MMT50 - 247
jD talks with David from London Ontario about track number 47!
Transcript:
Track 2:
[0:00] Previously on the pavement top 50 some motion.
[0:03] Suggests itself patrick weigh in on this as your number 48 track uh i think this song is is one of those like perfect pavement songs that only pavement could pull off welcome to thepavement, Pavement.
Track 4:
[0:27] And now on with a countdown. Hey, it's JD here, back for another episode of our Top 50 Countdown for Seminole Indie Rock Band, Pavement.
Week over week, we're going to count down the 50 essential Pavement tracks that you selected with your very own Top 20 ballads.
I tabulated the results using complex algebra and an advanced abacus.
And all that's left is for us to reveal this week's track. How will your favorite song fare in the rating?
You'll need to tune in or whatever the podcast equivalent of tuning in is to find out. Subscribing, I suppose.
This week, we're joined by Pavement superfan David from London, Ontario. So there's that.
How are you doing, motherfucker?
[1:18] I am well, and I thank you for including me in this experience to be on on the podcast and discuss some pavement.
Oh, the pleasure is all mine. This is great.
Just a bit of background. David and I met through the podcast, exchanged emails along the way, and then we actually got to go to the Massey Hall concert here in Toronto, and Davidended up going backstage and saying hi to the gang.
So there's that. How was that?
That was quite an experience. And it was very chill, which I guess surprised me a little bit until I realized that, you know, that they're people.
And from my side, they're celebrities. But I mean, once you get to know them, they're people.
So they're winding down after a show, and they had some family there, and they had some friends back there.
And so you kind of just joined right into that experience with them.
And you kind of seen the different conversations that were going on.
And again, seeing them kind of coming in and out, as well as the friends and family.
And that was quite nice. The members that I was able to engage with, I really appreciated.
To some degree, all five of them I did engage with.
[2:31] I have to admit that when I saw Stephen Malcomus, I was a bit starstruck.
So, more than the other ones.
And I was. So, for him, I squeaked out a, hey, Steve, or something like that, and gave him like an air pump. And that was the extent of it.
My longest conversation would have been with Steve West. And I appreciate the time he He gave me their talk to, I asked him a couple of silly questions and about. What a giant eyes.
Oh, all of them are terrific. And that's the truth. I talked to Spiral briefly and just kind of talked to him about his recent album, Medley Attack, and how much I enjoyed that.
And I was one of the few fans that actually. Yes, thank you.
I was one of the few fans that ordered the hat, bought the hat, his baseball hat. So he got a kick out of that to meet one of the ones, maybe one of the only ones in Canada who bought it.
And so that was neat. and then Mark Eibold was hello, I told him I was a big fan, but.
[3:24] Didn't have the opportunity to get into any deeper than that.
And then I saw Bob. He's tough to nail down.
Yeah, but I mean, he seemed like a genuinely really kind, personable person.
So I fed off of that at the same time. Yeah.
Bob gave me a hug, and that was probably the highlight of my evening.
And I ordered some records from him through Broker's Tip Records, which is not around anymore, unfortunately.
I know. What the hell, Bob?
I guess it was a lot of work, probably for a little reward, maybe.
I don't know, but definitely a lot of work.
Great experience altogether, though. So getting backstage and meeting you there in person, too, was great. That was really cool, right? That was a lot of fun.
Yeah. I, of course, had a massive panic attack and couldn't go backstage, but that's life in Hollywood, right?
Yes. It's right with celebrities, yeah. Yeah.
[4:15] So talk to me a little bit about, or a lot of bit, about your Pavement Origins story.
Sure. That's, the Toronto Massey Hall is the last time you saw them, I believe, right? That's correct. So when did you first experience them?
I first saw them in concert for me, I guess, which is quite late in their band history, which would have been in June of 99 when I was 18.
So this was in Detroit in their Terror Twilight tour.
[4:46] Probably the first time I would have had a chance to experience them, even though the shows are kind of all ages. But when I was younger than that, I just was a little more mousykind of thing. I would not have went out to big concerts.
So that was my opportunity there. But when I first got into the band, it would have been around 93, roughly. So let's say I'm 12 or 13.
I was at my friend's house. He had an older brother who was into a lot of more indie bands, different kind of music, a little bit more non-mainstream.
And so he had That CD, sorry Slandered Enchanted was the CD.
[5:22] That he had on. And I remember at the time, we were playing cards or board game or something like that, and just hearing it and really acknowledging that it was really good.
And noticing that it was something different than mainstream, similar to mainstream in some ways.
If you take into big bands at that time, like, you know, Pearl Jam and Nirvana and that type of thing, it was similar enough, but it really did kind of stand out.
At the same time, I don't think it was mature enough to really say, I'm going to go home and kind of get into them on my own accord i just wasn't there and had other things and at that agetype of thing just didn't do it also my you know my exposure to music access to music was limited to radio uh buying cds or cassettes cds were expensive uh so i think most of my cdswere purchased through like columbia house you'd get the 10 for a dollar yeah right and they stuck to mainly mainstream so you're gonna get bush and you're gonna get sound garden andlike those types of bands on cds and i kind of ran Ran through that gamut quite quickly, and then once the year was done, dropped them.
[6:23] But anyways, fast forward a little bit more after I did kind of mature a bit more with my music tastes and personally as well.
And then I did buy Slandered Enchanted. It was probably my first one I purchased.
And then I distinctly do remember, though, buying Wowie Zowie at HMV, I believe it was.
Bring it home. I can still just remember the experience of listening to that for the first time.
Time and again hearing we dance right right out of the gate i was set and and then rattled by the rush i had heard already uh as kind of a silly reference but i remember being on beavis andbutthead and uh they kind of came down a bit on it which i didn't appreciate at the time because i really enjoyed the song try harder yeah but they were like that right they would they hadtheir own style of more kind of punk heavy and more kind of heavy like metallica kind of thing would be more of their jam than something a little bit more deeper, more profound thanPavement. So anyways, it is what it is.
But I do remember Why We Zowie being that just really, really deep experience.
It is my favorite album today.
I think for a lot of people it is, but it's the one that just resonates with me the most.
Again, my favorite song, Grounded, is on it.
Second favorite song, probably being Trigger Cut off Slandered and Chanted.
[7:41] So i mean that great what a great fucking song trigger cut is it is and again i think i came back to that one more recently when uh i was at home during covid lockdown i was able towork at home fortunately but uh with it being at home all the time i needed to occupy myself so re uh discovering music and discovering new music was kind of the ways that i'd reallyspend my time uh kind of pass a lot of my time so trigger cut was the one that really kind of came back i'm kind of forgot how good that was uh i know i'm jumping all over the map here abit with my history but if i go back a bit to early 90s uh there will be no quiz i hope no not for me i do remember so one of the things too is i was kind of growing up and i realized that thismusic truly was cool and um so i did not want to lean into it too much because then it's going to look like i'm almost kind of using it as like a vehicle to make myself look cool type ofthing but i i remember whenever i would have it on if friends were over to kind of be on in the background and And just hear the comments of, oh, this is really good. What is the type ofthing?
And just try to introduce them a little bit, expose them a little bit more to the band.
And that was a fun experience, too. I distinctly remember driving in my parents' 1988 Pontiac Grand Prix with a cassette player.
And I had copied the CD to a cassette. And a friend being in the car and just going bananas over Slandered and Chanted.
So I think I copied them a cassette as well, probably for their car, which was probably made in the 80s type of thing.
[9:08] And that's kind of but it's just also appreciating the fact that how well the Pavement's music was speaking to a lot of friends at that time who would not have come across it againbecause heavy radio play even from Detroit because I grew up in Windsor so I mean we had a lot of Detroit radio but you would not have had bands like that would never go on it.
College radio yes but none of the mainstream music stations that would have been those mainstream bands.
Smashing Pumpkins and all that type of thing. Rage Against the Machine Sheen was quite big in Detroit for some reason. They got a lot of airplay.
But other bands like this, not so much.
But as I did mature, again, more into the late 90s, I left a lot of the mainstream music, put it off to the side.
Not that I had anything against it, but I would spend my music interests more, again, always Pavement was there.
But then I got into bands like Can, for example, Slint, Tortoise, Guided by Voices.
Uh more of that kind of indie sound um again with uh tortoise and uh slint you had david paho's uh signature sound in there uh so any of his bands i'm not familiar with either of thosebands oh really really yeah yeah slant they only had that way two albums sorry um, Their original bassist from their first album, Tweez, went on to form the band King Kong, also in 89.
[10:28] But then David Pahoe went on to form, he released a lot of music under his other band name, stage name Papa M or Ariel M.
Most of it is instrumental. Rarely would he put lyrics to it.
Slint did have lyrics, but he was a guitarist under that.
But they it would they had a very uh it was a sound that just really resonated with me so again more of that um type of music would have been heavy my style uh once we kind of brokethrough the 2000 that's really cool yeah that's really cool that you found that you carved out like this you know pavement helped you carve out this niche right so you could you could youcould uh, echo chamber sort of you know more music from that ilk that's really cool sorry i didn't mean indicate you are no not at all this is the experience here uh but a lot of it does goback to them and then to kind of find out in recent years that they were influenced by that band can who was german um experimentalist yeah um so that was kind of a neat experience forme too just to say that i was in both into both of them simultaneously uh as well as rem would have been my band of choice let's say in the late 80s um and then to find out that they werealso also influenced by REM.
I thought it was a cool connection there too.
So it's almost like their musical taste, my musical taste really kind of intersect. Yeah.
[11:50] It's a cool factor there. Bridge 2000s a bit.
I remember after they broke up, getting Steve Malcomus' solo CD album, that first one self-titled that he had.
That one lived in my car. Once I had a car with a CD player in it, that one, I would cycle out CDs, but that one would just live in there constantly.
Recently uh i don't think i ever took it out um later on i did i remember having a gap of time where because there was no social media and nothing like that you weren't constantly gettingyou know dinged with updates so a few years went by and you have other you know stuff going on in your life and i realized that he might have released other albums i should check thatout so i got face the truth um and then the other one that came out which i'm drawing a blank on right now um.
[12:35] First one he released with, uh, yes, thank you.
Um, so I had got those two and listened to them and enjoy them.
And then again, this is around 06, 07, just do other kind of life things, just kind of got away from music a bit to some degree.
It might be on the background, but, uh, it just kind of went away as one of my focuses until 2015, 2016.
[12:57] Um, and then again into COVID when, again, when I was at home, I went back to say some Some of these old bands, like the Beta Band, for example, I said, well, you know, therewas a lot of members there.
It's one of the bands I like a lot.
[13:08] Let's see what some of those members are doing now. They must have had offshoot projects because they're musicians.
They broke up in late 2000s. And so let's check that out.
So I got into Steve Mason, and then I kind of went back into Malcolmus' catalog and then realized that he had released all these albums between 07 to 2017, 18, 2020, you know, leadingoh that's so great that you got to enjoy all that you you got to binge it was a yeah exactly it was a fire hose of great music coming coming at me so uh and then getting into vinyl as wellkind of uh because my parents were downsizing their house and they were going to be getting rid of their record player so i all i said was don't throw it out and when you're ready to tokind of chuck it i'll take it and that day they just said we'll take it now because we don't listen to it anymore more.
So that helped me to get into vinyl as a hobby and then kind of re-experience music that way too, by having that different experience of listening to an entire album where you're not doingthe skip thing that you might on CDs or streaming where, you know, yeah, you're getting playlists on Spotify or whatever that, which I really enjoy, but you also miss out on that otherwhole album, full album experience.
Agreed. I was explaining this to my father-in-law just last Last night, it was interesting because he was like, ah, you know, he's like, it's so much more, you know, it's so much more work.
[14:31] And I was like, well, yeah, but you're holding this tangible thing in your hand and somebody made this thing.
It's not this ethereal sort of jetsam that's just floating in the air.
It's really quite interesting to listen to music on vinyl just experientially.
I agree. Forget about the audio quality. What pavement do you have on vinyl?
Do you have any? I have Slandered Enchanted, I have Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain, I have Wowie Zowie, and I have Terror Twilight.
I have not been able to locate Bright in the Corners.
I'm not too crazy in my vinyl purchasing because they can be expensive.
So whatever I come across that's reasonably priced that I buy, I don't go crazy with certain key pressings or rare releases or anything like that. No, no, I'm not.
Yeah. Did you get the Terror Twilight box?
I don't i i order the digital version of that through bandcamp but the vinyl is just the the as of the would have been released at the day kind of a thing the nigel god not the nigel godrichthe, spiral stairs sequence i guess version yeah yeah which is great yeah well cool uh what do you say we get to our song of the week i mean let's do it let's uh take a brief pause and we'llcome right back with song number 47. Awesome.
Track 2:
[15:56] Now on with the countdown. 47.
Track 4:
[19:06] Okay, that was Greenlander. And that, of course, comes from the Watery Domestic Sessions that included Sue Me Jack and So Stark You're a Skyscraper.
Is there a fucking bad song that they recorded for Watery? Like, really, there's not, right?
It's all so great. Great. This song, number 47, is the seventh track on the second disc of Lux and Redux, the boxed set of Slanted and Enchanted.
And I was just made aware that it first appeared, though, in the 90s on a compilation called Volume 4.
And the song that we are, of course, talking about, if you haven't put it together yet, number 47, is Greenlander.
[19:59] David from london ontario what do you think of greenlander i really like this song um this is one that i only came across again uh not to keep repeating myself but over the kind oflockdown days where with my extra time i was going through some of the more back catalog uh some of the extra kind of bonus songs that were not included on the albums when theyfirst got released uh and as well through listening to uh your podcast and the pavement conundrum podcast podcast.
They also helped to introduce me to some other songs that I was kind of not aware of, as well as getting the Westing compilation album as well.
But yeah, this song I enjoy a lot. And one thing that hit me as well on this one is it has that kind of little more slow, reflective kind of pace to it, vibe to it.
It's not a heavy rock. Really chill, right? Yeah, exactly.
[20:51] It's not a jam song. It's not a rock song. It's just, it's that vibe again, like that more slower kind of reflective vibe uh which i do enjoy and um as i was doing a little bit of research forthis i kind of realized that so this is not going to be original what i'm going to say whatsoever but it easily could have went uh onto the watery domestic ep um this is not me saying thismaybe it could have been added on it would fit uh if they wanted to add on you know a couple more tracks on there it would fit in my opinion and others again i'm kind of stealing thisfrom the conundrum folks and probably from yourself as well, as well as some other online kind of feeds there.
But one thing I did as I was doing a little more research, I realized that each one of their albums has a similar song like this on there.
And from my interpretation, if you start with Slandered and Enchanted, the song here has kind of a similar vibe.
I mean, it takes things down a little bit of a notch.
It's not In a Mouth of Desert. It's not Conduit for Sale.
It's that deeper, slower, reflective song. song.
And it kind of brings things down and then you can step it up again.
So I appreciate that style of song on an album.
But similarly, I mean, if I kind of walk through their catalog again, you could also say a similar one would be Stop Breathing on Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain.
Maybe Emotions, Jests on Wowie Zowie. Maybe even Transport is Arranged on Bright in the Corners.
[22:19] Possibly You Are the Light on Terror Twilight. Maybe more of a stretch on that one, but it could Could very well be.
It's definitely steps things down a bit. It slows things down a bit.
Even in Malcolm S. Sola's career, I'm not going to go through all of it, but I mean, self-titled, you could say Church on White could be similar.
You could say Loud Cloud Crowd on Face the Truth.
I'm not going to go through all the rest of them, but I mean, either his style or their style, but- Save it for the bonus feed.
[22:49] But I appreciate that. Them doing that and Malcolmis doing that, again, to kind of slow things down again, it's good because you don't want every single track to be kind of reallyloud and really out there and just to kind of relax for a bit.
And then when you're making playlists too, or whether you're doing it, Spotify is doing it, but these will then kind of fit into a different genre, a different style than what some of the othersongs are going to be.
So playlists aside, and even just the album straight through aside, just to kind of slow slow things down for a bit and then pick them up again just to let yourself kind of breathe a bit, relaxa bit, and then kind of step up again.
But that's really what I take from this song. That's where I'm coming from with this.
[23:29] Yeah, I can't help but think the song benefits from having Gary in it.
I love Steve West as a human being and as a drummer.
I think Westy certainly can drum, but there's something about Gary.
And when I listen to this song, it's his interesting style.
It's busier than it needs to be. but with the sparse arrangement of the song i definitely think that his drumming and the little fills fill the space uh of the song and make it more interesting asa whole that's you know sort of my take on the on the gary factor and really there's just you know sort of guitar and uh and and the drums and like you know bass string on another guitar itsounds like um i think it's interesting there's no chorus uh you know there's sort of just a musical lift at the end of every verse that sort of represents a chorus for lack of a better term uhand i also think that in a really rare to to sm uh kind of vibe the song has a title that relates to the lyrics like it seems like it is about a greenlander somebody from the land of ice and snowin greenland uh What's your take?
[24:52] I would agree wholeheartedly with that. And looking at a bit of the interpretations online, there's a couple of people that kind of jumped a little bit from here to there talking aboutpossible ancient rituals that it could be reflecting in.
But I think more sensible minds might have just kind of chimed in to say that it really does seem to be about lovers in Greenland.
There are lyrics here that kind of reflect that that may be, in fact, what they are talking about.
[25:21] Well, kind of taking away from the fact, I mean, they are talking about kind of a love for one another.
And even with this, the lyric kind of saying that on virgin fields will skate, standby children will create.
[25:34] Could that be talking about an individual couple? Possibly. It could be more broader in terms of the whole population or community, possibly.
But it does seem to kind of be talking about their kind of experience within that land.
And then towards the end it might be talking about uh kind of with vice is warm uh it's all that's left all that's left is vice is torn um could be about relationships unraveling or just reachingtheir conclusion type of thing that i'm a little uncertain about but uh that's what i take from that yeah me yeah that's sort of how i feel as well uh i i definitely think there's there's likeromance is afoot uh it seems you know in as unromantic a way as you know you can sort of um draw up but it it it does it it it works it really works and um fuck i i like this song and iwish that watery was a 10 inch and it contains so stark and uh sumi jack as well like that's my wish i don't know what we're going to see when this seven inch box set comes out that spiralwas talking about i don't know what that looks like but i'm excited uh you know i'm real excited about what the possibilities could be for that only time will tell right but they haven'tdisappointed so far with these actual releases.
[27:01] That's true. That's really true. All of them, man.
[27:05] So where do you think that this song rates as far as where it landed on the countdown? It's number 47 on the countdown.
Is it ranked just right? Is it ranked too low? Is it ranked too high?
What do you think, David, from London, Ontario?
I would say just right. It's definitely a top 50 song, in my opinion.
I think it holds that position quite well.
[27:27] Due to the fact that it is, again, that slower pace.
[27:32] It's not quite a hear from slanted so i have to kind of bring it down a little bit there but again you do have gary's drumming like you said so you got that um mix in there as wellwhich takes up a notch of course uh but yeah i agree i mean there's because pavement is the way their band is which is kind of that you know alt rock band uh there's other songs that ithink are going to define them better which should be ahead of this song and so i think this one fits quite well it could could be a bit higher for sure like uh if it was even 35 to 47 i thinkthat that would fit just fine uh but not that not a top 10 uh right possibly not a top 20 but um definitely within the top 50 and i fully agree again 47 sure there's no offense to the song if itcould be offended kind of thing it's not a b-side even it's like it's like a a track that didn't make anything you know like it was on a compilation disc for heaven's sake yes rediscovered intime now but yeah i kind of lost it uh at the time yeah yeah chris from uh episode 50 uh track number 50 he uh had had the actual uh cd so that's pretty cool that is cool yeah any of thatanyway david it's been a pleasure to talk to you today about pavement and track number 47 Greenlander.
[28:58] Uh, is there any, uh, pluggery that you need to do, or is there any place that people can find you online that you want them to find you online?
[29:09] Uh, I am on Twitter at, um, just, uh, D D R.
And then my last name T S S I E R. Um, I, I, kind of repost some musical threads. Otherwise, I don't do much independently because I don't create music independently.
I just consume it and try and pass around any good new bands or tracks or songs that I come across.
[29:31] That's the only way I can contribute that way. I do love kind of discovering kind of new bands from any decade that really speaks to me.
And if I enjoy it then i will uh share it i've created my own uh two uh sorry four different um 50 track spotify playlists of a bit of kind of random music that i've gotten from again manydifferent locations uh the majority of which is probably uh bob's podcast the three song pod yeah i missed that yeah so do i but i mean they did 178 maybe around there so i've gone i'vegone backwards and uh rediscovering i'm back to about episode 100 now uh so i've not heard the first 100 but i've heard the last 78 and from there there if you do kind of listen to some onspotify you'll get recommendations for other ones uh similar ones and so i'll listen to them if i really like them i'll add them to my own playlist or some of these like i said these fourplaylists i put together of just songs that i can then share because as i talk to music about music with other people, friends from work or family, cousins, whatever, they'll say, what kind ofstuff do you listen to?
And I can just say, well, here, I'll DM you a one of my playlists I put together and this is what I like.
If you don't like any of it, no offense taken because I fully of the mind that music is very personable.
[30:55] It's very subjective and I would never take offense to any music that someone else does not like or that they really do like.
If they like music, I appreciate that. They don't, I can understand that too.
But that's kind of what I do. So on Twitter, if you do want to look me up, I think I have put those playlists on there, accessible, fully public on Spotify.
[31:16] Cool. Well, thank you again so much for joining me today.
It's been an absolute pleasure talking to you again and keep up the good work.
Same with me. Loved it. Great time.
Awesome. Wash your goddamn hands.
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