I've Got a Lot of Things I Want to Sell, But

Pavement - "Summer Babe" (Winter Version)

Is there a better song to properly capture 1992 than Pavement's lead-off batter on Slanted and Enchanted?

Let me answer that for you.

No. There isn't.

Alex Ross covered it well in a New Yorker review available here:

Malkmus found his voice as a song-writer in "Summer Babe." . . . This song is exactly the swaggering, classic-rock sound that the title leads you to expect: Kannberg's guitar strides forward, Malkmus's voice lilts up and down, everyone's having fun. It's such a grand come-on that the words probably register only in the corner of your ear: something about waiting for a summer babe. Listening again, you find that the clichés you thought you heard aren't there. "She waits there in the levee wash, mixing cocktails with a plastic-tipped cigar," Malkmus has been singing. "Minerals, ice deposits daily drop off your first shiny robe . . . Yooouuu're my summer babe." Your classic-rock song has been hijacked by surrealists. Malkmus sings it with such cool passion that the irrational lyrics somehow flow as nostalgically as the conventional lyrics they seem to have replaced.

What I love about the song is how Malkmus mock-laughs on the bridge around the 2:10 mark ("drop a-ha-off your first shiny robe") and then shifts to a pose of anger to howl, "Not here, babe, you took it all." (Or "tortuuuuuure," depending on your mileage).

We're treated to the chance to compare versions on the Luxe & Reduxe double-disc released a few years ago. I prefer the dirtier Drag City 7" they cut before signing with Matador. This is where you really hear the laugh. (The repetition of this laugh across versions reinforces the idea that the laugh is part of the pose of the speaker.) The live version on the re-release is faster and places a nice focus on Kannberg's guitar. There's also some toying with the lyrics in it, particularly the gnash Malkmus gives to the final lines.

I listened to this song about ten times today. I rarely do this.

Alternate versions:
Pavement - "Summer Baby" (7" version)
Pavement - "Summer Babe (live)

Comments

[churlita]

When that album first came out, I was working at a coffee shop/ice cream place in downtown Iowa City. I probably heard it about 10 times a day for several months that year...At least, that's what it felt like. I'm just glad I liked it.

[Trevor]

Sounds like a great coffee shop. Was that the Great American, Churlita?

I was a senior in high school and came to the album and the band much later. I was listening to the Jayhawks, Pantera, Pearl Jam, and Soundgarden in 1992. Pavement wasn't MY 1992, but it definitely IS 1992. If someone had put this album in my hands, I would have listened to it 10 times a day.

Everyone really should read the rest of Ross' review excerpted here. It was pub'd in 1997 on the release of Brighten the Corners and does a nice job of summarizing the band's emergence and influence, and especially its resistance to the mainstream, particularly through its lyrics.

[churlita]

Yeah, Great Midwestern.

[Trevor]

Embarrassing. That's what I meant. I'm just not so regionalist in my thinking . . . Or maybe I think the Midwest IS America. Yeah, that's it.

[Justin]

I'll sheepishly offer that I only heard this song for the first time about a month ago, when I downloaded my first ever Pavement album (from eMusic). I'd heard a song or two here or there but never picked anything up. How did I let that happen?

[Trevor]

No need to be sheepish, I'm still getting to know the band in some ways. I didn't start listening to them until a pal in grad school (how can fall of 2002 be FIVE years ago? How?) loaned me Luxe & Reduxe. Gracefully, he did so with no judgment.

Hey, at least you didn't spend a good portion of the mid-'90s going to Dave Matthews Band shows like I did. You wanna talk about missing out on a lot of music.

[davy]

i'm trying to figure out if i was the pal in grad school or not! if it was 2002, sounds like somebody beat me to the punch!

i still take credit for spoon, damnit!