Pavement on Kinky Afro

I presented the Kinky Afro program on Triple R again tonight. And my special guests were Bob Nastanovich and Mark Ibold from the newly reformed PAVEMENT. As is not immediately evident from the photo above I was FRICKING NERVOUS and excited to be interviewing them. I even got all indie-fanboy and not only got a photo but had them sign by Dancing With The Elders and Father To A Sister of Thought 7" singles. I will try to attach the interview soon, but for now here is the tracklist from the program:

Pocahaunted - save yourself (its nice)
Otouto - twelve ten
Modest Mouse - novocaine stain
Harlem - gay human bones
Guided By Voices - underwater explosions
Pavement - in the mouth a desert
** Pavement Interview with Bob Nastanovich and Mark Ibold **
Pavement - at&t
Pavement - date with ikea
Pavement - silent kit
Here We Go Magic - collector
MGMT - flash delirium
Holly Miranda - no one just is
Calexico with Iron and Wine - history of lovers
Smith Westerns - girl in love
Besnard Lakes - and this is what we call progress
Dum Dum Girls - heart of stone
Spoon - trouble come running
Neon Indian - sleep paralysist
Freelance Whales - generator 2nd floor
Bell Weather Department - hole in the sky
Joanna Newsom - soft as chalk
The Morning Benders - promises
Ruby Suns - cranberry
Sparklehorse - saturday
Sparklehorse - someday i will treat you good
Sparklehorse - hundreds of sparrows
Sparklehorse - gold day
Sparklehorse - sick of goodbyes
Sparklehorse + Danger Mouse - just war (with Gruff Rhys)
Sparklehorse - its a sad and beautiful world
Real Estate - Fake Blues
Surfer Blood - swim
Predrag Delibasich - serpent bites the young lion
Caribou - odessa
Tame Impala - 41 mosquitos (Canyons remix)

You'll notice that I played a bunch of tracks from SPARKLEHORSE. In case you were not aware Mark Linkous, the 47 year old singer-songwriter behind the name, died on March 6th. He committed suicide, and had been battling depression for many years. It's incredibly sad news. Robin Hilton pays tribute here on the All Songs Considered blog.

Here's just one of his beautiful songs:

Pavement Radio Special - Tonight

UPDATE: the audio, now in the RRR archive, can be streamed here. Tracklist below:

Silent Kit (live version)
Box Elder
Summer Babe
Two States
Here (alternate mix)
Shoot The Singer
Range Life (demo version, with Gary Young)
Cut Your Hair
Dancing with The Elders / We Dance (alternate version)
Grounded (alternate version)
Serpentine Pad
Stereo
Date w/ Ikea (BBC Peel Session version)
Starlings in Slipstream
Major Leagues
Spit on a Stranger (live from their final gig in 1999)

Tune into Triple R tonight, Thursday 4th March, from 7pm AEDT for a special one hour program celebrating the music of American indie pioneers PAVEMENT. The best band ever invented. Hugely influential, mythically slack, sadly defunct until right this very second.

This special Max Headroom will feature key tunes from their early EPs like Slay Tracks and Perfect Sound Forever... the breakthrough albums Slanted and Enchanted and Crooked Rain Crooked Rain... dipping into the fan favourite Wowee Zowee... and finally their critically acclaimed Brighten the Corners and the swan-song Terror Twilight. Plus a smattering of rarities, live cuts and essential non-album tracks from their 10 years together, 1989-1999. Somehow we'll fit it all into an hour radio show!

Rediscover the brilliance of Pavement on the night of their first Australian show in Sydney, and the beginning of their world tour. Pavement also play Adelaide, Perth, Brisbane, Melbourne and best of all Golden Plains this coming weekend.

Max Headroom - PAVEMENT SPECIAL - hosted by Ryan Egan (that's me!)

Thursday 4th March 2010. 7pm Melbourne time (8am UT) on Triple R 102.7

STREAM IT LIVE - http://www.rrr.org.au/programs/streaming/

The new, and first ever Pavement "best of" - Quarantine the Past - is released this week as well, full details and tracklisting here: http://www.matadorrecords.com/store/index.php?catalog_id=468

Tour details: http://billions.com/pavement and check out Spiral Stair's blog about the current reunion tour: http://spiralstairsmusic.blogspot.com/

Pavement reformation ist rad

I should have posted this last week (well, i did but on Twitter, not here). It seems that my favourite band ever - PAVEMENT - is reforming for a world-wide tour in 2010. Their tour begins on September 21st, the first of four shows at Rumsey Playfield in New York's Central Park. On how the reunion came about Spiral Stairs (aka Scott Kannberg) told Prefix Mag:

"Steve and I just had a conversation on the phone, and we'd never talked about it before at all,” he said. “We've talked over the years, but the subject never came up. Then our agent asked us about these New York shows, so we went around to everybody in the band, and they said, 'Yeah, the time is right. If everybody's ready to do it, then we'll do it and see what happens'. There was no real impetus – it just kind of happened naturally."

More awesome details at matador.com and crookedrain.com

Fingers crossed for Australian dates, although it is tempting to buy tickets and a plane fare for NYC! VERY tempting...



Stephen Malkmus is in Australia this week anyway. I'll be seeing him on Wednesday at the Prince of Wales... AND Spiral Stairs is also in town too... coincidence? Hmm.

Spiral's in town.

Scott "Spiral Stairs" Kannberg is back in Australia this summer, playing Laneway Festival and a Melbourne show next week at the Northcote Social Club with a 'pickup' band of locals including his mates from Gersey and BBQ guru Julian Wu. Go figure! Along for the ride on Tuesday 3rd of February is campfire-pop heroes Port O'Brien, currently featured in TV ads locally (see below) and gathering some momentum on the back of their excellent album of 2008 "All We Could Do Was Sing".

Kannberg, in case you don't know, is the former guitar-slinger and founder of the best band ever invented in the known and unknown universe: PAVEMENT. I've been reading Rob Jovanovic's essential bio of the band "Perfect Sound Forever" which is the perfect accompaniment to the recent Pavement redux-reissues. It features interviews with the band, plus reviews, flyers, artwork, photos and anecdotes from people involved with them. So, so good.

The question on everyone's lips though is when's the Pavement reformation tour? Its now ten years since they broke up and 2009 is also the 20th anniversary of their first release. Surely, the planets are aligned? Scott told Time Off Sydney:

"I actually saw Malkmus last night, he played here in Seattle... We were supposed to have a little talk about that (the reunion), but instead we ended up having a little too much to drink. So, those best laid plans went to waste. So, I can tell you that nothing is imminent"

Boo! Come on!!! Ok, so some good news for fans of Kannberg's work as Preston School of Industries is that he'll be releasing a new, as yet un-named album, as "Scott Kannberg", in the not to distant future. It will be out through Matador. We're sure to hear some new tunes from it this coming Tuesday too!

So, anyway here's that Port O'Brien track to also get you excited about their small club show on the 3rd:

Brighten The Corners

The expanded reissue (Deluxe!) edition of Pavement's super fourth LP Brighten The Corners has at last been released (follow link for full Australian release info). If it is as well packaged, thorough and essential as the previous reissues, i'll be nipping down the local record shop this weekend to have me one of them spiffy 2CD packs, oh yes.

Fader get stuck in with Mitch Easter who may not have played the role of primary producer, in spite of what was reported at the time of its initial release... and Aquarium Drunkard ask "What sort of Pavement fan are you?"

I'm the Wowee Zowee devotee: "Someone who embraces chaos and finds life’s meaning in the constantly shifting nature of existence and human nature."

Pitchfork TV have the excellent doco on Pavement - A Slow Century - up online for free, for just one more day only!

Singalong with Pavement

I stumbled across this cool app for iPhones called Tunewiki that lets you sing along with the songs you are playing by downloading and scrolling through the lyrics.

The best bit? They have Range Life by Pavement as their example image:



Details on Lifehacker. Oh, but it still hasn't convinced me to get an iPhone or iPodtouch, i think i'll wait til the hype (and price) dies down and they increase the measly capacity.