There are bands that try exceptionally hard but don’t matter. They might result in an online discussion of a pedal-board, or, in the best of all possible worlds, a fashionable t-shirt. One such band just arrived in Iceland, performed earnestly, and left without fanfare. Then there are bands that change the culture entirely. In the 1990s, America imploded, subsumed by debts both real and metaphorical, and two bands used guitars, lyrics and drums to document this — Pavement, and Silver Jews. For those of us who witnessed the 90s, these bands matter more than any other cultural marker. Bob Nastanovich formed both bands.
“Two of my best friends were extremely talented. And I’m not talented,” Bob tells me, over a Zoom call, just after talking about his favourite sausages. He has digressed at the start of the interview noting he is “a real sausage lover” and has consumed a number of 12 dollar Icelandic hot dogs.
I have mentioned the absurdity of talking hot dogs with the man whose bands shaped my life, and he has, it seems, deflected. “Malkmus [of Pavement] was just an absurdly talented guy, and Berman, [of Silver Jews] he was an amazing poet. So that’s just all circumstance for me. So at that point it became, I guess, a bit of a mission that I was sort of unaware of, to get those guys to be productive as possible. And they both did amazingly. And you know, the impact they’ve made on people has even probably surprised me.”
To hear Bob speak, at times, is to think of him as a Zelig, as someone accidentally a touchstone of American culture. But as we go on, he reveals in chunks how formative his role truly was. It was Bob who got a job as a bus driver and brought his college friends Dave Berman and Stephen Malkmus to New York City. And while, as Bob points out — “They didn’t want us there. We were brats. But we were happy to be there”— it still becomes more and more clear that the connections they made in New York were essential for these unconventional artists to punch through to national conversation.
But Bob, in conversation, diverges again. He is now discussing his compost bin. An artist for life, our conversation about New York City reminds him that he has never fully been part of any one scene. “I’m sore today because I moved,” he says. And he explains that he moves every 10 years, reducing expenses and moving further into the country. He has just moved from Paris, Tennessee, to a more affordable town in Georgia. And, as one does, he has ordered compost bins which require assembling.
I remind Bob that he and Pavement appeared on national television in the US, performing “Cut Your Hair,” and in jumping and shaking while Malkmus casually eviscerated the notion of a rock star he showed us all, those music fans who couldn’t quite stand the stench of 90s rock, that something truthful was out there.
“We’re responsible for a lot of bad bands,” he says, initially. “Part of the reason for that, because I think people you know look up and they see somebody like myself on stage, and it encourages them. ‘I can be in a band too.’.. but it’s not great unless you’re in a good band. I’ve had the excruciatingly fortunate advantage to be in two good bands, although being in Silver Jews was quite arduous, and I got fired at least twice. At least twice.”
And I don’t know how, but one of the next things he says is, “If you ever met like Nick Cave or somebody like that, yeah, he’s not cool because he’s so fucking rude. The reason why he’s well-liked is because I guess people have a crush on him, or they think of him as some sort of mysterious character. That’s why, I mean, I don’t know what it’s like to go out with like Brazilian models.”
I slowly bring the conversation back to the reason he’s flying to Reykjavík then driving to Ísafjörður, a screening of Alex Ross Perry’s celebrated documentary Pavements of which Bob is a subject. Bob will handle a live Q&A after the screening. He asks if I’ve seen the film. I have not. I say this is a film I’d genuinely like to see with an audience.
“The best Pavement documentary is the one about Gary Young, Louder Than You Think. That’s an amazing documentary, and that’s about 90 minutes,” he tells me. “The movie that they’re going to show in a few days here in Iceland is like an attempt by the director to enhance his career, using Pavement as a vehicle, which he was invited to do. It just comes off as like kind of a clever update on the documentary that came out after the band stopped, Slow Century.” Clever here is not a compliment.
This weekend, then, a shockingly unfiltered Bob Nastanovich will be in Iceland, and he will likely be denying responsibility for changing popular culture. It is a must-see event, as almost everything Bob has been a part of has been.
Pavements will screen at Ísafjarðarbíó on September 13, with Q&A and DJ set from Bob Nastanovich. Tickets are available here.
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