Pavement May/June 1997

We’ve been Pavement fans since Perfect Sound Forever came out in 1990, following them as they went from deep left field to the pages of every magazine except Elle Decor and Boy’s Life.  So when it came time for our interview, we knew that the index Firing Line approach would have to be set aside.  John and Les were given specific instructions: Don’t make them talk about their new record; don’t interpret their lyrics; and under no circumstances are you to engage in gambling of any sort.

Mark Ibold, who plays bass, and is the only New Yorker left in the band, and who also plays with Julie Cafritz and Kim Gordon in Free Kitten, and Bob Nastanovich, who plays drums, makes noise, sings/screams, and lives in Kentucky, took a break from their recent whirlwind tour of lower Manhattan, and told us about all sorts of Pavement adventures.  The new record, Brighten the Corners, is out now. 

John Tremblay: I remember when Pavement was first on the scene, people were comparing you to The Fall. Mark E. Smith apparently didn’t like that comparison.

Bob Nastanovich:  Yeah, he hated us back then.  But it just so happened that The Fall is the one group that all five members of the band all really liked, have been fans of for many years.  We cover “The Classical” now, occasionally, and do a kind of fucked-up version of it.  A really...
Mark Ibold:  ...mangled version of it.

JOHN:  Both bands were on Matador for a while, although Mark E. Smith actually thought it was called Troubador.

BOB:  It was a tough time for Matador.  I don’t think they really enjoyed it very much.
MARK:  He put some pretty harsh demands on them.
BOB:  Irrational demands.
MARK:  Yeah, pretty unreasonable.

JOHN:  Like, World Cup tickets for his whole family?

MARK:  High grade Peruvian flake.

JOHN:  Hey, Les, didn’t you bring something for these guys?
LES:  I got you a scratch-off lottery ticket.

BOB:  All right!
MARK:  Do you want us to do it in front of you?

LES:  Yeah, let’s see if you get lucky.

MARK:  Wouldn’t it be awful if we won a million dollars.

LES:  It would be your most memorable interview.

BOB:  You can only win $2700, but that would still be good.  I’ve got my lucky Irish coin for this purpose.

LES:  You play the horses, right?

BOB:  Heavily, yeah.  I love the race track.  Now, if this is a seven, I’m a winner.

LES:  No, I think it’s eleven.

EVERYBODY:  Oh, no! 
MARK:  It says, “rub nine.”
BOB:  You rub them all.

LES:  It’s more fun to rub them slow.

BOB:  I don’t think this is a winning ticket.  Hey, wait, Mark’s a winner.  You won.

LES:  I’m sure it’s going to be...

BOB:  ... a dollar.  You won a dollar.
MARK:  I’m going to buy another one with this dollar.
BOB:  We once played in Vegas for like, sixty people — in a room that held 1500.  And the promoter paid us in chips, buckets of chips.  The guy thought it was cute.  And we were going all over town to cash them in.
MARK:  He convinced us to take a lot less money.  He gave me this long spiel about how he wasn’t going to pay us the guarantee.
BOB:  He paid half.
MARK:  And then he paid us in chips.  This sleazy consolation prize.  It was like winning the donkey on Let’s Make A Deal.

JOHN:  So how did you guys get your name?

BOB:  I think it’s actually one of... it’s on the list of the most pleasant words in the English language.

JOHN:  Oh, really?

MARK:  I like it too. When I heard the name, and saw that the band was from Stockton, the only thing that I could remember from Stockton was that guy who freaked out and shot those kids.
BOB:  At the elementary school.
MARK:  An elementary school or a McDonald’s.  One of the two.  I pictured parking lots, and kids having to walk through them on their way back home from school.
BOB:  It’s a pretty grim place.

JOHN:  Is that where you’re from?

BOB:  No, only Scott and Steve and Gary.
MARK:  But we went through the Valley...
BOB:  San Joachin.
MARK:  Through the orchards.  That was something I did not expect.
BOB:  I love it there.  A third of the nation’s fruits and vegetables are grown there.
MARK:  Yeah.  Three seasons for tomatoes.
BOB:  You can entirely relax there. 
MARK:  But it is kind of depressing.  Remember that one morning when we were driving around?  We got our breakfast...
BOB:  At five in the morning, yeah.
MARK:  We looked at that laundromat...
BOB:  Yeah.  Pretty bleak.  It’s like The Grapes of Wrath.

JOHN:  A place you’d really want to leave?

BOB:  It’s pretty dangerous, actually.  There’s some serious gangs, it’s a gang town.  And it’s got a really dangerous downtown area.  The first t-shirts we ever made for the band, we picked them up at this place, and there was a box of t-shirts next to ours that were for a gang called The Killa Tribe.
MARK:  Yeah, a crips gang.
BOB:  And Steve stole one, and wore it. 
MARK:  After that, every photo session we would do, I would be like, you know...
BOB:  Here comes the Killa Tribe.

JOHN:  Is there anything the record company makes you do?

MARK:  This is the only thing we really have to do.  Other than that, they don’t make us do anything.  They might say, “Oh, you should put a single out from your album.”  But that’s all right with us.

JOHN:  You know, there’s an old interview with the Butthole Surfers, where they said something like, “We were touring for two years, and then we discovered sleeping bags.”

MARK:  Have you been a big fan of the Butthole Surfers?

JOHN:  They got me through the ‘80s.

MARK:  They were my favorite band longer than any other band was my favorite band.

JOHN:  I saw them at Danceteria in ‘85.

MARK:  Oh, man, that show with the bottles, smashing the bottles.

JOHN:  I was scared for two weeks after that show.

MARK:  I took acid for those shows.

JOHN:  That band absolutely catered to people on drugs.

MARK:  But I would never trip my brains out.  I would always take a quarter of a hit.  And that was okay, and then I would take like, another quarter.
BOB:  I was always sober. I wouldn’t even drink for those shows.  I would just want to be completely aware.
MARK:  We should tell them about that one show.  He drove like, a couple of hours to get to the show.
BOB:  Yeah, by myself. It was during exam week and I was in college.  I was nineteen, it was ‘87 or ‘88, right after Locust Abortion Technician came out.  And I drove, and it was a really, really foggy night.  They were playing in this place that held 500 people, but there were 800 in the place.  So it was insanely jam-packed.  It was when they had Kathleen dancing, and they were playing on a stage that was six inches high.  The ceiling was really low and they had the flaming cymbals, with the flames hitting the ceiling.  So I was scared that this old wooden bar in Richmond, Virginia was going to catch on fire.
MARK:  He somehow made it right up front.
BOB:  I was totally crushed in with all these people.  And Paul Leary was making cartoon faces.  He was right in front of me, playing guitar and screaming at me and at the ten people around me.  He was looking right at us, going, “Get the fuck away from me, get the fuck away!”  Just screaming it at us for the whole show. 

JOHN:  That is scary!

BOB:  We were so scared.  And at the halfway point of the show, I was just like, “Please, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”  I was standing there, actually apologizing to him.  I thought he hated the way I looked or something.
MARK:  Didn’t you say that tears were streaming down his face?
BOB:  Yeah, yeah, that’s what it was.  It was just overwhelming.  And then I found out that after the show they stayed around for an hour after everybody left.  And they made the promoter guy play “Dancing Queen” by Abba, over and over again, like, 20 or 25 times, while they danced around doing whippets.

JOHN:  To wind down.

MARK:  I remember at one show, Gibby lunging off the stage, and like, grabbing me between my legs, grabbing my balls, and immediately...
BOB:  Did it scare you?
MARK:  Yeah.  He was just like, holding on.
BOB:  That would have terrified me.
MARK:  And I think he found somebody else and went over to them,  and I was just like - what the fuck?

JOHN:  I saw you guys last night at NYU.  You did that song, “We Dance,” and instead of singing, “There’s no castration fear,” Steve said, “There’s no beer in here.”

MARK:  I didn’t hear that.
BOB:  A bone dry show.

JOHN:  I’ve seen Pavement play three times now, and each time the band has this uncanny ability to make it seem like none of you have seen each other in a while.  Makes for a lively live show.

BOB:  Well, we did actually rehearse for ten days.
MARK:  We played six shows in England in the last month, and we’re still getting the ball rolling.
BOB:  It’s a good thing our new album hasn’t come out yet because we’re kind of slaughtering the songs.  We only have a few more days before it comes out.  That’s when we have to start doing good versions of these songs.  They’re good songs.
MARK:  Last night it was a battle with Scott, our stage-left guitarist Spiral Stairs.
BOB:  Yeah, last night was a battle.

JOHN:  It was good to hear you play “Conduit For Sale.”

BOB:  Yeah, we play that one quite a bit.

JOHN:  I took a friend who had never seen you guys before...

BOB:  Whoa, boy.

JOHN:  ... and she thought you wre going to go completely mad.

BOB:  I was having a nervous breakdown a little bit.  I don’t really have... I wouldn’t call myself an alcoholic, but in terms of playing live, I’ve never done shows without at least five beers.  It’s kind of sad, but it’s true.
MARK:  I’m sure one of my fondest memories will be the fond memory of seeing Bob Nastanovich, just moments before we went on stage, walking out with four beers held like this, and placing them down in his little department over there.

LES:  What kind of beer do you drink?

BOB:  Anything, pretty much.  Cans, bottles, warm, cold, doesn’t matter to me.

JOHN:  What was your wildest show?

BOB:  Oh, easy.  We played this festival in Sweden, got there the day before...
MARK:  Where did we fly from?
BOB:  We had flown from Auckland, New Zealand, which is like, a 45-hour trip.
MARK:  It was going to be this huge festival, and we get there and it’s raining and they hadn’t even built the stage.  They were making the stage out of two-by-fours, and Gary Young was saying, “Well, I’ll help you build the fucking stage.”
BOB:  It had been raining all day.
MARK:  The rain knocked the power out, remember that?
BOB:  Huggy Bear was playing, rain was pouring down on them, and we just told them to stop playing.  We didn’t want to see anyone die.
MARK:  People were plugging in their guitars and going, “OW!”
BOB:  We were supposed to play at mifnight and we ended up going on at 3:30 in the morning.  We were completely trashed, and in the middle of our show, the sun came up.
MARK:  Yeah.

JOHN:  Mark, are you doing any new stuff with Free Kitten?

MARK:  The last thing I did was in August.  I went up to Massachusetts where Kim and Thurston were staying.  We went into a little studio there, in the middle of like, a corn field.  Really hot, baking hot.  We were there for seven days and recorded some stuff, but I don’t know if that’s going to turn into something.
BOB:  I asked Julie about that last night, and she thinks it’s really great and wants it to come out.  She thinks it’s the best Free Kitten record ever.
MARK:  It actually will be.  We cover a Francoise Hardy song, “Teeny Weeny Bobby.”   

LES:  So are you guys up for the show tonight?

BOB:  It’s been a long time since we’ve done a really good show here.  We’ve played here probably fifteen times, and I’d say we’ve done some tragic shows here.  We’ve played some really horrendous gigs over the years.  Last night was bearable.  That’s the nicest word I can find.  Bearable.
[woman from Matador passes by]  Almost time to go.
MARK:  Okay, just tell us when.
[woman from Matador]  You have another photo shoot.
BOB:  Right now?
MARK:  Whenever these guys are ready, we’ll go.
BOB:  Well, good to meet you.

JOHN:  A pleasure.

MARK:  That’s sort of a standard thing for index —  it’s like, anyone can say, “Hey, can I interview Richard Linklater?”

JOHN:  Yeah, and we don’t even have to ask technical questions like, “How do you finger the bass?”

MARK:  Actually, I like those kinds of questions.

LES:  So ... how do you finger the bass?