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- [00:00]
Ian
Welcome back to Jokerman In Conversation, I'm Ian. Got another excellent interview episode. Feel like we've had a lot of these recently, but you know, when it rains, it pours. Lance Bangs returning to the program here just for, you know, just to kind of hang out. He's got a whole slew of cool stuff happening in his world. New music video with everyone's favorite indie rock maven, M.J. linderman. Best song on Manning Fireworks, Wristwatch. Some documentary work recently completed on the road with Michael Shannon and Jason Nardesy as they made their way across the country on their fabulous R.E.M. rock and roll revival tour. And then of course, the Pavements motion picture. An interesting, interesting filmographic approach to everyone's favorite indie rockers. From Stockton, California, Lance just happened to have a few hours free down in, I think, Athens, Georgia, legendary town for all sorts of indie rock, of course. So we just hopped on the horn and shot the shit for a little bit and here it is. Lance Bangs, you say? I've got a funny face. Lance Bangs. Welcome back to Jokerman.
- [01:42]
Lance Bangs
I'm so happy to be talking to you again.
- [01:45]
Ian
Again, indeed. Just got a whole kind of smorgasbord of products, products, projects I think we might hit for us here today. Kind of jumping around, starting off, I mean, most recently. You just sent me this, I think yesterday, and I gave it a watch. Fantastic new video for everyone's favorite indie rocker of the year, M.J. linderman, for probably the best song on the record, Manning Fireworks.
- [02:13]
Lance Bangs
Yeah, my favorite song on the record.
- [02:14]
Ian
Yeah. Wristwatch.
- [02:16]
Lance Bangs
Yeah. I had wanted to make something with Jake for that record when he had it ready like last summer and was very happy that nothing was set up or assigned for Wristwatch. And so we started talking about trying to figure out dates or get it together to make a collaboration together for that song. His touring schedule and my other shoots and travels. It worked out that like January of 2025 is the time that we could kind of get together to shoot something. And it can be tricky to shoot like a low budget music video in the winter when there's not as much daylight and it's cold to be outside. And you know, we didn't have like a massive resources to do like a stage or an idea that would need all of that. Sure. But he had moved to the region of Durham and Chapel Hill, kind of part of North Carolina from Asheville where he had grown up. And there's this well known bridge, it's a low clearance bridge in Durham, North Carolina, that's referred to as the can opener, it was 11 foot eight for a long time and then recently got chiseled up to 12 foot four. But it's the kind of a low clearance bridge that like modern trucks that are 13ft tall will repeatedly drive into and get stuck or rip off the top of the truck when they don't look at the signs that warn of you and lights that flash and say that you can't go under it.
- [03:38]
Ian
Hence the name.
- [03:39]
Lance Bangs
Exactly. And so there's a person that has an office across the street who started like a YouTube channel on a website called 11 Foot 8 and for quite a while has been documenting with a kind of a constantly recording camera. At least once a month, a truck will ignore all the signs and the flashing lights and drive straight into it and either get stuck or peel off the top of its. Its truck. And so I wanted to sort of have a MJ Lunderman lyric character of a guy that keeps making the same mistake and not learning and repeatedly driving into that bridge over the years. And so we have him genuinely, truly driving trucks into. Into that bridge and knocking vehicles apart over and over and over again. And blend that with like footage from the. The archives of 11 foot 8. And then try to incorporate like all the band members of the Wind and other friends and parts of his community from Asheville and other parts of North Carolina all being represented in the. In the video. And we had a tremendous time making it. I'm very happy with how it came out.
- [04:46]
Ian
It's very, very Lenderman esque, to use parlance of the day. And I'm glad that you didn't try to visually recreate a houseboat docked at a Himbo Dome for this. That would have been the wrong approach.
- [05:00]
Lance Bangs
Exactly. I don't think I've ever enjoyed a video where people were literal or sort of like see and say about lyrics like that.
- [05:07]
Ian
Indeed. And I mean, that lyric, I mean, you know, Jake is obviously a great lyricist, you know, one of the leading voices of the day. But I almost feel like at this point, like so many people have, you know, like gotten so invested in that one specific line from Wristwatch, like it's on the verge of turning into a meme or something. And so this is a brilliant way to approach the song. And I didn't actually know that this. I guess that makes sense because there is a lot of footage of actual trucks clearly just being torn apart in this video. And I was like, did you guys have the budget to just drive truck after truck after truck into this bridge, but makes more Sense now.
- [05:47]
Lance Bangs
Yeah. Have you talked about him in any previous context? Has he come up on your episodes at all?
- [05:55]
Ian
We've talked about him here and there. We haven't done a full deep dive on anything in particular. But you kind of. I can't but help but talk about him because he's really honest. I can't think of the last indie rocker that has kind of a. Been so kind of successful, not only literally just popularity wise, but executing his vision kind of effortlessly and essentially from such a young age and kind of clearly setting the world on fire. I saw him maybe a month ago. He played the independent here in San Francisco. Packed room, like the most crowded show I've been to in years. They fucking killed it.
- [06:34]
Lance Bangs
Yeah, I was there for those shows.
- [06:35]
Ian
Oh, you were there, okay. God. All right. I should have, I should have known. I should have said, hey, it was, I mean it's kind of. What do you make of his whole like the, the, the. Can we say call it like a phenomenon at this point? You know what he's kind of, what, what he's achieved over the last 12, 18 months?
- [06:54]
Lance Bangs
Yeah, he's the real thing. Like he's a genuine, fascinating, great person who listens to music throughout the day, is like, loves music and it's a big part of his just like existence. And what is what his brain is soaking in all day long. Reads books, he's not on social media, he's great with his friends. He's playing live music semi intuitively and telepathically. Like they don't work from a set list. He'll sort of connect with the other five musicians he's been touring with in his band the Wind before the show and then go on stage and they'll kind of look for small indications or gestures or hints from each other about what song to go in next. But it's all in the moment. And that's one of my favorite things to film or be around or to kind of have my antenna catch that frequency. And so we've been shooting some live footage and collaborated on this video and. Yeah. Very fond of what he's up to.
- [08:01]
Ian
Yeah, it's just, it's great to see someone who like is so, you know, has such a strong voice and clearly like is not trying to, I don't know, water himself down or make himself more approachable to a mass market or something like that. Just a real one of one character achieve this level of kind of like, you know, deserved success and recognition so early. I feel like so much popular stuff like you Kind of gotta get less unique, less idiosyncratic to become more popular. And I feel like Jake is kind of the, you know, maybe the exception that proves the rule in that as he becomes more himself, he seems to be finding greater, you know, greater and greater success. Cause I got a house bone dog and let him go down A pocket knife and a bag of phone.
- [08:54]
Lance Bangs
And.
- [08:54]
Ian
A wristwatch Tells me I'm on my own. So, yeah, so, Linderman, you know, great video. Hopefully that's out as of this time. Whenever this episode is running, I gotta figure out, you know, you and I, we'll talk about when this is gonna go up, but keep your eyes peeled, and if it's available, we'll have it in the episode description. But that's not all you've been up to. I think you were saying also off mic, before we started talking, you were also recently on the road with Michael Shannon and Jason Arduousi on the. What do we call this, like, a resurrection of REM I feel like just a covers band is not exactly the right way to describe it.
- [09:54]
Lance Bangs
Yeah, it's kind of a very unique live tour that's been happening and is likely to kind of expand and go further where kind of Evanston, Chicago area musician Jason Narducci has been making stuff with Michael Shannon in recent years and doing live performances where they'll do a great album all the way through. And they did a version of Murmur for what would have been the 40th anniversary of the record Murmur, the first R.E.M album in 2023, and immediately sold out the metro in Chicago. And other promoters around the country started calling being like, hey, would you guys come do that in our city or at our venue? You know, when. When might that work out? So they ended up doing a tour where they did Murmur and then Chronic Town and a bunch of stuff off A Reckoning. A year or so ago, when they got to Athens, Georgia, which is where I'm currently today, all four members of Ariam were in town and came out to kind of watch the show and go through the strange, intense, emotional, psychological thing of like, being on the other side of a club pa, hearing that music amplified and blasting out at you, instead of being in your part on the stage, hearing your bass part in a monitor, but not necessarily exactly all the lyrics or every guitar nuance that Peter Buck was playing live or whatever. And it was like an emotionally different thing for them. And they're a band that, in a way that I respect deeply, made a conscious decision to stop when they felt like they were proud of the work that they had done and not to kind of continue on or do the Coachella offered us a pile of money to do a show five years ago or whatever kind of thing, but to really kind of put it to bed at a point that they were very proud of what they'd made and stood by it and felt like they didn't ever water it down or go on too long in a way that, you know, I would say we would agree. Most musicians or bands have a tendency to do that. And there's later records or tours that are not full of the magic that the earlier ones were. So for them to emotionally process watching, this is extremely well done. You've got John Worcester drumming, John Stratt from Wilco playing bass. Jason is a great guitarist musician, Dog Julian playing guitar, like a very well presented version of early Ram material. And then Michael Shannon is a really intense performer, both theatrically theater work and then also in independent films and also mainstream giant motion pictures. He's been nominated for the Academy Award twice. He's an intense, interesting guy. And he's very much like doing performances that are based on him preparing in the way that he would for a dramatic role, but with the text being the lyrics and melodies of the songs. And so he's not doing like an imitation or a Michael Stipe. Shtick. Like he's doing an internal actor's work of what the lyrics and melodies of those early REM Records are, and kind of pushing himself and finding different things in each performance and getting better at singing and everything as it's gone on. And it's been pretty fascinating to film. And then there's this weird dynamic of like the guys in REM sort of getting something out of that. Like, it's exciting that their catalog of their music is in First Avenue in Minneapolis, which is a great venue, loud for a great two hour set of all the early material. If you want to go see that live in a way that the band doesn't have to break their decision not to reform, but the music is relevant and you can go see it in a great club, like a better thing than at some amphitheater or side stage at Coachella or whatever.
- [13:40]
Ian
Sure.
- [13:41]
Lance Bangs
Does that make sense?
- [13:42]
Ian
Yeah.
- [13:42]
Lance Bangs
And so it's wild how fulfilling and successful that tour ended up being and the great venues that they were at. And over the course of it, individual members of REM Started kind of showing up or getting on stage or joining in or playing parts of songs or singing, and that was kind of really rewarding. To film and makes the footage a lot more compelling and confusing and interesting.
- [14:09]
Ian
Yeah, it's a really fascinating kind of approach to the whole thing because, I mean, we here on the Jokerman pod, we typically talk about aging bands, aging artists, aging acts. And REM Is such a unique example of that because, like you were saying, you know, they have this, you know, in many ways, perfect discography. What, you know, what many people would consider, like, you know, all hits, no misses type of thing, wrapped it up, you know, on a very graceful note, and then have been wise enough to just sort of walk away from it and let it exist and breathe on its own. And yet, at the same time, like, you know, this music should continue to be out there and continue to exist for people. And so, rather than having, whatever, Michael Stipe and a bunch of hired guns or something go out there, or, like, a covers band that only plays music from Murmur, let's say, like the way the Grateful Dead covers bands exist, for instance, we have this, like, are they a covers band? Are they, you know, REM Are they something else entirely? It's sort of a new. Like a new direction entirely for the way that a band with an interesting catalog of music can continue to represent that material on into the future without it being kind of hung up with all of the shit that goes along with the reunion tour or whatever.
- [15:31]
Lance Bangs
Yeah, exactly. And it is fascinating that they're in a lot of the same venues that REM Played early on. Like, the first band to ever play in Chicago was REM and so it's wild that this iteration of these other musicians playing that same material is hacking a lot of those same spaces. And some of the same promoters or opening bands or people that were there at the shows are coming out and seeing it and having this very confusing time travel experience.
- [16:02]
Ian
Do you know if, like. So Michael and Jason obviously kind of put this project. Michael Shannon and Jason kind of bootstrapped this project themselves. Did they talk to people, the REM camp, before this kind of God started to sort of get a blessing to make this happen in the first place, or did they just kind of do it and then, obviously, inevitably, Michael Stipe and company kind of caught wind of it.
- [16:28]
Lance Bangs
Yeah, it happened on a smaller scale, like in Chicago, where Michael Shannon and Jason Arduousi had already done the Queen Is Dead and a Velvet Underground record and a few things like Modern Lovers record that. When they decided to do murmur for the 40th anniversary and they kind of announced the show, then they heard from Mike Mills about, like, hey, I Would come do backing vocals or show up for that or be there for it. And once that was so well received and they had such a great experience doing it, that's when they sort of were getting offers from other venues to turn it into, like more of a tour. And then, you know, Burtis Downs, the advisor with REM sort of was in contact with them and figured out, like, you know, when you guys are in Athens, the guys will all be in town and we'll kind of see how it feels or what it's like or whatever. And I don't know, like that. That seems like it was a pretty magical experience for the audience. You know, them all being there and then what it's kind of grown into where inadvertently, like, not planned, not rehearsed or warmed up or whatever. Peter Buck had been playing guitar and a bunch of songs, and Mike Mills had been getting up and down, playing bass parts and doing some backing vocals. And then Michael asked me for a copy of this set list. Michael Stipe and showed him. And then he decided emotionally just to go on stage to sing Pretty Persuasion. And again, had not rehearsed it, had not warmed up, had not relearned the lyrics on purpose. But just in the moment was having such a personal experience with the music that he got up and joined them and performed with Michael Shannon. Pretty Persuasion and Bill Barry ended up kind of getting up on stage as well. And it was really lovely. And everyone felt so happy to see them all taking part in this that it also was confusing about, like, you know, that was kind of an accident. Like, they hadn't planned that or really like, all talked it through about what does it mean? Does that count as a reunion or does that not count as a reunion? Or, you know, like, what is our ethical stance about that? And so. So that happened on the 27th of. Sorry, that happened on the 27th of February of this year. And there was another show booked for the following night at the 40 Club on the 28th. And I felt uncertain about, you know, are they all four going to do that again or is that going to be treated as like, whoops? Like, we didn't mean for that to happen that way. And it wasn't until the show was like partway going that everyone in R.E.M. the original band, all decided to all go up and do Pretty Persuasion and sort of be part of all celebrating that moment together.
- [19:06]
Ian
Wow. Yeah, that's. I mean, it's so cool that that is how we get the quote unquote, REM reunion, you know, instead of like, you were saying, you know, having Coachella back up a dump truck of cash to get them to, you know, headline Saturday night or something. Although, you know, I say that and, like, obviously, I'm sure if REM Were offered to Coachella to reform, that golden voice would book them pronto. But like, that, you know, the concept of, like, the great rock bands, you know, reforming and reuniting to, you know, headline a fest like that doesn't really even. It feels like that moment is past. You know, like Stone Roses, for instance, who headlined Coachella maybe 10, 12 years ago. Like, that would never happen again in a million years.
- [19:48]
Lance Bangs
Yeah, you say that now, but watch out for Oasis coming over here.
- [19:53]
Ian
That's a good point. Yeah, Oasis. Yeah, Oasis. That's a good. But, like, I almost feel like the Gallaghers are, like, too big for music festivals. Like, they're playing. I think they're playing the Rose bowl in Los Angeles. Like, they're pack 100,000 people in there. They're operating on another scale entirely. Does Michael. Michael Shannon is. Gotta clarify which Michael we're talking about here. Does Michael Shannon do, you know, does he. Does he have a history as a singer, musician, lyricist? Does he have his own material that he writes and performs?
- [20:27]
Lance Bangs
Yeah, he does. He has been interested in performing music and has done it over the years. And there's a recording that he put out, and the name of that project is Corporal C O R P O R A L. And, yeah, he's really gotten a lot out of doing these musical things with Jason Narducci, his friend, and has kind of been growing more and more into that side of himself. He played George Jones in a feature film and did a lot of work not to imitate George Jones, but to be able to sing or vocalize in character for that film. And it definitely is something that's emotionally significant to him and a big part of how he experiences the world, his deep listenership of music.
- [21:18]
Ian
Yeah, I saw him earlier this year do. I didn't see it personally. We were doing our own little David Berman Memorial Night on his birthday in Los Angeles this year, but the same night in New York, I think at Union Pool or the Bell House or something, there was another Silver Jews David Berman Memorial Night. And sure enough, Michael Shannon was there. I forget what song he played, a great Jew song or Purple Mountain Song or something, but that to me was like, oh, shit. This guy really. He really means it here. If you're just some sort of actor, a himbo actor doing this for prep, you're not gonna be Showing up unannounced at a David Berman memorial event. And that was just cool to me that, you know, this guy who, like you said, is, you know, just tremendously talented, tremendously successful as a stage and screen performer, he's also, you know, so interested and so good, frankly, at doing this totally different thing.
- [22:13]
Lance Bangs
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And he's aware, and Jason's aware of the. The trap of past mediocre, you know, recognizable actor tries to do music, and it's. It's not great. And. And they're also aware of, like, you know, the perception of what a cover band is or what that means. And the strange thing that they're doing is a weirder, more confounding thing that works and is genuinely worth going to and seeing and experiencing as a music listener. It's also weird because, like, REM Themselves performed an awful lot of covers in their early material, like when they would go play live in 80, 81, 82, and even on their, like, B sides and records, they were constantly covering unexpected. Yeah, and so, you know, what does it mean to cover a band that initially was playing their interpretations of development Underground and the New York Dolls and all those things at the time.
- [23:16]
Ian
Sure. It's also fascinating to think about in the context of, like, you know, Dead and company for instance, you know, which show maybe a year ago, year and a half ago here, one of their last shows ever, or so they claimed before they started doing all these sphere shows at the ballpark in San Francisco. And it's cool, and there's a great community and people kind of come out and really feel it, but I don't know. I never got to see the dead. I was three years old when Jerry Garcia died in 1995, so I obviously never got to catch any of those shows. And when you've got. As cool as John Mayer may be, it just doesn't. I. You know, it almost feels indecent at certain times to me. And this, like, I was. It just seems like such a clever and, frankly, more satisfying way of approaching creating this material or recreating this material, re presenting it, giving fans and listeners a place to experience it, you know, in a live environment. But you're not trying to pass it off as something that it isn't. You know.
- [24:28]
Lance Bangs
The walls build up stone by stone Feel divided one by one and trained up your cells Take a break Drive away drive away, take a break We.
- [25:03]
Ian
Well, I mean, and on the note of actors, musicians, the crossover, the collaboration, and maybe the confusing line in between those two, this might be the perfect, inevitable segue into. Into the apotheosis of this concept, a project with which you were involved, I think, from the very start. Pavements. Is there a subtitle to it?
- [25:27]
Lance Bangs
No, just Pavements.
- [25:28]
Ian
Just pavements.
- [25:29]
Lance Bangs
Plural? Yeah.
- [25:30]
Ian
More than one of them.
- [25:31]
Lance Bangs
More than one of them.
- [25:32]
Ian
You know, I know. I'm sure a lot of our listeners out there, you know, are. I know a lot of them are huge. Pavements. Pavements. Pavement fans. I've seen. I've seen them at the Pavement shows that I've went, that I've gone to. But for anyone out there who might not be aware of this project, or frankly, for me, because I would just love to hear how you conceive of this. Can you give me just a rundown of what exactly this is?
- [25:55]
Lance Bangs
It's a film that is, like. I think that Robert Greene, one of the filmmakers involved heavily, creatively with the movie, described it as like a kaleidoscopic film. I think that's a great description. It's the approach he took in the edit, where Pavement, as a band that we all love, was not super. Like, Malchimus was not ever trying to explain everything away or reveal everything or make it all easily understandable.
- [26:23]
Ian
Sure.
- [26:23]
Lance Bangs
And they existed in different aesthetics, and they made records that sounded distinct from each other. You could always sense his songwriting and his tone and what was distinct about him as a writer and performer and singer and guitarist. But there are things that, like they did on later records that don't sound like what they were doing when they were in an apartment in Hoboken. And so to make a film that sort of refracted or felt like Pavement or like a Pavement record worked well in this thing where Alex Ross Perry wrote a scripted, like, fake biopic of them with recognizable actors playing the five members of Pavement. So Drew Keery from Stranger Things and a bunch of great young actors are all in the film doing scripted, like if. As though it was Bohemian Rhapsody or whatever. And then there's a few kind of conceptual pranks or stunts that there's like a museum that was set up in the way that there's like, a David Bowie exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum or the Bjork exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art or the Pink Floyd exhibit that tours, where you go see artifacts and wardrobe and stage props and early lyrics and unreleased footage of a musician that you like in a museum setting.
- [27:44]
Ian
Sure.
- [27:44]
Lance Bangs
There's a version of that that was staged in New York and then filmed. There's a Off Broadway musical that a great director, Angela Trimber, choreographer put together where they had legitimate good musicians who do Broadway and off Broadway arrangements of rock or pop songs. Take the Pavement catalog and make it work within that kind of, you know, Broadway musical type of tone. And had a great combination of dancers and performers and singers. The guy that did American Idiot is doing a lot of Malchus parts. There's again Angela Trimber, who's great. And they. They genuinely staged a musical out of the Pavement songbook and filmed that. And that's a lot of great footage of that process. There's. I don't. So Alex Ross Perry didn't really film. He wasn't around filming pavement in the 90s while they were active in their first kind of 10 year span as a band. So I think all of that footage. There's a great woman named Deb Pastor, who was a tour manager with the Jesus Lizard and eventually Pavement on a couple tours, who often shot stuff on High Eight while she was traveling. And a lot of her great material from like the 1995 tour where they were on Lollapalooza and a lot of ups and downs happened for them. It was like the time that they put out the record Wai Zawi and then stuff that I had shot with them throughout the 90s, like that makes up the bulk of the footage of Pavement that's in the movie. So stuff that we shot back then and either didn't release or showed short fragments of is most of what you're seeing of the ban Pavement.
- [29:29]
Ian
Sure.
- [29:30]
Lance Bangs
And then there's actors or, you know, Broadway type performers or confused people at a Brooklyn Fake exhibit looking around. And then there is some footage that they shot of Pavement during the reunion tour that they did in 2022, 2023, some live performances and rehearsals and things like that. So all that is kind of woven together very satisfyingly. Robert Greene, who's a documentary director in his own right and is a professor of documentary filmmaking in the University of Missouri, he put a huge amount of work into taking all these different elements and. And we sort of wove together again. Kaleidoscopic is a good adjective that he used at some point that stuck with me of all this material in different versions of the band that makes up a feature film that'll be in theaters in November. It premiered at the Venice Film Festival. It ran at the New York Film Festival and has gotten a pretty great reaction in the form that we finally got it to as like a really satisfying film that people who have no idea whether Pavement's actually a real band have enjoyed the movie. People who were there seeing them live and love the music, have enjoyed the movie. It's a. It's kind of a wild thing to have pulled off and I'm happy with where we're at with it.
- [30:52]
Ian
It is, it is truly a film experience unlike any other. I was going to call it a biopic, but like, it isn't really a bio. There is a biopic in there, but this isn't a biopic, at least as far as the term is, you know, commonly understood. It's not the Bob Dylan movie in, in that regard. Suitably confusing, metatextual, like you said, kaleidoscopic for a band that I think all those descriptors could be applied to.
- [31:22]
Lance Bangs
Feel free to you and I both say biopic. Have you run into people that say biopic?
- [31:27]
Ian
I've heard people say biopic, yeah.
- [31:29]
Lance Bangs
Why would they say that?
- [31:30]
Ian
I don't know. It's clearly biographical picture, right? You put it together. Biopic that seems, seems very clear. Feel free to not answer this question if it's too much like a, you know, like a magician revealing his tricks type of thing. But, you know, I'm just kind of fascinated. Like, what was the genesis behind this movie? Like, I guess, who, who decided we're making a movie about Pavement? And then when that concept was decided, who decided this is the movie that we're making about Pavement?
- [32:02]
Lance Bangs
I can, I can talk about some of that from what I think has already publicly been said by various people involved. So while the band was active, I made a feature length documentary with the band called the Slow Century, which came out in 2001, maybe 2002, once the band had sort of broken up after the initial 10 years that they were together, after the tour for Terra Twilight. And that documentary, the Slow Century, was well received and exists on a DVD that we put out at that time. In recent years, there was a sense of what does a record label or someone that owns a catalog do to get interest in a band that's not regularly active but is great and has a catalog of great records? How do you get people in their 20s to hear that music or embrace it or make it part of their lives, or continue to explore the. The existing catalog and listen to it and stream it and buy copies of it and all that. And they'd already gone through the process of making reissues or greatest hits compilations or things like that several times and had kind of dug through every demo, tape or outtake or song fragment that didn't get completed or things like that and put those on two disc Versions of each record or so on. There's a thing that on the larger scale, like when you deal with Dylan and then Joni Mitchell or Springsteen, where some of those artists have, in a later stage in their life, allowed like a. I don't know, like a private equity or venture capitalist, whatever, to have an approach where they take over handling the catalog of the archive of Dylan or Springsteen or whoever. And in a smaller scale way. I think that it was a thing that Malchus was interested in. Kind of like he wanted to go focus on the hard quartet. He was going to be done with the planned 20 year reunion that they were going to do, that got pushed because of COVID but the sort of like 20, 20 or 21 or 22 batch of shows after doing a reunion 10 years prior and breaking up the band 10 years prior to that.
- [34:14]
Ian
Yep.
- [34:15]
Lance Bangs
And I think that they, you know, during that time they might have seen the success that Kate Bush had with Running up that Hill being used in Stranger Things. And now Kate Bush records are being bought and T shirts are out there and the catalog and publishing are revitalized. And people in their teens and twenties are familiar with Kate Bush because of like, how that song got used. There was a sense of like, well, what are some ways or what can we do to kind of like refresh or revitalize interest? And I think it was probably Chris Lombardi at Matador that was like, well, what if we made a film? And my understanding is that the band were like, well, we already made, like Lance made the Pavement film, the Slow Century. Like, we don't want to sit down and redo interviews or, you know, like that already exists and it's out there. And my understanding, creatively talking to Malchus at the time was that he didn't want to do a traditional thing. He didn't want to have a documentary filmmaker who does music documentaries come try and make something. What was interesting to him creatively was what if a screenwriter, he was thinking Harmony Koran or John Raymond wrote something and maybe that would be interesting or that would be a way to approach it and not just have another version of the Slow century get made or whatever.
- [36:00]
Ian
What a hand is, it takes, whenever it's real, whatever awaits me. I mean, so like on, you know, on the note of Pavement reemerging into. Into the cultural atmosphere these days, obviously, I mean, a lot of this movie, you know, consists of, you know, footage of them both, you know, throughout time. You know, obviously some of the footage from way back in the day, you know, when they were actually a functioning band in the 90s. And then some of the 2010 footage, the first reunion, and then obviously the more recent reunion, you know, from last couple years that I think was supposed to start in 2020 for like the 10 year anniversary, obviously got pushed for Covid reasons or whatever. I'm wondering, you know, kind of in light of the conversation we were having about the REM stuff earlier, just what you kind of think of, you know, how you conceive of the. The Pavement reunions now. You know, the 2010 one initially and then obviously this longer, more detailed one that happened more recently, where they went deeper into the. The back catalog, played all over the place, and really kind of, I don't know, did everything they possibly could to blow out the legacy of the Pavement discography.
- [37:28]
Lance Bangs
Yeah, I'm so happy that Malchus chose to do the reunion that you were just talking about that happened in the 2000s and kind of went for longer than they might have initially expected or planned on. They were really like the best live version of the band in some ways. They had Rebecca Cole join as sort of a musical director and keyboard player and backing vocals and additional percussion and all sorts of stuff. And she's a tremendously talented musician and just a great person to be around. And I think that probably made it a new energy or dynamic for everyone in the band to have her along, contributing to everything. They were really diligent about making a much deeper set list and kind of going through songs that they had not played that often or in some cases had never really played and figuring out arrangements of those and rehearsing them and getting informed to be able to play a much more varied set list. And a couple of people in the band are thoughtful about set lists and we'll kind of look at, you know, we haven't played Grounded in Cincinnati since 97 or whatever. And so figuring out, like, things that might be significant or worth playing in different cities and making that part of it. They did a version of Jim Pepper's Witchy Taito a few times live, which is like a great, I would say, jazz song. Jim Pepper that they did a really interesting arrangement of. That was good to see them doing, like, new ideas and new ways of playing together. So I was really happy with what they did in those reunion tour shows in the 2000s. And I think that, like I was saying, like, I think that musically they'd sort of all focused or put time into doing the best versions of a lot of those parts in those songs.
- [39:07]
Ian
Totally. Yeah. I I mean, I was at. I saw the Coachella, you know, 2010 reunion. I think I would when I was 18 and I, you know, I knew cut your hair and range Life and stuff. And it was a great set. I remember they had these big lights, I think, like strung across the stair, like string lights strung over the stage. It was beautiful on the main stage. I didn't really know I was 18. I didn't really know much about Bateman at that time. But I remember, you know, you know, I saw obviously a date, I think fall 22 here in San Francisco, and they just, you know, it was like a two and a half hour show and like everyone was just so dialed into it. It really felt like the band was into it up there too. Even Steve. I don't know, it was just a really obviously different way of, I don't know, reunion reproduction compared to the Michael Shannon and Jason Arduousy REM stuff, but. But no less careful and well curated, I would say.
- [40:06]
Lance Bangs
Yeah, there's a director of photography named Robert Kolodny that shot a bunch of footage of the rehearsals in Portland before the reunion tours and at several live shows in LA and then a couple cities along the way. And he did a nice job of capturing that most recent tour.
- [40:25]
Ian
Do you have. And you know, I don't mean to push you into the realm of gossip too much or anything, but obviously at this point Steve is, you know, quartet, I think is touring now or will be touring shortly. They put out fantastic record last year. I don't know, are we going to get a once a decade type of pavement reunion type thing on into the future? Because part of me feels like they really did everything they can do with this catalog at this point on the most recent tour.
- [40:55]
Lance Bangs
Yeah, I think I agree with you. He is a person by nature who tends to be more forward looking or in the moment and not a particularly nostalgic or backward looking person overall. And so I think that having already had all of the notebooks gone through and every cassette of a demo version of a song idea sifted through, I think his brain and his life force is probably more centered in the hardcore Ted and new things that he's writing going forward rather than another reissue over reissue or whatever.
- [41:28]
Ian
Right, yeah. Looking backwards. I've got a friend of mine who's just a hardcore, like the hardest core pavement fan you've ever seen and he's obviously seen all these reunion shows and stuff and loves the hard quartet and stuff, but he's grinding his ax a little bit because this means that there aren't gonna be any more Jix records. He's just a huge. And I know Malcolm has Did I think a couple just Stephen Malchemist records after the Jix before Hard Quartet. But he's just a huge Jix head. So if there's ever a Stephen Malcolmus in the Jix reunion, he'll be the number one ticket buyer.
- [42:05]
Lance Bangs
Right on. That sounds great. Great people, great records.
- [42:09]
Ian
He's just a fascinating. Malchemist is just fascinating character. Leaping kind of from project to project throughout his musical life and sort of. I don't know, it's admirable to me, I guess, as someone who obviously has made his bones sort of talking about people like Bob Dylan, Lou Reed, just forward, looking, forward thinking, questling, restless types who have not been content to rest on their laurels and just play the same old shit. It's striking to me that there are still contemporary artists who approach their material in the same way.
- [42:45]
Lance Bangs
So, yeah, that feature film Pavements will be out in theaters in North America, but we're doing some screenings in April and then more in May, throughout May in most kind of college towns and music scene parts of the United States.
- [42:58]
Ian
Yeah, I'm sure there's gonna be plenty of people lined up to see it. You know, I saw it, fortunately, a couple months ago when you sent me an advanced copy. I gotta say, a lot of the. My favorite parts, you know, the Lance bangs, the stuff from the. You know, the original material. I don't know. Did you how much of that was dug up from the archives and how much of that was from, you know, the previously released documentary? I can't tell you, but just the opportunity to kind of like be in the room with them at the time, that's just unimpeachable stuff.
- [43:31]
Lance Bangs
Yeah, I'm really happy with how much I was able to film throughout the 90s with them in different eras and different tours. And going through that again and sort of rescanning Super 8 and 16 and recapturing Hi8 and DV tapes from different eras was. There's just so many funny things that I hadn't picked up on or caught in real time at the moment that were there, like fragments of Malchima's playing a lick from a song that I didn't know when I was 22, but know now. You know what I mean? There's fun, you know, interesting to me. He'll just like start working on a song with the guys in Pavement that ends up being on a solo record a couple years later. Just Having ideas with them at different sound checks or rehearsals. It's at so many different times, you.
- [44:14]
Ian
Know, did you have any sort of, like, intention behind shooting so much of this stuff? Like when you were. When the cameras were rolling back then, or, like, did you know that, I don't know, slow sentry was going to be something you were going to make at some point, or was it literally just like, let's have. Let's just have this and then I'll figure out what, if anything, to do with it down the line?
- [44:33]
Lance Bangs
Yeah, it was not that calculated. It was more of like a wanting to preserve the culture that was around me that I felt initially as a young person was getting kind of choked out or drowned out by the dominant larger culture at that time. Like the sort of the Night Belongs to Michelob, Steve Winwood, Tara Clapton. Like, dominant culture of the late 80s, early 90s. That I knew how much I love Nirvana and Pavement and Sonic Youth and REM and wanted to film and document what they were up to in hopes that other people could see it or catch that moment or share in that regard for it when those things were not really being on the radio otherwise.
- [45:19]
Ian
Sure. Did you. And I don't mean to pry here necessarily, but, you know, I'm. I. Between the two. Not. And not that we even need to pit them, but between, you know, Pavement and the Jews, you know, David has just kind of got a grasp on my heart, you know, almost no other artist does. And it pops up a couple times in Pavements, the movie. Did you catch much, you know, was there much, you know, footing footage filming that you were doing in any of the, you know, Jews, either start, I guess, probably not Starlight Walker, but American Water era, anything like that?
- [45:54]
Lance Bangs
Yeah, I've got footage of David from a few times in the 1990s. Was like, very fond of the Silverju's music and his writing from the beginning. He could be a really fascinating host and person to be around. He could also be difficult to be around.
- [46:13]
Ian
We had Bob on the pod a year or two ago and he was, God bless him, he just. He told the truth. He was pretty frank about David being a occasionally difficult person to work with.
- [46:24]
Lance Bangs
Yes, he could be a very difficult person. And so there were times that, you know, Bob or Malchus would go to try and start making record and then get told off and that the session would stop and they'd have free time to hang out or do other things because that wasn't happening now or whatever. A few different occasions I went and stayed with Berman in Oxford, Mississippi. He was out there writing for a while in the early to mid-90s. And he had like a. I don't know if you would call it a house or an apartment, the place he was staying. And he could be, like, very fun and hospitable and great conversationalist. And then it could get dark or scary at some point later in the night, and you would feel like, we should probably go sleep in the van or get out of here, go somewhere else.
- [47:08]
Ian
Right now it sounds, you know, sounds like the experience of listening to a Silver Jew's record, frankly.
- [47:14]
Lance Bangs
Yeah.
- [47:15]
Ian
Yeah. We did a retrospective episode on the Natural Bridge earlier this year. You know, we kind of do a Jews episode once a year around David's birthday. And I remember doing. And reading at the. It's the second record after Starlight Walker, before American Water. And I remember reading at that time. I guess I hadn't been aware, but, like, it seemed like Steve and Bob were kind of blindsided by David. Just like David going to make that record without them, you know, because he had, you know, just decided, oh, these guys are doing Pavement now. I'm gonna do my own thing solo. And I love that record. It's unbelievable. But I guess there is an alternate universe in which he likes, I don't know, dials Malchimus up and is like, hey, I've got a second record to make. Let's go do it.
- [47:56]
Lance Bangs
Right. A tricky combination of friends and great musicians. And I love the work that they were able to make together.
- [48:03]
Ian
Yeah, indeed. Well, that's kind of the nature of the game, nature of the beast when you're working with generationally talented, brilliant artists who are also sort of tricky personalities on an individual level.
- [48:17]
Lance Bangs
Yeah.
- [48:19]
Ian
Well, did we. What else is going on in the world going forward? Are you gonna be back out with. I know Linderman's got another huge tour coming up this summer. Are you gonna be out on any of those dates or anything?
- [48:29]
Lance Bangs
I'm sure I'll probably end up out for some of that again. It's been really rewarding to film or document a few of those live shows along the way. And the way that they're currently performing is very interesting to me.
- [48:40]
Ian
Yeah, it's fantastic. I gotta ask, do you know, have any of the. Has anyone from Pavement listened to Linderman? Are they aware of him?
- [48:49]
Lance Bangs
That's a great question. I will check. I have not talked about MJ Lindemann to any of those Pavement folks, but most of the musicians of their age that I run into are Definitely listening and aware and kind of tracking. And we're already kind of paying attention to Wednesday when he was making those records in the past few years.
- [49:08]
Ian
A couple years, yeah. Let me say. I just feel like Pavement is, like, always kind of. And that's not even accurate. It doesn't really capture what he did, because I think Jake's writing is much more kind of like, personal than Steve's writing typically is. And even though there is kind of some surface level similarity in the way the guitars sound and this overall kind of slacker delivery or whatever, for lack of a better term, it's just kind of like the go to reference point for the New York Times when they're writing about Enderman, for instance.
- [49:36]
Lance Bangs
Yeah, yeah, I think you're right about that. Now I'll check with Malchimus. I haven't talked to him about Landerman.
- [49:43]
Ian
That'll be a great discovery for him when he's out there, I don't know, touring with the Hard Quartet and doing fantasy baseball and stuff. It's a dream of mine to get him on this podcast eventually and not even talk about music, literally. Just like, let's talk about. I know he's a fantasy baseball player, just like me. I know he's a. He's a. I think he's a Trailblazers fan. So, you know, we could just do an hour of sports talk.
- [50:03]
Lance Bangs
There you go. That's the way in.
- [50:06]
Ian
Well, did we do it? Did we hit everything, Lance?
- [50:08]
Lance Bangs
I think so. I'm making a bunch of other fun stuff, but I kind of like working discreetly and then putting things out when they're ready.
- [50:14]
Ian
Just popping up any old time. Well, that was kind of the way this episode came together. You just hit me up a couple days ago and we're like, hey, let's chat. And, you know, sure enough, here we are. So whenever you've got the next round of Lance Bang's material coming out, just let me know and we'll hop back on and rap about it.
- [50:30]
Lance Bangs
Yeah, there's one other thing that's coming out pretty quickly that I forgot to mention. There's.
- [50:34]
Ian
Sure.
- [50:34]
Lance Bangs
Eric Andre, the comedian, musician. He went to, like, the Berklee School of Music and has, like, a genuine composing background. And he just made a record that's going to come out on Stone's Throw, where he created score for films that don't actually exist.
- [50:49]
Ian
So it's like his version of, like, musical films. Brian Eno.
- [50:52]
Lance Bangs
Exactly. Yeah, along those lines. And so we kind of documented and filmed the process of him making that and it involved flying to Budapest to get footage of an orchestra over there.
- [51:02]
Ian
Wow.
- [51:02]
Lance Bangs
It's less expensive to hire orchestras in Budapest than most other major cities. And a lot of like him working with a producer named Pratik and composing and arranging and recording, you know, film scores. It's pretty great.
- [51:19]
Ian
Damn, I had zero idea that that was even a thing. I gotta check because, I mean, Eric Andre, one of the great comedic talents and apparently one of the great musical talents as well.
- [51:30]
Lance Bangs
So that's coming out on Stone's throw in a couple not that long from now, I think.
- [51:33]
Ian
Hell yeah. Well, thanks so much, Lance. You know, hope everything is good for you out there on the road and hopefully it won't be too long till we see you again here.
- [51:44]
Lance Bangs
Right on. Take care.
- [52:13]
Ian
Thanks again to Lance Bangs. You heard all about the many different projects he's been involved in spearheading he recently. The Linderman video should be up by the time this episode is running. If so, we'll have a link in the description. I think we still need to wait and see what's gonna come out of the Michael Shannon Jason Narducy documentary ing documentarianizing. You know, you get what I mean? And then the Pavements film coming soon to theaters near you, but not quite into wide release yet. Always a pleasure to hang with Lance. Hope it won't be too much longer until we welcome him back once again to Jokerman. Shaking home baking Kiwis are a cold. Taking my true index.