Wowee Zowee
Bryan Charles
(Author)
Description
Pavement wrapped up at Easley Recording in Memphis. They mixed the tracks and recorded overdubs in New York. They took a step back and assessed the material. It was a wild scene. They had fully fleshed-out songs and whispers and rumors of half-formed ones. They had songs that followed a hard-to-gauge internal logic. They had punk tunes and country tunes and sad tunes and funny ones. They had fuzzy pop and angular new wave. They had raunchy guitar solos and stoner blues. They had pristine jangle and pedal steel. The final track list ran to eighteen songs and filled three sides of vinyl.
Released in 1995, on the heels of two instant classics, Wowee Zowee confounded Pavement's audience. Yet the record has grown in stature and many diehard fans now consider it Pavement's best. Weaving personal history and reporting-including extensive new interviews with the band-Bryan Charles goes searching for the story behind the record and finds a piece of art as elusive, anarchic and transportive now as it was then.Product Details
Price
$14.95
$13.90
Publisher
Continuum
Publish Date
May 06, 2010
Pages
160
Dimensions
4.74 X 6.56 X 0.42 inches | 0.31 pounds
Language
English
Type
Paperback
EAN/UPC
9780826429575
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About the Author
Bryan Charles is the author of the novel Grab On to Me Tightly as if I Knew the Way.
Reviews
"[Charles has written] an oral history about the genesis and recording of Pavement's Wowee Zowee album that is infused with his own personal fandom of the band. Charles paints a vivid picture of the band as it wrote and recorded the album through interviews with band members and the creatives who surrounded the production of the album, all the while sharing his own experiences with the album and as a Pavement fan.Mixing the album's history with Charles' own works exceedingly well, and captures not only the essence of Pavement when they recorded Wowee Zowee, but also the indie rock culture of the time. -Largehearted Boy
"Charles puts himself in the center of the book we read about his aimless college years in Michigan and his discovery of Pavement, whose songs initially seem half hearted, even bratty, but actually contain an undertow of emotion that's hard to articulate. Charles' writing is the same way. He succinctly captures the flavor of being in one's late teens and early 20s without going into unnecessary detail. Finishing school, he undergoes that arduous, interminable crisis of figuring out what to do with "life", discovering that one of the only things that still makes sense is Pavement. Charles returns to the band time and again, the music weaving a thread through his life. The book includes unvarnished interviews with members of the band, providing an honest, first-person account of the making of the record. But the heart of the book isn't Pavement; it's Charles, and novelist or no, he has turned in one of the best pieces of rock journalism in recent memory a no-bullshit, heartfelt manifesto of fandom."-The Portland Mercury
"At the core of every 33 1/3 book is the question of roping in readers who may be unfamiliar with the band or album, but Charles is able to resituate Pavement as the everyman band they were during the 90s payday. From tales of major label flirtations (which the band is quick to dismiss as nothing more than random dalliances with the powers-that-be) to the band's reputation as slackers (which finds Stephen Malkmus tossing aside by pointing out the band's relentless touring schedule), Charles covers much more than the time period of "Wowee Zowee" without abandoning the album's specific importance in their catalog. Part history lesson, part fanzine love letter, Bryan Charles has written a book that is as ambitious and yet as untethered as his subject matter."-Tiny Mix Tapes
"Charles puts himself in the center of the book we read about his aimless college years in Michigan and his discovery of Pavement, whose songs initially seem half hearted, even bratty, but actually contain an undertow of emotion that's hard to articulate. Charles' writing is the same way. He succinctly captures the flavor of being in one's late teens and early 20s without going into unnecessary detail. Finishing school, he undergoes that arduous, interminable crisis of figuring out what to do with "life", discovering that one of the only things that still makes sense is Pavement. Charles returns to the band time and again, the music weaving a thread through his life. The book includes unvarnished interviews with members of the band, providing an honest, first-person account of the making of the record. But the heart of the book isn't Pavement; it's Charles, and novelist or no, he has turned in one of the best pieces of rock journalism in recent memory a no-bullshit, heartfelt manifesto of fandom."-The Portland Mercury
"At the core of every 33 1/3 book is the question of roping in readers who may be unfamiliar with the band or album, but Charles is able to resituate Pavement as the everyman band they were during the 90s payday. From tales of major label flirtations (which the band is quick to dismiss as nothing more than random dalliances with the powers-that-be) to the band's reputation as slackers (which finds Stephen Malkmus tossing aside by pointing out the band's relentless touring schedule), Charles covers much more than the time period of "Wowee Zowee" without abandoning the album's specific importance in their catalog. Part history lesson, part fanzine love letter, Bryan Charles has written a book that is as ambitious and yet as untethered as his subject matter."-Tiny Mix Tapes
