Mister Trend's Random 10

Like Lyrad with the Pixies, there's little I can say about Pavement that hasn't already said, and I also came to them rather late. I only first heard of them via the t-shirts that were abundant among the "altnerative" crowd at my school (I was one of the quiet, strange-but-studious kids who viewed high school as time served for getting to do something as cool as college in the future), but none of my few close friends personally listened to them, so they were just another one of the bands I'd heard of but never heard (up there with the Jesus Lizard and Helmet). For reasons I don't even remember, in my late college years I finally got around to checking them out (it was probably when Malkmus was starting his solo career, which I didn't find that interesting, so I decided to see what he had been like beforehand). Suffice to say, when I heard "Slanted and Enchanted", I was floored, and couldn't believe I'd spent about 7 years never listening to it. I checked out the rest of Pavement's stuff too, and while it's all good, I gotta say that "Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain" (which this week's seventh song is from) is my favorite. Of all the bands that were huge in the 90s, Pavement somewhat strikes me similar to the Breeders, in that they were lumped in with "grunge" when they had virtually nothing to do with it (part of the unfortunate "alternative = grunge" phase of the early 90s). Anyhow, I may have missed out on Pavement the first time around, but their first two albums are as good together as the first two albums of any band out there.

1. "I Got Stripes" - Johnny Cash
2. "Cut You Loose" - T-Model Ford
3. "Ma Rainey's Black Bottom" - Ma Rainey
4. "Where Can I Change My Clothes" - Bukka White
5. "Nothing Man" - Bruce Springsteen
6. "It's Nobody's Fault But Mine" - Blind Willie Johnson
7. "Cut Your Hair" - Pavement
8. "Le Rendez-Vous" - Manu Chao
9. "Yusef's Mood" - Yusef Lateef
10. "Chove Chuve" - Jorge Ben