If you haven’t heard already, then you either don’t care or you’re my dad, but Pavement have reformed for some ‘one off’ shows in New York in September 2010. It’s a sign of the times we live in, and I don’t just mean how fast news spreads over the internet. Bands reform so often that I’m not sure if anyone ever really dies anymore.
WORDS: STEPHEN PIETRZYKOWSKI
Prompted a little by Pitchfork’s prescriptive attempt to summarise the decade in lists and my own proclivity towards nostalgia, I’ve been thinking about what the last ten years will be remembered for, even if just so I can make a series of sentimental mix CDs. Rather than be characterised by any one type of music, like say punk in the 70s, the noughties has basically been one continuous George Romero film, sometimes with the same associated horror (that’s you, Verve). My Bloody Valentine, Pixies, the Jesus and Mary Chain, Blur, Slint, The Breeders, Polvo, Sleep, even Rival fucking Schools: the list stretches into infinity (or so it would seem), mainly thanks to ATP’s messianic ability to bring the dead back to life. But sometimes the dead should just stay lying down. Has nobody seen Pet Cemetery?
As great as some of these shows have been, very few of these bands have bothered to make any new music, opting just to take the easy pay day and live off former glories like Liverpool football fans. They literally are Day of the Dead zombies feasting on the shopping mall of life, which is OK for a few hours, but I don’t want to spend the rest of my years looking back over my shoulder like my life is already over. I’m not going to begrudge anyone making money and it’s not as if they’re all Simon Le Bon rich, but this haunted decade is getting a bit predictable and I’m not sure how long my neck can stay this twisted.
But let me be clear, Pavement reforming is, for me, a very good thing (even though I know some some people at Platform don’t exactly agree – you’re wrong, btw). Too young and clueless to see them while they were together, the band have nonetheless soundtracked the whole of my teenage and adult years. Until recently, I thought that I’d listened to Pavement enough to not have to hear them ever again, but the reissuing of the first four albums, replete with about a million extra songs, has got me falling in love all over again like a second honeymoon. Too see them live is a teenage dream come true (as it was with Blur), even though I’ve seen Slow Century and suspect they might not exactly be watertight. But my desire is pure nostalgia. The true pleasure is the thought they might reform, not the actual experiencing it. The dream is sweeter than the taste - “a goal once reached, always retreats a new”. Even though I know this, I’m booking my plane tickets right now…
Reviewing a copy of the recently reissued Feelies albums (which are amazing, apparently) a friend of mine observed that we’re running out of ‘lost classics’ to exhume and canonise. He claims what we do have left should be protected and preserved like fossil fuels, because they are a finite resource; a resource the music industry desperately needs to survive. There’s hardly any history left. The past is nearly up to the present. With Pavement now back together, I’m not sure who’s left. I might have to start pretending to like dead bands (Limp Bizkit, anyone?)
The maxim of rock and roll has long been live fast, die young and leave a beautiful corpse. Somehow adding “and then in fifteen years reform for a series of one off shows at Camden Underworld” doesn’t seem quite so seductive. And the thought of those inevitable Oasis comeback shows is bringing sick between my teeth. That said, if Michael Jackson wants to be reborn as a dancing Robocop from space playing on a revolving stage above the reconstructed Twin Towers, that’s one (other) Lazarus comeback I’d make a concession for.
So, see you all in NYC 2010…
Pavement – “Frontwards”
