Some of the best songs on The Secret History, Vol. 1 come from the summer of ’92, when the band went to London to appear on John Peel’s BBC Radio 1 show. Songs like the moody ballad “Secret Knowledge of Backroads” (which later appeared on a Silver Jews EP) and the Pixies-esque “Circa 1762” show a songwriter who was already restless to roam past Slanted. “My mind was like, ‘Let’s just mess around in here and make something new that’s not been done before,‘” [singer Stephen] Malkmus says. “And that’s what we did.” Pavement hadn’t played many gigs before recording Slanted. “The only tours we knew about were Laughing Hyenas or the Jesus Lizard — they toured in a van for no money,” Malkmus says. “We were psyched to do that once in our life and then maybe move on.” But good reviews kept coming in for the album, and fans kept coming to the shows, which by then featured Mark Ibold on bass. “It kind of caught on with people,” Malkmus says.
—Simon Vozick-Levinson writing in Rolling Stone about the release of rare music recorded during the formative years of one of the 1990s’ most beloved indie bands: Pavement.
from Longreads Blog » Longreads Blog http://blog.longreads.com/2015/08/11/the-sound-of-pavements-early-days/
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