Wowee Zowee!!!!!!

As you may know I'm a bit of a Pavement fan and as you also may know Wowee Zowee Pavement's 3rd album which came out in 1995 was reissued along with countless bonus tracks last week. Last week on Monday I got my Wowee Zowee along with pre-order only merchandise including a poster, a never before released 7 inch, and a live CD.

Now for those of you who don't know Wowee Zowee was realest following the breakthrough (shut up all of you they had three songs on MTV and they were supposed to be the next Nirvana so shut up it was a breakthrough) of Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain. It was heavily anticipated by the critics and many said Pavement were going to be the next Nirvana. The critics thought they were going to get a grungy, guitar driven, piece of crap, but instead Pavement delivered a big f*ck you to the music industry. Wowee Zowee was more than an album it was a rejection of all that was corporate. WZ only had two songs anything like what the critics wanted Flux= Rad and Serpentine Pad and even those were border line. WZ was critically panned, but fans loved, many see it as Pavement's finest moment.

I could go on talking about WZ for over ten minutes (Nik has timed me) but instead I'm going to review the reissue as I originally intended. So the first 18 tracks on WZ are the original album and are needless to say awesome. WZ is quite varied which makes it great. After the original tracks come the Father to Sister of Thought B- sides, the Rattled by the Rush B- sides, and then the Pacific Trim EP. Easily fooled is truly a Pavement classic off the Rattled by the Rush B- side, but other than that nothing really stands out off the two B- sides, however the Pacific Trim EP is truly awesome, the only problem I already own it. Pacific Trim has great tracks such as Give it a Day, Gangstesr and Pranksters, and I Love Perth. The second disc in the two disc set is filled with radio spots and various compilation recordings (ie soundtrack to I Shot Andy Warhol). Most of this is new to my ears, but nothing is special, much of it is in fact just different versions other other Pavement tunes. The one gem on the second disc has to be a song called Candyland which was first (and as far as I know only) played live on an Australian radio show.

The WZ reissue is definitely the worst of the three reissues (Slanted was reissued in 02 and Crooked was reissued in 04) containing few great tracks that I didn't have, but it is still pretty good. I know I'm biased but throw out the second disc listen to the first disc from beginning to end and tell me Pavement doesn't rock the f*ck out of the world.



In Radiohead related news check out this video of the Arizona marching band covering some classic Radiohead tunes.