Tag Archives: reunion

So Pavement Sucked

Once upon a time, Pave­ment were a spe­cial band to me. That rabid fan­dom petered out since they called it quits in ’99, and ever since I’ve felt like Malk­mus’ solo career was just him navel gazing.

The reunion dis­ap­points main­ly because they haven’t learned any­thing about show­man­ship since their start­ed. Maybe that’s good for folks who were accus­tomed to them being one of the most bor­ing live acts on the indie cir­cuit, but I real­ly expect­ed it to feel momen­tous, like I’d final­ly wit­nessed a piece of his­to­ry I missed the first time around.

Does­n’t help that my friend got assault­ed, or that the words “I could kill you” were direct­ed at me, entire­ly unpro­voked. What they said about Pave­ment fans chang­ing over their course def­i­nite­ly holds. I’ll stick to those records and cher­ish the mem­o­ries I made lis­ten­ing to them.

Also worth not­ing: the Mann Music Cen­ter was­n’t near­ly as great a venue as I thought, at least not for rock music. I know that I’m nos­tal­gic for my high school days when I saw clas­sic rock fogies like Emer­son, Lake and Palmer and the Moody Blues sit­ting on the lawn, but the pavil­ion sounds real­ly noisy, espe­cial­ly toward the back. I hate to say it, but I’ve had bet­ter con­cert expe­ri­ences at the back of the Susque­han­na Bank Cen­ter pavilion.

Smashing Pumpkins Anniversary Tour

I laughed when I read this at Pitch­fork. They threw a sim­i­lar tantrum when I saw them in July 1996, play­ing 20 plus min­utes of feed­back, alleged­ly because they’d been asked to play longer to avoid traf­fic snarls with the crowd leav­ing a Phillies game. Some things nev­er change, huh?

These 90’s reunions would be much more appeal­ing if the bands could seri­ous­ly get their acts togeth­er. I’ve skipped Stone Tem­ple Pilots and Smash­ing Pump­kins sim­ply because I expect­ed both to be dis­as­trous, not to men­tion that it feels too soon for these reunions. (I’m look­ing hard at you too, Pavement.)