Pressed Into A Little Electric Two

Pavement @ Williamsburg Waterfront 9/19/2010

Cut Your Hair / Date With IKEA / Rattled By The Rush / Ell Ess Two / Grounded / Frontwards / Shady Lane / Unfair / Perfume-V / Fight This Generation / Silent Kid / Box Elder / Stop Breathin’ / Two States / Father To A Sister Of Thought / Heckler Spray / In The Mouth A Desert / We Dance / Summer Babe / Fin / Stereo // Spit On A Stranger / Trigger Cut / Starlings Of The Slipstream / Gold Soundz / Kennel District / Range Life

When I saw Pavement at the Pitchfork festival back in July, it was a very intense experience. I would’ve been freaking out no matter what, but my energy level was pushed to an extreme by a large and very enthusiastic audience. Pure fanboy bliss. This show was a lot more mellow. There were definitely a lot of people having a good time, but this wasn’t a crowd of excitable superfans. It was more just like a normal show. Which is weird, right? I may be seeing Pavement play almost every day this week, but it’s not like you get to see a Pavement show every day. My theory is that all the hardcore people will be at the Central Park shows, which were the first reunion tour gigs to go on sale a year ago, and this Williamsburg show was for the less committed stragglers. This was a great gig and I had a wonderful time and got to see the band perform songs I’d never seen them do before, but I’m looking at this one as a warm-up. The main event begins tonight.

Memorable moment: During “We Dance,” Bob brought out Stephen’s wife Jessica, and danced sweetly with her on the right side of the stage. After the song, Stephen said “That was for Jessica Hutchins. She put out on that one.”

Pavement “Box Elder” (Live in Hollywood, 4/24/1994)

I don’t think I ever appreciated “Box Elder” as much as I did Sunday night. It’s a simple, compact tune, and aside from a couple strange lines, one of the most direct songs Stephen Malkmus has ever written. It’s from their very first 7″, and it begins a theme that carries on through Malkmus’ most recent material: Hey, I’m moving on, can’t stick around here. Gotta keep going. See ya. This tour is about as sentimental as Malkmus gets, and well…he certainly doesn’t seem that way up on stage. “Box Elder” resonated with me because I was connecting its desire to move on with someone else, but maybe I was also tapping into something in Malkmus’ performance — he’s here and present, but he’s got his eyes on the exits, and ready to go somewhere new.

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