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Yeah, this book is a few years old, but after reading The Flaming Lips book, I was definitely in the mood to read some more music biographies! Plus, even though I've loved Pavement for decades now, I still didn't know very much about them. Recently, I dug their first album Slanted & Enchanted out, and I've been listening to it in the car. (Something about Spring weather just puts me in the mood for that CD!) And Mike and I were commenting on that awesome cymbal-skippy thing in "Summer Babe", and Mike made a passing reference to their crazy hippie drummer...and it gave me pause. They had a crazy hippie drummer? I didn't remember him from the video to "Cut Your Hair"? That's when I knew, it was time to read this book...
Ah, the days before the internet, when fans had to go to great lengths to learn things about the bands that they liked! And as you learn from this book, apparently Pavement intentionally played up the mystique in the beginning, avoiding putting their pictures in releases, and with founding member Scott Kannberg using the enigmatic moniker "Spiral Stairs". So the tales about their acid-fried first drummer Gary Young were quite interesting to read! (Even if his brain was full of holes like swiss cheese, he sure was a kick-ass drummer...)
The book also proved interesting in, um, revealing the passive-aggressive nature of Stephen Malkmus. The break-up of Pavement was always a bit confusing to me, and this book addresses some of Malkmus' crappy behaivor towards the end. For example, during the Coachella '99 show, Malkmus would just stop singing mid-song, frustrating his band members to no end. And, then of course, there was the final nail in the Pavement coffin, when Malkmus called Kannberg asking him to put something on the Pavement website saying the band had broken up, when this was absolute news to him! When Kannberg insisted that Malkmus call up his former bandmates to let them know the band was over first, Malkmus responded with a "hissyfit", leaving the dirty job to poor Kannberg in the end. Ouch.
In any case, it's a fascinating, drama-filled read, and is amazingly-designed by Cooley Design Lab. The book combines plain ol' text, with "handwritten" footnotes indicated with circles and arrows, plus reprints of old band flyers, fanzine reviews, and photographs, giving it that D.I.Y.-feel that absolutely evokes the band's era. (janice.04.06)
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