Questions
1) Whose voice is better?
2) Who was a better songwriter?
3) Who made better music?

My answer:
1) I think Paul Westerburg's voice is my favorite in rock and roll. Yes. I am aware he can't sing.
I think Stephen Malkmus sucks as a singer, but I guess that's what people like about him.

2) Paul Westerburg can definitely write better songs. Stephen Malkmus's seems to have problems writing any coherent music.

3) Stephen Malkmus obviously made better music.
Tim and Let it Be are great albums, but come on, next to S&E and CRCR - there's no comparison.

malkmus, malkmus, and MALKMUS!!! He took songwriting to a whole different level, just listen to silent kit, it beats anything westerberg ever wrote (except maybe seen your video and like 3 more songs.. either way malkmus is still much better)

Malkmus hands down in all aspects of musical comparison. Tim and Let it Be are fun in a drunken, messy, incoherant way. Bastards of the Young and a few others are absolutely classic songs, but the Replacements don't touch Pavement. Pavement had great songs 10:1 to the Replacements.

How about 200:0?

Tough call. It's not really a fair comparison since they were of different eras, and stylistically very different. It's sort of like comparing the Beatles and Elvis.

I'm a huge fan of both Pavement and the Replacements. I'd really say both are about equal in terms of quality, influence, and impact.

I will say that I prefer Westerberg's post-Mats solo work to Malkmus' post-Pavement work though. So I guess that gives a slight edge to Westerberg.

Good lord! Knock it off. Quit downplaying the Replacements! Tim and Let it Be are just as influential as CRCR or S&E. The Replacements were in the exact same spot in the early 80's as Pavement was in the 90's. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying Westerberg's entire catalog is anywhere near what Pavement did, but you can not just dismiss those two Replacement's albums.

"No comparison" is correct though. You can't compare the two because there are two totally different artists..two totally different approaches to songwriting...

Who is better Bob Dylan or Bob Marley? Do you compare those two? No. You don't. Comparisons are stupid.

Bob Dylan and Bob Marley are of two different musical genres.
The Replacements and Pavement are both within the genre of alternative/indie rock, therefore this is a fair comparison. The only difference in time is that Replacements is pre-Nirvana, but both had about the same public exposure.

quote:

Originally posted by AIRIK:
Bob Dylan and Bob Marley are of two different musical genres.
The Replacements and Pavement are both within the genre of alternative/indie rock, therefore this is a fair comparison.

First and foremost: it's Westerberg, not Westerburg.

Dylan and Marley are both singer-songwriters. Sounds like the same genre to me. The comparison seems no less artificial than the one you're setting up.

The Replacements and Pavement may both be alternative/indie rock, but they're VERY different kinds of bands. The Cranberries are an alternative/indie rock band: should we compare them to Sonic Youth?

Depsite the fact that I don't get why we should feel these two bands are somehow fit for comparison, and the fact that I share the "what's the point of comparing artist A and artist B?" attitude, I'll take Westerberg on all counts. Pavement is exactly the kind of indie rock I don't like for the most part: artsy, obtuse, and deliberately difficult. There are some Pavement tracks I enjoy, but I'll pass on most of them. They were also one of the worst live shows I've ever seen.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: philosopherEric,

Westerberg!!

quote:

Pavement is exactly the kind of indie rock I don't like for the most part: artsy, obtuse, and deliberately difficult.

I guess it is all personal opinion so I am not criticizing you for saying this, but in point, I think the very charm of Pavement is discovering the melody, the possibility, the potential, underneath the layers of weirdness and "deliberate" disguise. If someone made accessible covers of Pavement's greatest songs, they wouldn't be great anymore. Pavement's uniqueness comes in making the melodies difficult, and in doing so, it is beautiful

quote:

Originally posted by AIRIK:

quote:

Pavement is exactly the kind of indie rock I don't like for the most part: artsy, obtuse, and deliberately difficult.

I guess it is all personal opinion so I am not criticizing you for saying this, but in point, I think the very charm of Pavement is discovering the melody, the possibility, the potential, underneath the layers of weirdness and "deliberate" disguise. If someone made accessible covers of Pavement's greatest songs, they wouldn't be great anymore. Pavement's uniqueness comes in making the melodies difficult, and in doing so, it is beautiful

That's a fair point, but I'll say that I've never discovered anything deep within a Pavement song that's stuck with me. But I don't tend to like art for the sake of art. I certainly don't HATE Pavement, and there's a fair amount of stuff on S&E and CR,CR that I like, but I'm just not in the camp of Pavement worshippers that seem to conglomerate in indie music generally.

I'm with Eric. I'm not feelin' Pavement joints at ALL.

I go Westerberg, easily. I kind of like his solo stuff over certain Replacements records.

If the music is intentionally "artsy, obtuse, and difficult", then the music is intrinsically bad. There isn't really a point to debate that.

However, what is debatable is the mass appeal of the music. Music Theory is taught so that you can destroy it, or mold it, or shape it into something that people can enjoy.

So the debate between Pavement and Replacements should not really be whether or not you personally like them, but rather, which group was better at pleasing the crowd it was gunning for, and for how long.

Having said that, I choose Pavement.

This is a tough one, I'd probably take Let it Be over anything Pavement did, but on the whole I'd probably take the total output of Pavement over the total output of The Replacements. I haven't heard any of Westerberg's solo stuff, so I can't compare there. I guess I'll call it a split.

When Westerberg songs are at their best (I Will Dare or Unsatisfied) they are a lot more anthemic than the best Pavement songs, but for me Pavement records are more consistently engaging listens. I only own Tim and Let It Be though, so screw what I think, right?

I've never been able to get too into the Replacements, but I absolutely love Pavement. I don't see what's so "difficult" about them. It may take *some* of their songs a few listens to find something to grab a hold of, but I find that's true of most music I consider great.

I think a fair number of people just don't know some of the words Malkmus uses, or understand the context, and dismiss it as arty and pretentious. For example, from "Transport Is Arranged":

You better find your way out,
you better learn how to run
You better walk away
and leave the angles for the shills

If you don't know what a shill is, those four lines sounds like benign nonsense. If you do know what a shill is, those lines should ring brilliantly true. I haven't heard anything by Westerburg that plums those depths of the psyche.

Pavement had such a strikingly original sound to me, whereas the Replacements, while original to a point, sounded aesthetically similar to a fair number of bands.

"You better find your way out,
you better learn how to run
You better walk away
and leave the angles for the shills."


You don't know Malkmus like I know Malkmus. He's a talking about how some fella dat sold him a bunk cassette tape that was supposed to contain a real live magnetic miracle.

Human psyche my foot. Cat's ass! He's talking about commercialism and materialism and the people that push it. All he's saying is walk away from all the different tag lines that people are trying to use to push stuff on you. Not really that deep. Just don't get ripped off like he got ripped off on that tape.

"Plums the depths of the psyche." C'mon, you just wanted to say that. And the fact that you're trying to say that people don't get it because they don't know what a shill is.....is laughable. You don't even go on to explain why the lyrics "plum the depths." You just say they do and expect us to take your word for it? Shame on you, Commontone, shame.

Please, explain to me how not buying into a promoter's lines is plumming the depths. Maybe you're just not as deep as Malkmus.

You may know Malkmus, and you and he may smoke the same shit, but what you said makes no sense.
"Transport is Arranged" seems to be an obvious song about the singer dumping his lover. She's the one angling (a shill) for something that he'll never give. The transport can be interpreted as either him taking off or she being taken away. It's also possibly some kind of political satire. Walk to Baltimore from the Pillars of Eights sounds like something akin to leaving D.C. It's only 43 miles from Baltimore to all the pillars of the D.C. landmarks (aka the White House.) Then again, the surgeon could be the Surgeon General, so no more smoking.

Anyway, Westerberg has written tons of deeply-felt lyrics about human relationships.

I'm just trying to figure out how I can be so stupid. What friggin' tape is Malkmus talking about, and where does he mention it?

Here's my interpretation of those first lines. I think many people sometimes find themselves in a state of mind where they're trying to read between the lines of life, questioning what they thought they knew and starting to consider things from new angles. This happens to people after a big change in their life--a relationship ending, graduating college, the loss of a loved one, or anything that radically challenges your world view. You start looking for an elusive meaning or truth that will tie things all together for you. This is an emotionally vulnerable state of mind, and things you would have shrugged off in the past, even things as small as a look you catch from a store clerk or something, become a challenge, a piece of the puzzle that you have to figure out.

Psychologically it's just your ego trying to preserve itself, wanting to interpret things in a way that will allow it to go on in the way it's comfortable with. You're trying to find yourself and your way again.

I've been there, and it's a fragile, dangerous state to be in. You've gotta "find your way out" of it, "learn how to run" again and go with the flow of things. You have to "walk away" from this existential crisis before you go nuts.

When you feel like this you'll feel like you're in a "maze," and you might "hate all you touch," because you're hypersensitive to yourself and the effect you're having on things around you, and it's not going well.

When you finally get on a comfortable path with yourself again, you're "talking easily" (not questioning everything you say and do) and your personal "borders" are intact (you've found your identity again). Your mode of "transport" through life has been found, arranged. You've found your path and the flow of life again--you might say you're strolling down a "shady lane," to reference another song.

I first listened to the song when I was out of school, watching all my friends move on with life and get jobs, and feeling pretty lost and depressed about what the hell I was going to do with myself and my life. So I've definitely attached some pretty personal meaning to it, and it does indeed plum the depths of *my* psyche at the very least. Incidentally one of my friends hears the song more or less the same way.

That's my best attempt at this moment to explain what I was thinking about those lyrics. For *me personally* I don't think that deeply when I listen to Westerberg. I hear him rhyming "mud" with "blood."

Anyway, nobody knows exactly what the song's about except Malkmus--who, like many songwriters, may not even know himself, and just liked the sound of the words.

For the record, "shill" isn't the most obscure word in the world, but it's far from commonly used, and a fair number of people out there don't know it.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Commontone,

quote:

Originally posted by Harper Bruce:
Maybe you're just not as deep as Malkmus.

I think I saw Malkmus brawling with a dude wearing a bad toupee and a potato sack. Or maybe it was a bum-fighting video. Either way, the guy was shouting all sorts of crazy shit. I didn't get that, either.

But the bad tape story is cute. Maybe I buy it.

Deconstructing Pavement lyrics is like watching a drunk try to fuck a doorknob. It's funny, and it entertains you for a minute, but ultimately just makes you feel like you've wasted fourteen seconds.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: philosopherEric,