Musical Wednesdays: Pavement, Ten Years Later

I was driving home the other night, and Pavement's "Range Life" came on the radio. It's a great song, one of my favorites, but then the line, "Stone Temple Pilots are elegant bachelors" came on, and I thought, "Wow, this song just really dated itself." The Stone Temple Pilots broke up in 2003, which was four years after Pavement's last album. There's also a reference to a Walkman in that same song, which is of course, a device that played cassette tapes, which were...oh, you get where I'm going with this. Pavement has some reunion shows coming up, and what I'm wondering is: will they still be relevant?

I'd love them to be (although I didn't manage to get tickets to any of the four shows in Central Park), but still, I have to wonder: what generation will Malkmus, at 43 years old, be fighting? And is a leisure suit still nothing to be proud of in this early century? I don't mean to make fun of these songs--I really love "Harness Your Hopes" and "Cut Your Hair" and "Summer Babe"--but it is weird to think of a reunion after a ten-year hiatus.

But it's been done before, and it's not like the members of the band have been silent since Pavement broke up. Reissues, Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks, the Silver Jews--they've still been in the music business. I'm interested to hear how this reunion is, and whether they'll change any of the very-90s references in some of the song.

On the other hand, the Stone Temple Pilots apparently had a reunion tour this summer. I wonder if they're still elegant bachelors..