Pavement - "Speak, See, Remember"
Pavement - "Strings of Nashville"

This is the week of the original Pavement reunion shows in New York City. A time for another time, a week to remember the bygone era of a band that never really existed. Remember 1996? When your dad was still working his P.O.W. job and your grandparents were still alive, and still went by their CB handles. Crusty Rusty and The Squall. You masturbated on your homework and used PhoneNet to start a rumour that Caitlin Benjamin-Ng was responsible for renaming dorm wing F "BlowTown USA". Your girlfriends were all Family Size Ruffles and every time you'd chug a beer you'd smack your glasses into your eyes. A simpler time, a better time. A time when you could pay for cigarettes with a french kiss. A time when "goin' to the library" didn't mean going to the library, it meant mini-putt and a knife fight. When learning something from a stranger was as simple as a head-on collision; a note of apology and you're on your way. When love was affordable and didn't hang around like a bad fart: Paparazzi Priest will preside over this marriage, "God loves you, but what could he do." When we humans ruled this planet like we deserve, before the Great Cowering. So bring back 1996, I say, bring back powdered envelopes and binge-boarding, bring back Crushed Velvet Cola and Dr. Sandwich (the fixin's are in!), and we can all sag like open wallets on a jazz-era chaise-longue, twenties from the twenties, "What's your twenty?" "In my twenties."

[Bye]

(photo embroidery by Maurizio Anzeri)