The 2nd-Grader Job

Bob Nastanovich of Pavement called me at my parents' house from their stop in Detroit. It was a weird afternoon, because my parents were in the middle of a major yard sale, the yard sale to end all yard sales, frankly, with all of New Jersey's alt.nerd.obsessive types arriving at dawn looking for Mork And Mindy lunchboxes. Little curiosities were littered all over the driveway, much like the trippy sound effects and cues from heavy-duty rock lore spring up unexpectedly on Pavement's successful new CD, "Terror Twilight" (reviewed previously.) When Bob called up, I was in the next room playing it for some cousins who had stopped by to watch the yard sale. They never heard of Pavement, and weren't sure if they recognized my a cappella version of "Cut Your Hair," Pavement's MTV hit from "Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain," an album I played virtually nonstop in 1994. Confronted with Stephen Malkmus' voice, which another writer once described as "singing as though he was falling asleep," the sporadic loops, whirs and squiggles, and the brazen disregard for what a "normal" song sounds like, I think they were . . . taken aback. And critics have called "Terror Twilight" their sell-out album.

I let Bob know straight-up how much Pavement means to me. "I'm a real cheapskate," I said, "yet I bought a second copy of "Slanted and Enchanted" after an errant Discman scratched a whole bunch of my albums. It was the only one I had to replace."

Nastanovich seemed truly touched; he'd been there before. "I only did that with a select few albums myself. Gang of Four's 'Entertainment!' was one, 'Meat Puppets II' I think I even bought three times," he said before realizing where he was calling. "You're near the Freehold Raceway! We used to go to that track all the time." Nastanovich is an avid racing fan. He owns horses and makes sure to schedule touring around the Triple Crown. He's also impressed we had a Mork and Mindy lunchbox to sell, though we agree it could have gotten more than $35 if it had the Thermos still in it.

Nastanovich, playing an actual instrument

Nastanovich's job description is a little vague. He's kinda the extra guy. He makes the odd introductions, sings back-up, adds percussion, plays with Moogs and other aural toys. "Basically I have the 2nd-grader job," he admits. Still, he is much beloved by the band's fans, embodying the spirit of their po-mo peculiarity, mugging as the disbelieving rock-star.

Pavement's had a strange career, emerging from lo-fi esoterica to find themselves much-deconstructed and discussed youth culture markers. The arc begins with the early homemade singles the band scratched together for fun and ends with a New Yorker article showing a respect and attention to their work rarely given anything other than museum retrospectives of well-established artists. I ask about the dichotomy.

Jordan Hoffman: Why do people want to scratch their heads over Pavement?

Bob Nastanovich: I don't know why we're intellectualized. Then again, we aren't ashamed of being smart. We invite analysis. We're very honest. Plain, straightforward, a little bizarre. We puzzle people, they want to get to the bottom of it. I mean, if you go to a restaurant, and, say, get a really extraordinary jambalaya or gumbo, you're gonna ask, why is this better than most?

It may be because of the lyrics. It's usually the first thing one notices about Pavement. They are surreal, mundane, often preposterous, sometimes out-of-nowhere, and just shy of being unbearably cryptic, such that they feel as though, just below the surface, there is a greater point to it all, if we just think for a moment. Asking if the band has to compete musically with the striking (and infamous) lyrics, I'm stunned to learn that Stephen Malkmus considers the lyrics "as an afterthought, suited to a style or riff." I'm told that, "the lyrics are sometimes loved, sometimes hated, but Stephen always hates his singing voice. He wishes he didn't have to sing."

It's No Lie. Nastanovich and Malkmus Playing Scrabble.

Fair enough, but where does all that crazy talk come from, if it doesn't really mean anything? "He reads, plays Scrabble. He's starting to keep notebooks now; he wants to take his job more seriously."

JH: Journalists still label you lo-fi. This makes sense in describing the singles collection "Westing by Musket and Sextet" and, perhaps, "Slanted and Enchanted," but ever since "Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain" there's been a density to your sound. There's hardly any wasted space, or slapped-together material. Does this description bug you?

BN: It doesn't bug me, but it's lazy journalism. We once were lo-fi, and it used to fit. There is a specific lo-fi aesthetic, not just a lo-fi attitude. Daniel Johnston recording songs in his basement is a lo-fi aesthetic. People got excited about it in the early 90s because there was suddenly large distribution for 7 inch records. It was a fun time.

JH: The lo-fi attitude may be just a way for journalists to explain your sound?

BN: Perhaps.

JH: I like when J Mascis [of Dinosaur Jr.] is referred to as lo-fi. He's one of the most trained and proficient guitarists out there.

BN: And he's got, like, thousands of dollars of equipment.

JH: Right. Why isn't Yngwie Malmsteen lo-fi?

Bob wisely didn't answer that. He did, though, go on to describe some of his lo-fi experiences. Specifically, a recording with his previous band, The Silver Jews, where the recording device was a Sony tape recorder on top of a television set, a singer in front of it, and a guitar player in the kitchen. "That caused a lot of fights because they would have to shout from different rooms, and each thought the other was too close to the recorder, they would fight to get closer. I was in the middle playing drums—banging sticks on the back of a cardboard box."

The recording of "Terror Twilight" was much different. They were working with the rising star producer Nigel Godrich, whose recent work includes Beck, Radiohead and Jason Falkner. Instead of Malkmus creating 25 or so sketches of songs, missing bridges and lyrics, and then mailing the tapes to the other members of the group before coming to record them, as the last few records were made, Godrich was insistent Malkmus reduce it to twelve, so that recording time could be more focused and in-depth. Godrich is the king of echoes and effects, and while he approached the band as a fan (he is younger than all the members of the group) determined to keep it "a Pavement album," there were some struggles with maintaining the purity of the sound.

Pavement, The Rock Band, In One Of Those "Rock Band" Shots

"Some of his personal stamps were edited out, because of overkill. At one point [bass player] Mark Ibold had to look him and the eye and say, 'Nigel, this is not my band!' We cracked the whip a bit."

The blending worked. "Terror Twilight" is a fan-fucking-tastic record. I told Bob this. He responded, "Thanks, man. That's really nice to hear."

I asked if it was odd working with an Englishman. I always consider Pavement so perfectly air-conditoned American. "That's funny," Bob replied, "The Brits think of Pavement as English. They love us there, and we're so vocal about our love for The Fall and Wire. It seemed like a good fit." So maybe I don't know everything.

"Terror Twilight" has a few tunes that crib directly from power-chord 70's rock. It takes balls for an uber-hip band to do this, especially as the whole Lenny Kravitz thing is now surely the least hip thing happening in music right now.

BN: Frankly, we want to rock. Flowery and gentle gets tired on the road. We're not looking for the support slot on the next Phish tour. It's hard for us to do mellow and not bore people.

Yet there still remains a sense of humor in Pavement's music. Not only in the lyrics, but permeating the music somehow, no matter how professional it's getting.

BN: Bands need to make me laugh. It's supposed to be fun. There's nothing glamerous about this job, and compared to some old buddies, the snide sarcasm is intact. Everything's a laugh. We're friends in the group and we have a good time.

I asked Nastanovich what he was listening to these days. I thought I was hip! Looking at my notes now, I can't tell which are the bands and which are the exotic labels. I'll just write it all down and let you figure it out.

Bob Nastanovich. He Wants To Rock. And read the Racing Forum.

Bob Nastanovich is listening to: Lonesome Organist, Mogwai, Delgados, Belle and Sebastian (yes, I've heard of them), Hull, anything on the Zeppserter label, Baby Mammoth, Matmos, and, because of his roommate, every Blue Note record from before 1960.

I impressed Bob by catching the three-note musical reference to T. Rex in "Folk Jam," but was told it was not the first such time this gag has been pulled. "Silence Kit" had a few bars of Chuck Berry in it, though he "hasn't heard it in a while," and is "not astute enough to point it out in the song just now."

Pavement has mentioned other bands, artists and songs before, one of the most famous is the R.E.M. resumé recital on "Unseen Power of the Picket Fence" from the Red Hot Charity collection "No Alternative." Video director Lance Bangs introduced Pavement to the Georgia pop giants when they came through Lexington, Kentucky. In their hotel suite, after Michael Stipe entered naked from a shower (it is unclear whether he thought the room empty), everyone had a chuckle over the song, and later that night, before tens of thousands of screaming fans, Stipe dedicated a set of songs to Pavement.

That's a nice little story, I thought, and thanked Bob Nastanovich for his time. I also thanked him for the good work on "Terror Twilight," and reminded him how it had taken a permanent home in my CD player.

"Well don't burn out on it!" he warned. "I don't want to see it at your next yard sale!"