I discovered Pavement in March 94 through Myrene’s radio show “Not Radio”. Their song “Cut Your Hair” followed the Charlatans’ “Can’t Get Out of Bed”, and I know this because I used to tape her episodes.
since then pretty much every band I’ve played with has covered Pavement. I’d sing “Westie Can Drum”, “Debris Slide” and “Stereo” for Ciudad (while Mikey did “Grave Architecture”), Blast Ople did “Blue Hawaiian” and “Flux=Rad” and I did backup for th MZA for “In The Mouth A Desert” with The Aga Muhlach Experience, Diego and Myrene’s band.
And that was just the tip of the iceberg. We did Pavement tribute episodes on “Not Radio”; both Diego and I had a collection of Pavement shirts; one time at Rockeoke Diego, Mikey and I accosted the instruments and did “Cut Your Hair”; I went on to see three of the side bands of Pavement members; if you listen to the Ciudad songs ‘Bombsite’ and ‘Corina Turina’ you might hear a bit of Pavement; Us-2 Evil-0’s ‘Nice Apocalypse! Where’d You Get It?’ is Pavement-inspired; hell—even the name of this blog is based on a Pavement song.
That’s why, with Diego and Myrene fast asleep around me, at Len and Gutsy’s lovely apartment, I find myself not being able to sleep. I’m giddy. I can’t help myself. I saw Pavement with the people who taught me everything about this music in the first place.
And we met them, too. But that’s another story.
At one point we told Spiral Stairs that Myrene is the first ever person who played Pavement on Philippine radio. He said something like “wow it must be nice being here to see us then”
She smiles and says, “you wouldn’t believe.”
i’m not anywhere near to ready for 1990s nostalgia, but these pictures of my flippy mates hanging out w/ the Pavements in Australia give me big feelings
