We all have those friends who are the DJs—the music gurus—of our lives. Mine have committed a crime of omission: a crime of irresponsible neglect. They somehow let me live through my teens and early twenties without ever hearing Pavement. How did this happen?

Pavement was not commercially successfully enough to catch my ephemeral attention when they disbanded in 1999, just as I was developing decent taste in music. But this shoud not have kept them off the radar for the next decade. For shame music gurus. I had to discover Pavement on my own thanks to their 23 track Quarantine the Past: The Best of Pavement. Continue reading