the most defeating thing about a revolution, is that it's hard to anticipate, or sometimes even see the change taking place. There's a whole lot of waiting. And for those on the front lines of a revolution, the inspired, and the progressive, sometimes the wait can just kill you. Or allow you to kill yourself.
CR,CR on the surface isn't making any claims that the band Pavement are in anyway preaching, or the picture of change - but you can't help but think that they are. The album is a tour diary of sorts - a realization that Malkamus and the boys took off on this journey by their own accord, and things are different but they're still the same. We're making music we want to hear, but people will still ask "Did you see the drummers hair?". And by the end of the album, the chorus of "I need to sleep" wearily, yet somewhat angrily comes from the speaker. You can almost hear what Malkamus is thinking "I've done what I could, I've worked hard at it, but you guys still aren't listening. Make sure you wake me when the revolutions here."
Track listing for Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain :
- "Silence Kid" - 3:01
- "Elevate Me Later" - 2:51
- "Stop Breathin'" - 4:28
- "Cut Your Hair " - 3:07
- "Newark Wilder" - 3:53
- "Unfair" - 2:33
- "Gold Soundz " - 2:41
- "5-4=Unity" - 2:09
- "Range Life" - 4:54
- "Heaven Is a Truck" - 2:30
- "Hit the Plane Down" - 3:36 (Spiral Stairs)
- "Fillmore Jive" - 6:38
Locating MOG account...
Comments (17)
god i love the way you write; "This is broken down rock n' roll, rehabilitated, resuscitated for our own needs, and put back on the road as is."
Malkamus is thinking "I've done what I could, I've worked hard at it, but you guys still aren't listening. Make sure you wake me when the revolutions here."
And for the record, since I feel the 90s was an era without much distinction or spirit, I'd be curious to see in 2010, a resurection of all things 90's. Kids will flock to the kitsch aspects of Hammer pants and Cross Colors. And for the record I hope the flannel grunge movement never returns. save doc martens. i gotsta love my docs.
somethings are timeless, like doc's. I think the 90's distinction is it's indistiction (oh how post modern and very 90's at the same time). It was sort of the result of pop cultural overload. Kids growing up in the general discontent of the seventies left them discontent in the 90's.
Buffalo Springfields line "There's something happening here, what it is aint exactly clear" comes to mind. But it never is clear. Now we are so quick to identify it, label it and put it in a museum, it doesn't get a chance to hatch from it's cocoon and fly. Look at all the abels we have for sub genres of music: Math Rock, Nerd Core, etc. I'm guilty of it myself (simply for the fact I like creating words like the above).
The 90's was about grasping at elements of inspiration and making something. I don't know how you would define Pavements sound, but it's just so unique. Maybe it's intentional and a calculated miscalculation, but that in itself is also what the 90's was about. I think the post modern deconstruction of everything kinda collapsed in the 90's as a result of this circular logic.
Well said. The Boomers not only kept their kids "children" longer than any other generation, they +still aren't stepping down from positions of power, putting off retirement indefinitely in order to retain the power (but the power of the old guard fades anyway) because as you said, the Xers said, "fuck it... the system is flawed... I'll do it myself..." and therein lies the rub. The Boomer generation stuck us with the bill, and figured that we would fix it anyway... so here's to 2010 and beyond. (may it come sooner... at least the part about taking over...)
Cheers!
I'm a bit of a cusper myself. I stradle the edge of Gen X and I guess Y, but I associate more with X. Around the time of Brokaw's book "The Greatest Generation" my friend said something along the lines that there should be a book called "The Worst Generation" about the boomers. Obviously, he was a bit sarcastic in saying it, and we all have boomers we love, but I think he was getting at the over all self importance many of our elders exhibited to us growing up, and in turn basically telling us how we weren't living up to what they did for the world.
I certainly wont make such a sweeping geralization about a whole generation of people, but man you can only get pounded with how great the 60's were so much before you want to go start your own punk band and bury everything.
Along those lines, I think the Gen-X'ers saw that the previous generation tried to change the system and failed miserably, and decided that they would simply "opt out". The baby boomers never understood that as a legitimate course of action, thus the antipathy, the "slacker" references.
Exactly. It's kind of a "I'm taking my toys and I'm gonna play over here" approach. It's tiny revolutions. We will find like minded folks, and do it our way. I think it is the main reason you have these growing grass roots movements like community sustained agriculture, urban homesteading, critical mass. It's not about changing everyones mnids, just enough to try to effect a change.
"If you (re)build it, they will come"
LOL!!! Contra - so true - and the way is through music and media etc... it's a social revolution, just like the 60's - it's funny though, the same ones that talked about how great the 60's were, were responsible for all the "Worst" stuff that you talk about. Most of the hippies actually became yuppies and were responsible for the S&L scandal in the 80's and even the sub-prime debacle that we're facing now in this decade. Sarbanes-Oxley was handed down based on that - etc...
Agree with Dale too - that the Xers were opting out - because they were disinterested, and they labelled it "slacking" - Xers didn't like the rules (and lack of them in some cases) but also - their hands were tied. They saw the flaws in the system, as the hold guard hanging on forever, and the cronyism that was established, kept them out in a lot of cases - and they couldn't really play - so they didn't even pick the ball up and go home - they changed the rules of the game, and designed a new ball altogether.
That's powerful.
great post and such a great album. I can remember hearing gold soundz and right afterwards heading to Cheepo records to find this band I had not heard of before. A few weeks later I was watching them in concert, and this record played for almost a year on my cd player. I can only hope when 2010 comes around props are given to bands like this, and the soundtracks of which you speak are not filled with the pop music that I grew to hate.
Yeah, I think I bought it souly off of "Cut Your Hair". Listening to the album kind of made me feel the way I did when I first heard The Velvet Underground - I didn't get it right away, but I knew there was something more to what I was hearing. There were these kind of out of tune sounding melodies they were playing, and someone could only play stuff like that on purpose! It's one of those albums I feel good about finding, because none of my friends were listening to them, so my reference was pretty limited.
It's one of those albums I feel good about finding, because none of my friends were listening to them...........funny because I felt the same way. I also remember trying to shove this record down their throats because of how great I thought it was, I dont think they felt the same way about it though.
I think I had it for a couple years, and then Trey Anastasio of Phish name checked them in an interview. Then one of my friends was interested.
ha!
contra: Did you really invoke Lloyd Dobler? Whoa. In any case, this is my numero uno Pavement joint.
As I sse it, the Boomers mutation into the "Me" Generation, with its greed and materialism, is related to a strain of Peter Pan-ism - hanging on to youth and the trappings of youth. You gotta figure that it was tough to reconcile such an attitude with the adult responsibilities of child-rearing. Thus, in the face of knee-jerk or half-assed parenting, another (albeit different) generation of disaffected youth is spawned, then another, and another - each with its own brace of musical styles/idols.
But rock 'n' roll will never die. It will continue to exist as one of the many genres of popular music, rather than the life-altering force it was for almost 50 years.
I guess rock n' roll as we know it, or knew it (55ish - 79) is dead, but rock n' roll isn't really one of those things you can define so specifically. I consider hip hop rock n' roll. I guess rock n' roll expands, and the borders blur. It is rock n' roll in the popular music sense, but it's not the rock n' roll we knew. So no, it will never die, it will just be rehabed and used in it's own way (like my analogy above) by the next gen.
I certainly have no patience for, but I am guilty of the sort of re-adolescence of post college life. I can remember feeling as angry as a teenager shortly after college. You have this limbo of "waiting for life to happen". Being n the other side of it now, I just look at the few single friends I have and wonder what it was all about. Did I really have that much time on my hands? It's frustrating, but when you live in a country where even with education your barely making more than minimum wage when you've got student loans, after 4 years of school, I guess you can't blame people for regressing to the only state of mind you can feel nostagic for.
I was never a Pavement fan, but I like the points you make about how this relates to our (Gen X) generation. From what I can tell, they will be seen as a history lesson for those kids that will "re-discover" the 1990s. Certainly an interesting representation of the times.
Great post!
About a week ago I was going through some playlists I have of bands listed by year. When I listened to the album, it really brought back a lot of memories of that time and they really just seemed to fit the Gen-X aesthetic to a T. They also seemed like the blue print for the indie scene and the dreaded "hipster."
"CR,CR represents everything that 80's post-punk college rock was building up, and pardon the pun, paving the way for the indie revolution."
This strikes me as quite true. I haven't listened to much pavement but I played in bands and saw a lot live local/unsigned bands in the late eighties and this disc contains a lot of what was being done at the time. A lot of approaching melody then backing off, vocals that hit the note then go off pitch, and tunings.
I don't know quite how to read this. Is it just a cynical approach to the pop form and an admission that it's all been done before and can't be improved upon, so let's not even try? I see the parallel to Velvet Underground you mentioned but I also think that VU embraced sixties-style melody with a little less irony. Anyway nice to hear it.