Smacks of Slack

I picked up a copy of rock critic Rob Jovanovic's Pavement bio, "Perfect Sound Forever" as a self present at Christmas time. A completely fascinating read, especially with regards to original drummer Gary Young's drunken antics (onstage gymnastics and cabbage charity service) and Malkmus' late Pavement diva behaviour. More than anything it inspired me to dig through the Pavement discography, which, as it turns out, is pretty fucking timeless. "Brighten the Corners" (which Matador recently reissued in a sexy deluxe package) caught me off guard especially as being such a brilliant, musically competent album, standing out as the obvious pinnacle of the bands career (though Slanted is still pretty fuckin badass).
Stereo (sizzlin lead off track from Brighten)

Malkmus also indicates in interview, that despite being labeled as slackers, Pavement always tried their best:
SM: "Usually we're trying as hard as we can to be entertaining."
The slacker reputation, so it seems, comes more from their naive, laissez faire approach to the music industry, the story of the first Pavement 7" is especially characteristic of slacker behaviour, here's a spattering of quotes to whet your appetite:
SM: "I was fucking around getting static from the radio and Scott had a keyboard and was recording himself with this little handheld cassette. It was pretty reasonable to be able to make a single for $1000, so we decided to go for it. We didn't have any real plans because we weren't a real band."
Gary Young: "These 19 year old kids walk into my recording studio to do a four hour thing. They come in and they play this weird guitar noise and it just sounds like noise with no background. My drums were in there so I said 'should I drum?' and they said 'ok'... [Malkmus]'d play the guitar and he'd say, 'okay get ready, do, do, do- one two three,' and that's how that worked."
Spiral Stairs: "I had no idea mastering was a big thing. I got the test pressing back and it just sounded so bad. It sounded like it sounds now- it's just a mess- but being poor and not really caring I said 'okay that's cool, if it sounds like that- whatever"
The day after they recorded Malkmus left to CA to travel the world:
SM: "I was on vacation in Austria and i heard the EP over a record shop stereo... Iasked the guy in the record shop whether I could see it and there it was. I told him Pavement was my band. He said "that's a good name, somebody had to use it eventually"
and so forth. what a bunch of jokers those Pavement guys, hey? Here's a couple tracks from a 94 show in Hollywood that i found over at the always excellent aquariumdrunkard.com blog a couple months back,
Box Elder (Live, 94 [one of the two songs on slay tracks])
Stop Breathin (Live 94)
Coming soon: The first installment of I AM NOT AFRAID OF YOUR DISCOGRAPHY AND I WILL BEAT IT'S ASS, featuring: More blog posts about, you guessed it, Pavement!