Sorry to go a bit left of the dial for a few days, folks, but it’s been a busy one—Rhino reissued the final four albums by The Replacements (more on those next week, but here’s a primer), and VH1 is currently showing "100 Greatest Hip Hop Songs." Unfortunately, I’m only at Digable Planets’ "Rebirth of Slick" and I’ll have to wait through an hour of "Behind the Music: New Kids on the Block" until I find out which song is No. 1. Fortunately, that gives me time for a public service announcement:
Gold soundz: One of Charlottesville‘s finest contributions to rock, Pavement, in an old press photo.
Last year, local radio station WTJU started "Rock and Roll Movie Night," held every Monday night for free at Olsson Hall (map here). Last year, the group screened the Fugazi documentary Instrument and Dig!, one of the greatest rock meltdown flicks I’ve seen. Monday night, WTJU’s Nick Rubin screened Slow Century, Matador Records’ documentary about Pavement.
It was a great pairing—a movie that gave a once-local rock act a fan’s reverence, screened for about a dozen Pavement-loving locals who seemed to share the outlook. The last 15 minutes of Slow Century, in fact, are given over to the last three songs of Pavement’s final performance in London; the credits roll as the band packs its gear up, a nice touch.
I’m not a Pavement nut, necessarily—I love Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain, but one of my favorite songs on the record has always been "Newark Wilder," and the song isn’t exactly held up as a fan favorite, which always made me feel like I was missing something integral. But the film was the right tune for the right night, and with a few other good ones coming up—Dave Chappelle’s Block Party (your only chance to see the Fugees, really) and 24-Hour Party People, about the Manchester music scene that centered around Factory Records and Joy Division/New Order.
Come check out Block Party on Monday night! The rest of the schedule can be found here. What other rock flicks should WTJU screen?