March 10, 2002

 
I've been reading a lot of old articles about Pavement... all a part of my cyclical obsession with them, a seasonal cycle that's been unbroken since 1994. For some reason, the spring = Pavementmania for me. I'm like a capistrano swallow...

I'm particularly fond of this one article from The New Yorker, circa Brighten The Corners. It (along with this article from BAM) seems to very eloquently explain a lot of my love for the band, particularly the lyrics of Stephen Malkmus...

choice bits:

The music burrowed through the dense, dissonant textures that were fashionable in eighties underground rock, then took flight in stately melodies that smacked of a sunbaked suburb and a refined pop-record collection. A flat-toned voice sang lyrics that sometimes touched on suburban discontent but more often drifted into unanalyzable abstraction. "Life is a forklift." "Now my mouth is a forklift. This I ask, that you serve as a forklift too." What did it mean? No one had any idea. That was the beauty of it. Pavement was credited to "SM, Spinal Stairs, and G. Young"; it looked to be some kind of dangerous Dadaist cult.


Malkmus aims at writing rock songs with history and poetry in them. He has a gift for coining phrases that sound like points in a missing manifesto or like slogans for a movement yet to be named: "the South takes what the North delivers"; "Between here and there is better than either here or there"; "Praise the grammar police." But no phrase really connects with the next, and Malkmus's little orations turn cryptic or comic.

A few moments later, the topic, so to speak has switched to the falsetto croon of the lead singer of Rush--"What about the voice of Geddy Lee? How did it get so high? I wonder if he speaks like an ordinary guy?" A band mate chimes in, "I know him, and he does!" Malkmus answers, "Well, you're my fact-checking cuz." The idea that such a song could have its own fact checking department in Pavement's best joke since the Jason Priestley hoax.

Sometimes Malkmus is apparently seeking out words that can't have appeared together in rock songs before. In "Type Slowly" he sings the phrases "excruciatingly gray," "leather terrarium," and "lady, I'm no futurist." More often, his choices have musical logic behind them. He pins his lines to classic rhythms--for example, Chuck Berry's "Johnny B. Goode" pattern, with the "Goode" falling between beats two and three. Malkmus invents ever odder combinations of words to fire up this old syncopation. "Shady Lane," the catchiest song on the new album, has a gentle, hypnotic melody that keeps slipping off the beat and then falling back into line. Two Johnny B. Goode-like phrases that cause slippage are "emery board" and "worlds collide." In another song Malkmus sings, "I vent my spleen at the Lord/He is abstract and bored"; this has the same rhythmic contour as, say, Grand Funk Railroad's "We're an American band ." Even if the words don't cohere, meanings emerge.

 
In other news, I was very disappointed by Jon Stewart's guest-hosting appearance on Saturday Night Live last night. My expectations were very high - Stewart is normally one of my favorite comedians, but nearly every sketch last night was uninspired and mostly unfunny. It certainly wasn't all Stewart's fault - most of the cast seemed to be sleepwalking through this episode, and the writing was way below average in many skits. Please bear in mind this is SNL I'm talking about - below average can be really quite painful.

There were bits of quality - Tracy Morgan and Rachel Dratch were in a good skit playing themselves interviewing Jon Stewart, Tina Fey had a great one liner about not being a convincing Ashleigh Banfield in a sketch, and Stewart had a funny bit about coming off of the bench to fill in for Jimmy Fallon during Weekend Update - but that's about it. It was nice to see Chris Parnell back in the cast after being temporarily let go, even though he wasn't particularly funny in any of last night's skits. Will Ferrell wasn't in last night's show either; which was very unfortunate, and a bad sign for what will happen to the show once he finally leaves it in the near future. There are a number of solid comedians in the cast (namely Fey, Dratch, Fallon, Morgan, Amy Poehler), but somehow when Ferrell isn't around, it seems to falls apart.

 
My most sincere apologies to anyone who has been coming to this site in the past week hoping to find interesting content - for me, last week was characterized mainly by alternating between being rather busy and incredibly lazy.

Anyway, I've been listening to Woody Allen's Standup Comic record, which has been bringing me a great deal of pleasure. It's a shame Allen abandoned standup in 1968...he's certainly one of the best standup comedians that I've ever heard, a real master of the form. Picking up this record was mainly inspired by a chance viewing of Annie Hall on cable last weekend, and remembering how much I enjoy Woody's comedic work. It occured to me that an old friend of mine always spoke very highly of Woody's standup, so I splurged and bought a used cd...

I feel a great need to see more of the man's films, as I've only seen a small handful. Actually, I think that I need to see more films in general - I feel as though I've been neglected the cinema for far too long; like I should be a film buff by now, but I've been sidetracked. Anyone with good Woody Allen filmography advice, or film recommendation advice in general terms should be made aware of the fact that this blog now has a silly little guestbook in which you can feel free to leave me messages...