The First Time I Got High,...

...I listened to “Two States” from Pavement’s first album, Slanted and Enchanted.

It’s not the best song on the album, it’s not necessarily the worst (what is the worst song on the album? On viewing the tracklist, “Jackals…” is the only one I openly do not adore, so I guess that’s a candidate), but somehow I find it fitting that the first time I got high I listened to that song. I don’t really smoke pot that much as I used to (relative to my younger self, that is), and pot didn’t turn me on to any music that I didn’t like (although I did think that Zion I was good once when I was high. I’ve felt a certain sense of betrayal ever since), I just like pot a lot and I like Pavement a lot, and I find that fitting.

And, shit, Steve and Spiral sound like they’re high when they’re playing on this track. This was pre-full band Pavement, just Malkmus, Kannberg and the inimitable Gary Young fucking around in Louder Than You Think in Stockton. Rumor has it that if you go to the mailing address on the early Pavement singles, you’ll find the home of Kannberg’s parents, who apparently still love the attention they get after all this time.

These little things were the sorts that made my teenage self fall hopelessly in love with Pavement. Pavement was one of those bands whose real life idiosyncrasies matched their sonic ones. Malkmus’ solo on the track is so trebly and flat, yet played with such bombast and abandon and glee, there is no way he wasn’t high during the recordings. And for my newly christened high self, it was all glory. North and South!

--Mac Pogue