No One Will Dance With Us In This Zany Town

Stephen Malkmus @ Knitting Factory Tap Room 1/10/2006
Shoot The Singer / Church On White / We Dance / Box Elder / Ramp Of Death / Frontwards / Witch Mountain Bridge / Freeze The Saints / Major Leagues / Vanessa From Queens / Gold Soundz

Pavement “Shoot The Singer (Live @ St. Louis 1999) – I now live in eternal debt to the Brooklyn Vegan, who kindly hooked me up with a ticket to this show at the last minute and pretty much made my year. As you can see, this was a very special set, especially for a longtime hardcore Pavement fan such as myself. Malkmus performed the entire set alone with an acoustic guitar and without a setlist – everything played was an audience request. I was lucky enough to get two of the songs that I shouted for – “Shoot The Singer” and “We Dance” – and the One Louder dudes were treated to a lovely version of “Box Elder” that was played on strummed chords rather than the arpreggiated notes as per usual.

As you can imagine, the performance was a bit ragged as he attempted to play several songs that he clearly hasn’t practiced in a while – “Frontwards” was especially shambling, and the audience had to help him remember the words of “Gold Soundz,” even the “we’re coming to the chorus now” bit! Either way, he carried it off with his typical charm and no one in the room was about to complain, since he hasn’t publically performed Pavement songs in NYC since 1999. “Ramp of Death,” “We Dance,” and “Major Leagues” were especially well suited to solo performance, though I’m sorta mystified as to why anyone would call out for “Major Leagues” (much less “Freeze The Saints”) at an all-request Malkmus show. Songs that were called out but rejected for one reason or another: “Grave Architecture,” “Shady Lane,” “Old Jerry,” “Jo Jo’s Jacket,” “Father To A Sister Of Thought,” “Summer Babe,” “Ell Ess Two,” “Here,” “Range Life,” “Harness Your Hopes,” “No More Kings,” “Civilized Satanist,” and “Candylad,” the last three being particularly ambitious and obscure.

I can’t emphasize enough how big of a deal it is to me that I finally got to see the guy play “Shoot The Singer.” I’ve been wanting this for about twelve years now, and it’s easily among the highest percentile of my favorite songs in the world. I was convinced that I would only ever get to see it live if Pavement were to go on a reunion tour, and even then if I was very lucky. So yeah, yesterday was a very lucky day for me. (Click here to buy the studio recording from Amazon.)

Lashio Thein Aung “You Got What You Want” – More so than any other record that I’ve heard from the label, Guitars of the Golden Triangle: Folk and Pop Music of Myanmar Vol. 2 lives up the name Sublime Frequencies. The album collects a string of uniformly great Burmese psychedelic pop songs from the early 70s that were previously hopelessly obscure and almost entirely unheard outside of Burma. This gorgeous duet credited to Lashio Thein Aung is a major highlight from the compilation, and fairly representative of the set’s relentless catchiness and beautiful reverb. (Click here to buy it from Sublime Frequencies.)