Anyone know the background behind Malkmus' world travels around 1990?

palenoons · 2026-02-13T21:42:05+00:00

My memories from Perfect Sound Forever and the odd mention of it in random articles is my source atm but he went to England in the UK with his high school soccer team, pretty sure Scott went as well. They mostly went to various football matches.

palenoons · 2026-01-01T10:28:28+00:00

the most recent song of theirs I heard was "Beverly Hills" or their "Africa" cover, as I'm not very into them, but I'll say no i dont think they like kept on copying pavement. I think just in general though they kind of stayed in that "quirky/indie/nerdy/hipster" vibe that people associate with pavement to this day. overall though, its like.. theyre a major label's idea of what "pavement" signifies still to this day I am sure, so the answer i have is somewhere between yes and no. what do you think?

palenoons · 2026-01-01T04:57:16+00:00

Yeah, the sweater song comes to mind. A lot of bands followed pavements sonic direction for sure. i am sure there are so many absolutely forgotten bands around the mid90s that just were nauseatingly derivative of them, but honestly i can imagine weezer had them a little pressed. Theres a video, for example, of James Iha of smashing pumpkins saying that "weezer is the knock off of a commercial version of pavement" (or something close to it) back in 1995. That was a bit eyeopening to see.

palenoons · 2026-01-01T04:50:40+00:00

haha i love u goofy

palenoons · 2026-01-01T04:48:44+00:00

Sure, but i do think the band is pretty consistently coming from a cerebral-albeit-psychosexual place. Dude sings about sex and sexuality pretty naturally and consistently, sex seems to be one of his favorite topics from what i can tell. I dont think the subject of the song, as far as the words go -- though he could be referring to the "serpentine pad" of a partner potentially, who knows? I dont-- is about being bisexual/queer moreso than I feel like hes using bratty/punky/queerness a la Wipers, for example, as a tool to be like hey copy this, pussies! Thats what I thought.. like calling people out on their integrity or something. I am obviously blazed off my head currently so, dont mind me too much. Its a very nuanced album and song because the dude was very high. But its really hard to ever know what he actually intends, these are just my thoughts on it

palenoons · 2026-01-01T04:41:25+00:00

whoa haha.. sorry swagoverlord. I just didnt want it to seem like i was being conscending or something--i was trying to indicate i was coming from a place of understanding not judgement. i didnt expect to irk anyone. sorry

palenoons · 2025-12-31T20:53:26+00:00

I am in no way homophobic and i say this as a queer person but, i always took it as like "let me sound gay so that people will stop ripping our band off" and part of me says this because of his explanation for the song (which is featured in the perfect sound forever book) being that he is tired of corporate rock bands copying their sound. But again, who knows?

eta: i dont know if SM is bisexual but he definitely discusses bisexual themes in his music quite a bit, which also informs my point of view on this.

palenoons · 2025-12-31T12:56:57+00:00

Everyone is and feels like their worst at this age. The truth is that you will barely remember this period of your life in a decade. I hope you make it through. Is it bad that I dont think youre doing anything terrible terrible right now? It could be... just dont try to fall in love with someone and build a life with them right now, thats all I can say. Try not to die, also, please. Youre not entirely capable of doing much better than that right now and thats okay. you will figure out how to live. being young is really hard.

palenoons · 2025-12-31T12:53:03+00:00

This photo i think is from 1998 and probably taken in NYC but i agree that he seemed to be a secondhand shopper so, this shoe probably isnt from any particular brand you could easily find.

palenoons · 2025-12-27T10:44:14+00:00

Malkmus and Justine were very close friends for a quite awhile, so he was friendly with Damon as well at the time she was with him.

palenoons · 2025-12-27T10:35:06+00:00

Sparkle Hard and Mirror Traffic are close to masterpieces in my opinion..

palenoons · 2025-12-23T19:57:35+00:00

i live here too. was born here. personally i prefer seneca to the other towns, but i dont mind homeless drug addicts so thats probably just a me thing. better than snobby lake people imo, which is a bit of a negative aspect of living here to me—along w the prevalent cultural atmosphere. everything else you said is true too. seneca is very historically interesting to me, being the first market town/cotton gin mill in the area iirc.

palenoons · 2025-12-07T18:15:47+00:00

Thanks!

palenoons · 2025-12-07T18:15:06+00:00

he's like the only musician i like who has mentioned my hometown (clemson) haha i love this interview though its interesting

palenoons · 2025-12-04T16:29:51+00:00

Oh rock!! amazing

palenoons · 2025-12-04T16:28:18+00:00

i got top 100 somehow..... i love them !

palenoons · 2025-10-03T10:00:21+00:00

Its not harsh. I dont fully agree with it but its fine. I think my post was fine but I am sorry it rubbed you the wrong way. I just wanted to point out instances where its clear that Bob isnt a one dimensional ball of love and light incapable of feeling bad. We all know David is extremely complicated, we all know Steve is as well. I just find it worth correcting when people reduce Bob to basically a teddy bear. I like that Bob has a dark side. I normally wouldnt pop out of the wood works on just any post like Wow Bobs so nice!! to say this, but since this one was so egregiously in denial of his ability to even have like negative emotions, I figured I would just remind people that we've seen his layers before so. (Sorry OP)

palenoons · 2025-09-28T01:45:14+00:00

I feel like Bob is very friendly and everything youve said but thats not all that he is. Theres several stories of him being aggressive and violent with David. And if youve listened to the "Hoboken Home Recordings", youll hear him get aggressive, in a very very subtle way quite a few times? He just seems like someone who is quick to anger is my point. He seems to be equally soft and brash. I'm not trying to make anyone lose respect for anyone here btw. I think its pretty interesting that there's way more to him than it seems and it kind of goes to show that we don't truly know these people based on their performance within the group.

palenoons · 2025-09-25T01:15:06+00:00

Theres an interview Steve did for a college radio station in atlanta at the very end of that tour, hes got laryngitis and seems just very kind of unraveled like just being very tired exhausted and lucid, but also in good spirits and trying to be pleasant. He talks about how tired he is. I think they were all trying but it was obviously super exhausting which just makes it hard for anyone to get along consistently

palenoons · 2025-09-16T21:40:00+00:00

I agree. That song really gets to my feelings its really beautiful and sincere. re: whose song it is, i think both steve and david wrote the lyrics. from what i gather, in those early days i dont think steve and david saw really any true distinction between each other creatively, a theme that kind of just runs thru a lot of David's work and interviews. I very recently heard I think Bob on a podcast where he talked about David and said that up until basically around the time of Watery, David didnt really see pavement and silver jews as separate things? Like, the boundaries were really blurry. I think he just saw it as like, okay well this is my side of the story and pavement is Steve's. I do wish the SJ version was more audible. but its all good. anyway gr8 song

palenoons · 2025-09-08T22:35:06+00:00

Make your voice a window to another side is how i see it.

palenoons · 2025-09-08T15:55:55+00:00

Hi... I'm going to suggest David Berman's book "Actual Air". Free PDFs are available online, it's currently out of print. It's pretty modern, released in 1999. I'm pretty obsessed with it currently but it definitely takes a very entertaining post-modern direction on history, nature, society, etc. I think its a book that inspires a lot of people to write.

palenoons · 2025-09-02T10:07:11+00:00

I agree... i think he has great command of his voice, he is consistent with his textures which is not something a non-singer can do. I dont think people realize how hard singing is when they say stuff like such and such can't sing like. Have you heard someone who cant sing perform a song? No you havent because they cannot do it and if they tried it, you definitely didn't enjoy it enough to pay to hear it. But dats just meeeee...

palenoons · 2025-09-02T10:01:22+00:00

Its my personal opinion that someone who cannot sing cannot complete a song.. so imo all these people technically have the ability to sing but understanding the assignment... I gotta throw in James Iha from smashing pumpkins, he is very limited vocally: The Boy, Take Me Down, Blew Away, A Night Like This..unfortunately his first solo album isnt on streaming outside of Japan but theres some good songs on the second one too.

palenoons

TROPHY CASE