#189 (of 365) "Box Elder" Pavement

One of, if not the first songs ever recorded/released by Pavement, it appeared as the second track on their 1989 debut EP "Slay Tracks", right after "You're Killing Me". All five songs on this EP plus their two follow up EPs that preceded breakout debut album Slanted and Enchanted were placed onto the compilation Westing (by Musket and Sextant), released in 1993, which is where I first heard this song (and so many others) that I would fall in love with. Pavement of course broke up in the late 90s, after just a single decade of amazing music, and while there have been reunion tours, there haven't been new songs, and it's definitely a shame, but also maybe just maybe sort of nice. To hear the pure joy in this early track, so brilliant right out of the gate. Oh, and I recently saw the pseudo-documentary Pavements, about the band, which is one of my favorite films of this year, and found out Malkmus used to live in Hoboken (!) back in 1989 or 1990 and one of the first shows (if not the first) the band played on the east coast was in New Brunswick, right around that time, when I happened to be going to school at Rutgers. Oh, if I had only known to become an indie music/concert junkie back in my 20s, I could have seen so many great bands in their prime. Alas, I'm still enjoying it now. 

"Box Elder" - Pavement // Slay Tracks: 1933-1969 (1989) - also on Westing (By Musket and Sextant) 1993