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Welcome back
to Indie Rocker vs Classic Rocker. In this edition the boys
get all nostalgic over Pavement’s Slanted
& Enchanted and Bob Dylan’s Blonde
On Blonde.
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“I’ve
been waiting, anticipating… the sun comes up, the skies won’t sink my soul…” Cold air like icy
fingered knives cuts into my face as I hustle out to my parents’ minivan, a
two-tone silver gray behemoth that two years from now will be unceremoniously
up-ended and served shiny-side down onto an icy median while visiting a
girlfriend at college. I am nursing a
hang-over and clutching a cassette copy of a band operating under the name of
Pavement, a group of upper-middle class collegiates who went to school a few
hours south of here, who’ve been assaulting college radio stations, zines and
anybody who has more pimples than friends with their witty lack of zeal and
their blatant copy-catting of an English post-punk band with a curmudgeonly
lead singer. (Yeah, I know there’s more
than one.) While Pavement’s debut Slanted and Enchanted is harsh in some
areas – almost overbearing in its rawness – in my mind it is fitting that they
are named after one of the most soothing words in the English language. They are elegance wrapped in indifference. Despite the sudden chill I am an excited,
exalted and happily unrefined adolescent on a mission. I have just left the comforting embrace of a
dorm-room floor at Albright College, entombed among records by seminal punk
bands and obscure art-rock groups comprised of people who sing in weird accents
and who have a redefined concept of how an instrument should be played. Emboldened by naivety and an unquenchable
desire to listen to music that my parents find “unlistenable,” I pop the tape into
the deck. Yeah, those icy knives are on me as the minimalist drums
and swirling guitars take shape to form the opening riff of “Summer Babe
(Winter Version)”, and it takes a good fifteen minutes for the engine to heat
up, but in a few moments, while traversing the roads of Reading back to the
state capital that is my hometown. I’ll be warmed by
these refreshing new sounds. They are
difficult sounds. Treacherous
sounds. Gold Soundz. It is the fall of 1992, and I am seventeen
years old. By
the time I reach the bucolic back road that leads me to route 78, I have fallen
deeply in love. I am head over heels
for the clanging instruments, the alternately abrasive yet entrancing vocals,
the whimsical (and seemingly nonsensical) wordplay. I think to myself, Who the
hell would think to rhyme ‘lies and betrayals’ with ‘fruit covered nails’? To some it is the work of a creative
genius. At the very least, it brings to
light the troubling fact that, in comparison, many songwriters easily succumb
to clichés and that this Malkmus character – at this particular stage in his
life, anyway – refuses to take the easy way out. His songs are the abstract answer to the concrete question: How many ways can you write about having
your heart broken? I ask myself this as
the searing, convulsive guitar solo in “Loretta’s Scars” (one of my favorite
solos committed to tape) takes control of the radio. This album is a series of beautiful mistakes. The wind howls in agreement. There
is sadness in a cold fall morning that resonates with me. Every time I hear this album, I think of
bronze-leafed trees and clouds of steamy breath, winter coats with mittens
dangling haphazardly from buttons. From
the inside of my van I can see people carrying on animated conversations, held
captive by the oppressive chill, trying to expediently get their ideas across
before the weight of cold becomes overbearing.
Most people hate fall: they see it as the beginning of the end. Not me, though. I see it as the apex, that moment right before everything goes to
hell, the last gasp, if you will, before it ends, and we all start over. Jay’s
Bit
I am always at the
bus stop at Baum Boulevard and Craig Street, and my heart has been broken into
about a thousand pieces, which seems a stereotypical way to describe heartbreak,
but I could feel myself choking on pieces of muscle and torn flesh and blood,
in between drags on my smoke. The sun
is going down, but I have sunglasses on because I don’t care, and if some
motherfucker in Homewood thinks he’s going to mess with me on the way back
tonight, I’m going to burn a whole in his soul, until he writhes. I have Dylan’s Blonde on Blonde on my
walkman (a walkman, how fucking quaint), and every lyric is killing me. The album is psychedelic suicide via
heartbreak. I keep fast forwarding to
“Fourth Time Around.” I am bypassing
everything else, and I am thinking about being in Liz Riddick’s apartment on
Craig Street, Big Yellow, and how she and I sat by her steam heater to keep
warm. She was drinking coffee, and I
wanted a drink, and for some reason I told her that I was in love with
her. Liz Riddick. My Friend, Liz Riddick. Liz who had been the bane of my sophomore
year, who had been a mistake I’d stumbled upon in class, who’d been my partner,
and who sat in the union and laughed at me for the whole semester over my
trials with other women. “When
she said don’t waste your words, they’re just lies, I cried she was deaf.” And the year was
dying, and Pittsburgh was dying, and only a week before Liz and I had been in a
darkened theatre watching this flick called “A Perfect World” with Kevin
Costner and Liz was crying, and I held her close, and kissed the top of her
head like a friend would do. And Liz
Riddick was just a mistake I ran into in class, and there I was by the heater of
her apartment on Craig Street telling her that I was in love with her. And I was wearing my leather jacket. And Liz had coffee. And I wanted a drink, but I would’ve settled
for her hand, man. “It was
raining from the first and I was dying of thirst, So I came in here. But your long time curse hurts, but what’s
worse, is this pain in here. I can’t
stay in here, ain’t it clear.” And I can’t quit
talking. She’s saying no and wrapping herself into herself, and I don’t
care. Just keep talking Grochalski, I
think, because you got some kinda way with words, man. Keep giving her your prose, man, because a
woman loves to be told she’s loved. But
she’s saying no. Liz is drinking coffee
and saying no, and I can feel how cold my leather coat is. My friend Liz Riddick. Liz who had been a mistake I’d stumbled into
in class. Liz who laughed at my hapless
loves. Liz whom I loved. And so I left her apartment and I’m standing
at this bus stop at Baum Boulevard and Craig Street, and I have Bob Dylan’s
Blonde on Blonde on my walkman (a walkman, how quaint), and every lyric is
killing me. And I am thinking about
being in love with Liz Riddick. And I
am choking on my heart. “And
your saintlike face and your ghostlike soul, who among them do you think could
destroy you?” Kurt’s
Bit on Dylan Why the hell would anyone want to listen to
this nonsense, I mutter under my breath – actually, to anyone within close
proximity – in a Monday morning math class during my freshman year of high
school. My buddy Kevin, a fellow
burgeoning music aficionado, and up to this point, the biggest Bob Dylan fan
that I know, looks back at me, crestfallen at my disapproval. For the most part Kevin is cool; he plays
guitar, likes the Pixies, and can grow a full beard, which for a fifteen year
old is a definite check-plus in the trim-getting department, but that annoying
nasal drone of Mr. Zimmerman is driving me out of my mind. Because of this I briefly consider giving
Kevin his walking papers. What Kev
doesn’t realize is that I am fighting nausea and sleep deprivation, the Mutt
and Jeff of my high school experience, and the last thing I want to listen to
is an elfish Minnesota rogue with outlandish vocal affectations and a penchant
for riding motorcycles at breakneck speeds.
(Zing!) Although my bus arrives
just down the street from my house at 7:15 every morning, I usually don’t wake
up until sometime close to noon, which means trekking zombie-like from class to
class, my cerebrum overwrought with boring calculations and insipid dangling
participles; things that I couldn’t possibly give a damn about considering that
when I do awake to this heavenly nightmare I spend every waking moment trying
to reel in my hormones, which are racing at top speed; clutching, begging,
longing for a willing young lass with which to commit unholy mayhem. And when the moment of clarity does finally
peek its sunny smiling face through the fog, there are a thousand different
things going through my mind: Should I
have cuffed my jeans? Must Algebra be
this boring? Why do most teachers give
off a scent of failure tempered by false enthusiasm? Now you’re dancing child with his Chinese suit
He spoke to me, I took his flute
No, I wasn’t very cute to him
Seriously
though, I’ve got all these issues going on, and I’m supposed to take the above
lyric as something other than second-rate quackery? You’ve got to be kidding me. But
then something happens. The
change doesn’t occur overnight, mind you.
In fact, it’s a decade-long transformation that comes to fruition in
southern California… …so
it’s 1999 and they say that you can alter your body chemistry if you consume
enough alcohol, and well, I’ve just spent five-plus years on such a survey with
predictably depressing results. I’m
flat on my back in a north Hollywood bungalow, hungover, with yet another
dead-end job that could possibly lead to big money but no spare time to do the
things I really like, when it hits me. It finally hits me, Kevin, you
magnificent kraut-eating sonofabitch- like some Midwestern hayseed wanna-be
starlet with a surgically enhanced chest who states without the slightest hint
of irony that she, “absolutely LOVES Los Angeles, except for the Mexicans,”
and I finally get Dylan. Or, at the
very least, I can appreciate the verbose wordplay, the ubiquitous harmonica,
the tin-plate percussion. Hell, I can
even stomach the throw-away lyrics and a man with a discography of countless
albums, where an artistically questionable record could lay in wait like a
forgotten land mine in a Bosnian cow pasture. Blonde on Blonde does me right.
Besides, when the last song on your album contains the following lines: With
you mercury mouth in the missionary times
And
your eyes like smoke and your prayers like rhymes
And
your silver cross, and your voice like chimes
Oh,
who among them do they think could bury you?
All is forgiven. Jay’s
Bit on Pavement To say Slanted and
Enchanted never meant a thing to me, I guess, to some would say that I’m being
my standard prick self in this piece and am denying the greatness of yet
another damned fine indie rock band.
The truth of the matter is, I’ve done my years bowing down to the altar
of Pavement, and consider them a band I truly enjoy, but the splendor of
listening to them just simply did not start with their first and most herald
album. It began with the underground smirk of Crooked Rain, Crooken Rain, and
ended with the stark disjointedness of Brighten the Corners. Yeah, it must be like being a Velvet’s fan
without having heard a lick of The Velvet Underground and Nico album, but it’s
the truth. That’s not to say I haven’t
heard S/E, but to say that by the time I heard the fuzz and sway of Summer
Babe, I was already hooked, so the album never made a lasting impression on
me. Perhaps this is my fault. So I’ll be brief,
and will go back to 1994 and the Carnegie Library and Craig Seder, who first
hooked me on to Pavement. It was Seder who told 20-year-old me that everything
I was listening to in music was wrong, and in the same sort of the way a dealer
hands a junkie his wares, slid Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain across the desk at
the library, telling me with a knowing wink to take it home and give it a
listen. What I got was a plastered landscape of golden, lost summer evenings with
sun going down over buildings, and pockets full of smokes, and all the bluster
of youth. And I got high off of it. I remember Mary
Bermiano turning her nose up to Wowie Zowie in a Cranberry Twp parking lot, and
asking me what the hell I was doing listening to something like that. Mary, I
realized you and I were through in that golden moment, and as I spent the rest
of the night pouring us madly through the streets of suburban Pittsburgh, while
you moaned in Steven Malkmus’ voice, I knew freedom was coming. Garrison, if S/E gave you any of what the other
Pavement records gave me, and obviously it gave you much more….then I’ve been
babbling too long, and anyone who wasted their time reading what I wrote about
Pavement would’ve been better served by shutting off their PC and grabbing the
disc instead. Jay’s
final bit on Dylan: I have mastered the
art of drinking and made it through a New York morning alone with my head
thumping in a Bay Ridge Greek Diner. As
I push through eternity on the subway trains, I throw Dylan’s Blonde on Blonde
on my Discman (no Ipods for this kid) just to see how old we’ve grown. Through
the fog of Zimmy’s psychedelic apocalypse, I can see images of myself from that
time before. And there I am. And there is Liz Riddick’s apartment so far
away. And there is the D train with its
magic, barreling past me at 36th street (Brooklyn). I put my head against a graffiti-scratched
window, and I close my eyes. The booze
and time are working on me good. I can
feel every rattle and sway of the R train.
And then… Kurt’s
final bit on Pavement: It was time well spent.
Kurt Garrison enjoys moonlit walks to the convenience store and often practices Kung-Fu in an inebriated state. When not sleeping in a queen-size bed he's been known to make a mean blueberry pancake. His cat is still named Isaac (for now). John
Grochalski, TNY’s resident Classic Rocker, is a writer formerly from
Pittsburgh. He lives in New York now with his wife and two cats. Grochalski's
book of poems "The Noose Doesn't Get Any Looser After You Punch Out"
is forthcoming via Six Gallery Press.
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