Talking Sentences So Incomplete

Pavement @ Rumsey Playfield, Central Park 9/24/2010

Heckler Spray / In The Mouth A Desert / Frontwards / Spit On A Stranger / Shady Lane / Date With IKEA / Grounded / Cut Your Hair / Perfume-V / Conduit For Sale! / Father To A Sister Of Thought / Stereo / Starlings Of The Slipstream / Gold Soundz / The Hexx / We Dance / Silent Kid / Unfair / No Life Singed Her / Trigger Cut / Stop Breathin’ / Ell Ess Two / Here // Rattled By The Rush / Heaven Is A Truck / Summer Babe /// Kennel District / Debris Slide / Range Life

After the glow, the scene, the stage, the set…

The night after my last Pavement show — possibly ever! — I found myself wishing that I could just go back to Central Park and see another Pavement show. Like, somehow, going to the park and seeing Pavement every night could just be the new normal. But alas, Friday night was it for me, and for all the moments that were bittersweet, it was mostly just a total blast. All the Pavement shows I saw last week had their own character, and this one was the victory lap. They were on, and so was the audience. A lot of singing along, a lot of physical movement, a lot of unrestrained glee for these wonderful songs, and these charming men. I know I’ll be seeing Malkmus again before too long with the Jicks, and that there will be opportunities to see Spiral and Mark perform again, but man, I am going to miss Bob Nastanovich. I wish that he could just get some kind of gig — I don’t care, a podcast! A podcast would be enough! — that kept him in our lives. He’s a true gem, and there’s just nothing else like him in all of rock and roll. More bands should consider finding their own Bob Nastanovich.

Pavement “Grounded” [Live in London, 4/11/1997]

Every time they played “Grounded”, I did this thing when that huge, majestic riff comes in — tilt my head back, get up on my tiptoes as it ascended, and then “crashed” down as the motif ended with Steve West’s drum fill. It felt like the right response, it had just the right physical and emotional resonance. I will maintain forever that Wowee Zowee would’ve sold a lot more copies if “Grounded” was the lead single. Pavement’s singles erred on the side of the sillier, more novel tunes, but I think 1995 was the right time to remind listeners that the band had a darker, more emotional side, and could write this ambiguous yet totally devastating ballad about the inner life of some patrician doctor. It certainly would’ve made more sense on the alt-rock radio of that time than anything else on the record. (Would any other Pavement song make sense coming after “Glycerine”?) All these years later, it’s taken its rightful place among the band’s best-loved classics, a cornerstone of the reunion tour setlist. Most of Pavement’s best live songs are due to the energy level or opportunities for improvisation, but with “Grounded,” it’s just about the song’s intensity. It has an unusual and beautiful power.

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