Pavement- live at the Glasgow Barrowlands

 The 1990s had returned to Glasgow last night with those ancient student unions and indie clubs pouring forth their revenants into a chill October evening. Pavement were back at the Barrowlands for the first time since 1999. I was there in 1999 and I was there in Barcelona in 2010 and I was there last night. Pavement seemed even more present than they were on those distant dates. They were tight, energetic and apparently enjoying themselves.

They played 26 songs, 7 of which I would describe as the MTV pop hits. Those bangers were delivered well and enjoyed by the crowd.  I own all the Pavement albums although I haven’t listened to some of them for several years.  Most of the songs were familiar but there were a couple I didn’t recognise. At times they mimicked Neu and the Fall. They fell apart in the middle of one song for the second time on the tour.

Pavement are a great band and it was good to see them again. I believe that if they had desired it more at the time they could have been massive. They could have been bigger than Nirvana with true pop hits but that was not their road. The road they picked was right for them and right for the Barrowlands last night as the spirit of the 1990s was manifest again,

Corporate Rock Sucks: The Rise and Fall of SST Records by Jim Ruland

 I spent a lot of time as a teenager listening to music released on the SST label.  Black Flag, Minutemen, Husker Du, Descendents, Bad Brains and many more released music via SST in the halcyon days of the 1980s.  Then it all went wrong.  The good bands stopped releasing music or moved to another label and eventually SST ground to a halt.

This book highlights how successful SST actually were at their peak and documents the fall.  It's not totally clear what precipitated the fall but the departure of key team members such as Chuck Dukowski and Mugger seems to have played a part.  Greg Ginn is often cast as a pantomime villain in events although I'm  not sure how accurate this is.  Certainly, early on, he did a lot of good for these bands and gave them a step up to better things.

I was an American hardcore/alternative enthusiast when I was younger but this book contained viewpoints I was unfamiliar with and has introduced some music that I did not know.  I was left pining for a world where SST signed Nirvana and managed to keep Sonic Youth happy/release Daydream Nation.  That may have been an exciting world.

What does the future for the SST bands hold?  Will we see reissues and remasters with unreleased material?  Has it all been lost?  Do they even have decent tapes of the 1982 Black Flag demoes. 

Ian MacKaye took a very different, archivist approach with Dischord and we will have much of the DC scene for posterity.  The LA scene may just be degenerating, covered in some green mould.