{"id":892,"date":"2014-09-12T09:00:47","date_gmt":"2014-09-12T08:00:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/douglascowie.com\/?p=892"},"modified":"2014-09-10T11:35:06","modified_gmt":"2014-09-10T10:35:06","slug":"song-of-the-week-lariat-by-stephen-malkmus-and-the-jicks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.douglascowie.net\/?p=892","title":{"rendered":"Song of the Week: &#8220;Lariat&#8221; by Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Each Friday I pick a song\u2013new, old, borrowed, blue\u2013that\u2019s been on my mind and in my ears, and write a short post about it.<\/p>\n<p>This is &#8220;Lariat&#8221; by Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks:<\/p>\n<p><iframe src=\"\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/CLJcE_dsT6E\" width=\"402\" height=\"226\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/crookedrain.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">Pavement<\/a> is Stephen Malkmus&#8217;s more famous band, but he&#8217;s been doing albums either solo or as Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks for fifteen years now, and his\/their body of work is, at least as far as my view goes, just as interesting and good as Pavement&#8217;s. I recently read Michael Azerrad&#8217;s\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Our_Band_Could_Be_Your_Life\" target=\"_blank\"><em>Our Band Could Be Your Life<\/em><\/a>, and though the book doesn&#8217;t have anything explicitly to do with Pavement or Stephen Malkmus, I was struck by how many hardcore punk musicians of the early 1990s expressed an interest in\/admiration for the Grateful Dead. You don&#8217;t necessarily hear that influence in the music of Black Flag or Fugazi, but it did occur to me, while at a Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks gig earlier this year, that one way of thinking about Stephen Malkmus&#8217;s music is that it expresses an equal interest in the Grateful Dead (who get namechecked in this song) as it does in punk rock. Until I read Azerrad&#8217;s book, this seemed like a rare or unusual combination of interests, though thinking about it further, I don&#8217;t know why; I like the Grateful Dead and punk rock, and I know various other people who do, too. I suspect, at least for people whose lives were changed by punk rock, they either go through a time of denying they have or had any interest in the Dead, and then as they grow a bit older and\/or their musical tastes develop further, they come back to that kind of thing, and realize the contradictions aren&#8217;t unreconcilable. Anyway, all of this is a longwinded way of saying that in the music of the Jicks you get the meandering, noodling music of the Dead in a head-on collision with the tautness of punk. Of course, there&#8217;s Minutemen in there, too, and that&#8217;s a lesson to us all.<\/p>\n<div style=\"padding-bottom:20px; padding-top:10px;\" class=\"hupso-share-buttons\"><!-- Hupso Share Buttons - https:\/\/www.hupso.com\/share\/ --><a class=\"hupso_toolbar\" href=\"https:\/\/www.hupso.com\/share\/\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/static.hupso.com\/share\/buttons\/share-medium.png\" style=\"border:0px; padding-top: 5px; float:left;\" alt=\"Share Button\"\/><\/a><script type=\"text\/javascript\">var hupso_services_t=new Array(\"Twitter\",\"Facebook\",\"Google Plus\",\"Pinterest\",\"Linkedin\",\"Tumblr\",\"StumbleUpon\",\"Digg\",\"Reddit\",\"Bebo\",\"Delicious\");var hupso_background_t=\"#EAF4FF\";var hupso_border_t=\"#66CCFF\";var hupso_toolbar_size_t=\"medium\";var hupso_image_folder_url = \"\";var hupso_twitter_via=\"DouglasCowie\";var hupso_url_t=\"\";var hupso_title_t=\"Song%20of%20the%20Week%3A%20%22Lariat%22%20by%20Stephen%20Malkmus%20and%20the%20Jicks\";<\/script><script type=\"text\/javascript\" src=\"https:\/\/static.hupso.com\/share\/js\/share_toolbar.js\"><\/script><!-- Hupso Share Buttons --><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Each Friday I pick a song\u2013new, old, borrowed, blue\u2013that\u2019s been on my mind and in my ears, and write a short post about it. This is &#8220;Lariat&#8221; by Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks: Pavement is Stephen Malkmus&#8217;s more famous band, but he&#8217;s been doing albums either solo or as Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks for [&hellip;]<\/p>\n<div style=\"padding-bottom:20px; padding-top:10px;\" class=\"hupso-share-buttons\"><!-- Hupso Share Buttons - https:\/\/www.hupso.com\/share\/ --><a class=\"hupso_toolbar\" href=\"https:\/\/www.hupso.com\/share\/\"><img src=\"https:\/\/static.hupso.com\/share\/buttons\/share-medium.png\" style=\"border:0px; padding-top: 5px; float:left;\" alt=\"Share Button\"\/><\/a><script type=\"text\/javascript\">var hupso_services_t=new Array(\"Twitter\",\"Facebook\",\"Google Plus\",\"Pinterest\",\"Linkedin\",\"Tumblr\",\"StumbleUpon\",\"Digg\",\"Reddit\",\"Bebo\",\"Delicious\");var hupso_background_t=\"#EAF4FF\";var hupso_border_t=\"#66CCFF\";var hupso_toolbar_size_t=\"medium\";var hupso_image_folder_url = \"\";var hupso_twitter_via=\"DouglasCowie\";var hupso_url_t=\"\";var hupso_title_t=\"Song%20of%20the%20Week%3A%20%22Lariat%22%20by%20Stephen%20Malkmus%20and%20the%20Jicks\";<\/script><script type=\"text\/javascript\" src=\"https:\/\/static.hupso.com\/share\/js\/share_toolbar.js\"><\/script><!-- Hupso Share Buttons --><\/div>","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-892","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-song-of-the-week","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.douglascowie.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/892","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.douglascowie.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.douglascowie.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.douglascowie.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.douglascowie.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=892"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.douglascowie.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/892\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":894,"href":"https:\/\/www.douglascowie.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/892\/revisions\/894"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.douglascowie.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=892"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.douglascowie.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=892"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.douglascowie.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=892"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}