Seen Your Video/Color Me Impressed: Pavement's "Shady Lane" and Pavement Overall

(Normally "Seen Your Video" and "Color Me Impressed," the latter being a segment that addresses the question, "What's so great about those guys?" are separate segments. But the video for the song today is good, as is the band, so we figured we'd combine them and do a little bit of both.)

You know when you get a song in your head and then you listen to it a few times and the ongoing loop in your head subsides? That usually works for me...usually. Every once in awhile though a song burrows its way in...WAY in. Most times it's in the form of a bad commercial jingle (I can't even look at a Mentos package now for this very reason). But sometimes, it's a lovely song with a hook so hooky that if I died right then, I'd go out smiling for sure. I'm happy to report that the song currently wedged in my frontal lobe is of the latter variety: Pavement's "Shady Lane."

I think the best way to trip someone into a love of Pavement is with a random Ipod shuffle of their records. On a road trip with a friend, who, it turned out, was a huge Pavement fan, was when I fell ass over teakettle in love. I wasn't a total neophyte, I'd bought Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain a long time ago, and listened to it a few times...then put it away. I wasn't ready. There were a few tracks I liked ("Cut Your Hair," "Gold Soundz," "Range Life"), but most of it seemed to be all noisy-noisiness, and well, I've never been a fan of true noisy-noise. But being a captive audience to someone else's driving of an Ipod (and a car), the underlying current of catchy melody that Pavement worked into that noisy-noisiness suddenly dawned on me because I wasn't multi-tasking with five other things; Pavement had my full attention. By the time the finger-tapping guitar-line of "Shady Lane" came on (my friend's favorite Pavement record is Brighten the Corners) and I heard one of the greatest rock song lines ever-"You've been chosen as an extra in the sequel of the movie adaptation to your life"-that was all she wrote. Pavement had scored one more fan.

PS: Mark Ibold? Loooove me some Mark Ibold. And I'm normally a drummer kind of girl!

Give a Listen: Shady Lane-Pavement

Color Me Impressed: MSTRKRFT

("Color Me Impressed" is a segment that addresses the question, "What's so great about those guys?")

by Dave "Scout" Tafoya

At first listen, or even second or third, MSTRKRFT (pronounced "Master-craft") appears to be an unremarkable techno act. Some things may catch the ear, like their rubbery bass sound that nicely brings out their rhythm. And, if you're willing to pay attention to some of their remixes, you can see something a little different about them as opposed to the myriad of other DJs in the electronic music world. But ask anyone who's seen them live and you'll see where their genius lies, as there's something indefinably amazing about watching those guys do their thing. I detest the idea of clubbing but when I saw them live at the recent Rothbury Festival, it was an amazing, relentless assault of bass and pop hooks that were ground up like sausage and spat out like magma from the mouth of a volcano. If you watch the two men at the helm (Alex Puodziukas, or Al-P, and Jesse F. Keeler), they're just as mesmerized by the sounds they make as the many hundreds who show up to lose control to their music. They shake, bounce, smoke, and drink, all in time with their music, exhilarated by merely being there and unleashing their set on the crowd. Just before they went on at Rothbury, Keeler leaned over to me and told me giddily the song they'd be starting with; it was obvious that they were just dying to get on stage. I was happy to hear his secret, even if only for the three minutes that it was one, and I was even happier to dance like an idiot for the duration of their set.

Give a Listen: Zero (MSTRKRFT remix)-MSTRKRFT
Buy: here

(MSTRKRFT is touring throughout Europe, Canada, and Australia this fall, and doing two US shows, the Monolith Festival in Denver, CO and the Treasure Island Festival in San Francisco...see specific dates here.)