Easily Fooled

A b-side to the "Rattled By The Rush" (aka "Rattled By La Rush") song has been running through my head, lately. "Easily Fooled" is this jammy piece of happy that found its way onto La Rush's backside as well as the comprehensive Wowee Zowee re-issue, Sordid Sentinels. On the latter, the song appears twice: once as the original recording and then as a live recording in Holland.

Waiting for life to accidentally get better is what's fooling us all. It's like all those guys in line at your gas station, waiting patiently for that one lottery ticket that will be their salvation, when, all along, they could've saved all the money they spent on lotto tickets to buy that Hummer they've been eying. Your girlfriend will get better looking, if you wait long enough. Your band will be on MTV and headline Lollapalooza if you just wait for it. I could go on and on, but I'm sure you get the point.

This great wait is the same thing that keeps most of us spinning our wheels, waiting for that American dream or some shit like that to come to fruition. It's what makes the working poor vote for conservative politicians in hopes of the trickle down to take effect. People continually take out more and more credit with a plan to pay it off later when their ship comes in. How foolish. That ship will never come.

The song's head-bobbing jamminess bridges the band's material between their final three albums. The off-kilter, stoned performance demonstrates WZ-era Pavement to a T. This song would have fit perfectly with "We Dance" and "Rattled By The Rush" if the rest of WZ stuck with this folky aesthetic. The lyrics suit the clarity and dominant theme of alienation found on the next release, Brighten the Corners. (I'm thinking "We Are Underused" and "Fin".) Pavement's third album was their most accessible and Dead-invoking which is where this song seems to be headed. I can't think of one career-spanning song in Pavement's catalog, but "Easily Fooled" does the second half of their tenure great justice.

I've always had this feeling that Pavement's greatness would be realized by the masses, but I guess I too was easily fooled.
Pavement – Easily Fooled

Baptist Blacktick

B-sides don't get much better than this. "Baptist Blacktick" originally appeared on the "Summer Babe" 7", their only release on Drag City before heading off to Matador. It later appeared on DC's collection of early Pavement singles and EP's, Westing (by Musket and Sextant). That's where I discovered this gem, but I never really appreciated it until hearing the single. My cousin loaned me his copy as he bragged about grabbing it before it was ever placed on the shelf. I still have it and may never let it go.

Coming of age in the grunge era steered me toward more aggressive rock. Songs with great urgency attracted my attention. "Baptist" had that urgency with a large dose of sloppiness. The tempo is way faster than later Pavement material as Stephen Malkmus frantically tries to keep pace with his flat, California drawl.

The metaphor of a black tick (black-legged or deer tick?) sucking the life from our hero always painted a picture of this black-attired Baptist preacher who would ride around the Reconstruction-era South, distributing his own sort of divine justice, sort of an evil religious zealot in Zorro drag. It's too literal, but I thought he'd make a great comic book villain. Either way, he pisses off SM tremendously causing him to break from his deadpan delivery into a painful scream after achingly repeating the chorus. This is one of my all-time favorite moments in indie rock history:

"I'm just waiting, waiting for the Baptist/That fucker...ahhhhhh..."

It may have been the f-word that grabbed my attention, but it got to me. Still does.