pavement r reviewed

March 05, 2023

pavement r reviewed

everybody’s mostly white n agein and we have to be seated cos it’s the perth concert hall and pond start and I sit alone near the front watching them cos everyone else is in the bar drinking mid-strengths and white wines cos it’s perth in summer and it’s still warm n that and I’m just thinking like a 51 year old all the stuff about my family and work and little incidents that flit in and out and how we’re all positioned here at this venue to be entertained and the pond leader who is a perth man – they all are i think - is doing his funk leader thing being all funky and groovy in a slightly ironic way, writhing a bit, trying to engage the mostly empty venue of distracted seated folks waiting for pavement to arrive, and he says laconically "if there’s one thing you can take from this gig it’s that my brother used to work at captain munchies" and their stuff is alright maybe too slick or just not quite rocking out enough I don’t know and maybe I don’t care that much...

and adim kuuvolovski is sat behind me with his lookalike teen son and I know this guy from the 90s indie band turnstyle I think I once even wrote about them and somehow I am reminded of henry kissinger and anyway I hobble up to the bar when pond is done and find my friends there sat around a table and all that greeting is done and then there we are back inside under the dim and pavement is on the stage and straight into it and soon enough spiral stairs says hit the front and so people stand and move into the aisles and the security tries to stop it but they can’t stop these folks from their hunger to stand and sway!...

and it stays like that but there is still not much room to move and I think isn’t that just a metaphor for life now and we chat a bit sipping mids and the songs are bought and so are we and pavement are pretty good although people complain of a lull when they play a few newies but what the fuck my leg hurts and I sit down for a bit and a woman in front is in ecstacy the whole gig it seems really jittering around while her boyfriend stands by kinda stiffly with a shit-eating half grin and tentatively puts his arm around her waistland which she doesn’t even seem to notice as her arms are flung skywards in ecstatic dance as pavement bash out a solid rendition of summer babe and we all agree this is a good gig...

and leader malkmus goes on a bit of a spiel after not saying much the whole night and says they shouldn’t concrete over some grass tennis courts in mt lawley somewhere and maybe get some funding from tame impala and call them the tame impala mt lawley grass courts and he intros the band and they play some more including a cracking go at 'fillmore jive' and they also earlier jammed on a song they once had called 'perth' i think but could not really play or remember it but they had a go and that’s when people go awwww that’s the pavement we love and then it is over after an encore and we leave and drive home through the balmy perth night with the experience bolted on to us in us in some commercial and non-commercial way some literally if they happened to have hit the merch stand...

something that brought us into a new realm and we said we should do this again and made jokes about dance music and how it was either complete shit or not really that shit