MMT50 - 221

This week on the program, jD is joined by Russ Romandini to unveil song 21 on the Pavement Top 50 Countdown. Transcript: Track 1: [0:00] Previously on the Pavement Top 50. Track 2: [0:02] So here we go with Texas Never Whispers. Aiden from Vermont, what are your initial thoughts about this song? Texas Never Whispers is a really cool song. Full disclosure, before you sent me that this would be the song that we were going to be talking about, it honestly wasn't one of the tracks off of Watery the Mystic that really jumped out at me. But after um after you sent it and i knew that we were gonna have to chat about it um i listened to it a little bit deeper and i i definitely found like a new appreciation for it hey. Track 1: [0:38] This is westy from the rock and roll band pavement and you're listening to the countdown. Track 3: [0:46] Hey it's jd here back for another episode of our top 50 countdown for seminal indie rock band and Pavement. Week over week, we're going to count down the 50 essential Pavement tracks that you selected with your very own top 20 ballots. I then tabulated the results using an abacus and an air fryer. Seriously, is there anything this machine doesn't do? How will your favorite song fare in the rankings? You'll need to tune in to find out. So there's that. This week, I'm joined by Pavement superfan, Boston Russ. Boston Russ, how the fuck are you? I'm fan-tastic. and ready to rock. This is great news because it would be a hell of a podcast if you were not ready to rock. That's right. That's right. Thanks so much for having me on. Oh, it's my pleasure. Thanks for doing this. You guys do all the heavy lifting on these, so this is fantastic for me. Let's get right to it. Let's talk about your pavement origin story. Sorry. I think my Pavement Origins story goes back to 1994. Track 3: [1:50] I'm a little late. I'm kind of a late comer in some respects. So back in 94, a good friend of mine, so I got to give him some props. His name was Sean McGovern. We called him Slappy and a few other things. He was in a band in the Boston area called Beeswax. There's some other bands in our area called Beeswax also, but he was in with a few guys. And they did AK-47 and a couple other songs. Sadly, he passed away a couple years ago. He got sick. Oh, shit. Track 3: [2:23] But back in 94, we were good friends, and we hung out a ton, and he just one day gave me this bag of CDs. He left it in my car. He's like, listen to these. And so Crooked Rain was there, and so I put it on, and Silent Kid comes on, and I'm just like. Track 3: [2:41] Who are these guys? And, you know, I played the album some. And it was just, like, I go back and I look at that time. And, like, the album release times were just, like, really, like, fast-moving parts of my life. It was, like, the end of college almost where Crooked Rain came out. It was, like, the end of my junior year. And I was doing a radio show. And I don't know. I, like, never quite linked up to, like, really featuring them prominently. And then wowie zowie comes out like two weeks before i graduated college and you know and get into like the summer in 95 and it's just like it like just blurred and so it's like i heard it like a little bit but didn't like totally like dive in not until bright in the corners came out in 97 and that like i just could not stop playing that album like just word great record and word out and And I wanted to see them in concert. I had been to a bunch of different shows for bands, like Foo Fighters. I got to see Foo Fighters when they were together for two weeks in 1995. Holy shit. They were together. Nobody knew who they were. This is my same friend. So Sean says to me, we got to go see this band play. Track 3: [3:55] Eddie Vedder's wife is doing a percussion band. Track 3: [3:59] And Eddie Vedder is going to play with Mike Watt. And Dave Grohl is going to show up. and do, he's going to play with his new band. And I was like, he's like, you got to go. And it was like this rainy Sunday afternoon. We go to this club called Avalon. So if anybody knows Boston, knows the 90s, we wore Avalon out. I mean, it was like one of the best places to go for rock bands. And Foo Fighters was the middle band. Grohl comes out on lead. And you're like, because you're like, oh, Dave Grohl, new band, going to be a drummer, right? He comes out on lead and does like, and he's holding his guitar tower in hand and it was like that one moment where it's like best ever or total train wreck and he did this as a call comes in with the first lines you know just his voice butter and from there it was it was crazy so like you know i followed like a lot of these bands and went to a lot of these shows and just didn't quite i kept missing pavement and then they broke up and i got old you and me both brother you know and it's like oh and they got together in 2010 and but my My son was like a year old, and I had really moved far from Boston at t