Bryan Charles - Pavements Wowee Zowee

WOWEE ZOWEE

Praise for the series:

It was only a matter of time before a clever publisher realized
that there is an audience for whom Exile on Main Street or Electric
Ladyland are as significant and worthy of study as The Catcher in
the Rye or Middlemarch . The series is freewheeling and
eclectic, ranging from minute rock-geek analysis to idiosyncratic
personal celebration The New York Times Book Review

Ideal for the rock geek who thinks liner notes
just arent enough Rolling Stone

One of the coolest publishing imprints on the planet Bookslut

These are for the insane collectors out there who appreciate
fantastic design, well-executed thinking, and things that
make your house look cool. Each volume in this series
takes a seminal album and breaks it down in startling
minutiae. We love these. We are huge nerds Vice

A brilliant series each one a work of real love NME (UK)

Passionate, obsessive, and smart Nylon

Religious tracts for the rock n roll faithful Boldtype

[A] consistently excellent series Uncut (UK)

We arent naive enough to think that were your only
source for reading about music (but if we had our way
watch out). For those of you who really like to know everything
there is to know about an album, youd do well to check
out Continuums 33 1/3 series of books Pitchfork

For reviews of individual titles in the series, please visit our
website at www.continuumbooks.com
and 33third.blogspot.com

For a complete list of books in this series, see the back of this book

Bryan Charles

2010

The Continuum International Publishing Group Inc
80 Maiden Lane, New York, NY 10038

The Continuum International Publishing Group Ltd
The Tower Building, 11 York Road, London SE1 7NX
www.continuumbooks.com

Copyright 2010 by Bryan Charles

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by
any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or
otherwise, without the written permission of the publishers.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Charles, Bryan.
Wowee Zowee / Bryan Charles.
p. cm. (33 1/3)
1. Pavement (Musical
group) 2. Rock musicians United States Biography. I. Title.
II. Series.

ML421.P38C53 2010
782.421660922 dc22
2009051862

eISBN-13: 978-1-4411-0377-2

Typeset by Pindar NZ, Auckland, New Zealand
Printed in the United States of America

Gerard Cosloy, May 20 and 21, 2008

Doug Easley, March 18, 2009

Bryce Goggin, April 1, 2009

Danny Goldberg, March 12, 2009

Mark Ibold, March 10, 2009

Scott Kannberg, July 14 and October 10, 2008

Steve Keene, June 7, 2009

Chris Lombardi, June 17, 2008

Stephen Malkmus, May 14 and June 17, 2009

Bob Nastanovich, July 10, 2008 and October 6, 2009

Mark Venezia, April 6, 2009

Steve West, May 27, 2009

I was living in Kalamazoo Michigan on Walwood Place. There was a football field in front of the house. Starting in August the WMU Broncos would practice there. Id wake to their grunts and whistles and yells. In the winter and spring the field was empty. Wed slip through an opening in the fence and let Spot run around. On a hill overlooking the field was East Hall, part of the old main campus, now barely in use. East Hall was a red brick building with broad white columns. You could see all of Kalamazoo from its steps. The steps were a good place to ponder existential dilemmas. They were a good place to make out. It was early 95. I was twenty years old. I ate Papa Johns for dinner two or three nights a week.

The Walwood pad was a former assisted-living facility, two large apartments connected by a back set of service stairs. Greg, Chafe and Curt lived in the upstairs unit. Justin, Spot, Luke and I lived downstairs. Spot was Justins dalmatian. He was a great-looking dog but a little nuts. He seemed to attack everyone except Justin and me. Id met Justin a year earlier when we were both music writers at the Western Herald. Justin dug Greil Marcus and Lester Bangs. His criticism was stuffed with non sequiturs and obscure references. I was less sure of myself as a critic and by early 95 Id essentially quit. I liked writing and playing music more than analyzing and critiquing it.

I played guitar and sang in a band called Fletcher. We were a power trio with a Jawbreaker vibe. I had my Stratocaster and Twin Reverb in the Walwood basement. I spent hours down there writing songs. Id get blitzed, crank the reverb and play surf tunes. Chafe and Curt were in a quasi-Dischord outfit called Inourselves. Their apartment was littered with instruments and recording machines. Someone was always listening to or playing music in that house. This was in keeping with the Kalamazoo ethos of the time. There were dozens of bands and everyone was a rock dude whether they actually played music or not. Even the girls were rock dudes. Everyone went to shows and bought vinyl and jocked out on obscure bands. At the same time underground vs. mainstream tensions had eased. Once in a while a big band made a splash. A few months earlier Weezers first record had hit the city like a megaton blast. It was beloved in all quarters of the fragmenting scene.

Justin worked at Flipside, Kalamazoos best record store and a haven for rock dudes in the middle of awkward musical transitions. A mini movement was afoot in the local hardcore community. Straight edge fell by the wayside. Darker pleasures reigned. Abstemious emo geeks ditched the gas-station work shirts and sanctimony. They started to blow grass and roll their own cigarettes. They grooved on jazz and orchestral pop. Moss Icon and Born Against were out. Sun Ra, Captain Beefheart and Brian Wilson were in. A new breed of geek materialized. Theyd hang by the vinyl bins at Flipside extolling the genius of hophead jazz greats. There was dietary capitulation. Soy milk and tofu were out. Beer and cheeseburgers were in. The weird change seemed to occur overnight. I was leery of this musically schizoid behavior and regarded the jazz and reefer scene with contempt. As a Flipside employee even Justin a Beatles freak and all-around power pop guy was susceptible. He disowned the traditional in favor of screeching free-form noise. He declaimed old favorites to be pass. He boned up on jazz history and held forth on this or that player or this or that famous session. He burned through new trends and passions forever in search of the Next Thing.

One day he came home with some promo CDs. We sat in his room going through them. I got the new Pavement, he said. He put it on. I dont remember what I was thinking as it played. I dont remember if we discussed it or not. All I know is what I heard made no impression on me. We played all or part of the disc. Justin took it off. I didnt think about it again for a long time.

One record I continued to think about was Slanted and Enchanted, Pavements first album. It was three years old but already felt to me like a timeless classic. I listened to it often that spring and early summer. It was in permanent rotation in a stack of vinyl I hauled back and forth between home and my job at Boogie Records. My favorite songs were Summer Babe, In the Mouth a Desert and Here. I also liked Conduit for Sale and Zurich Is Stained. I knew little about Pavement. I didnt know who the members were or where they were from. I knew I liked Unseen Power of the Picket Fence their song on the No Alternative compilation and I remembered sitting in my dorm room watching MTV and seeing the video for Cut Your Hair. That was a year ago. That had been strange. You saw strange things on MTV then. I saw Jawbox get interviewed by Lewis Largent, the ber bland host of 120 Minutes. He asked about the rave scene in Washington DC. They told him they didnt know anything about it. He apologized and admitted it was a stupid question.