jim greer
SPIN DNA: James Greer
There was a time period, let’s call it 15th century Europe, where a select group of men made their bones in a variety of different occupations. Leonardo da Vinci, just to pull one name out of my hat, was not only a famous painter, but also a sculptor, scientist, philosopher, and mathematician. Apparently there’s some evidence that he was also a pretty good dancer. There were others, too. There are always others. Fast forward 400 years: Not content with just proving relativity, Albert Einstein was also a classically trained violinist. Sort of like how Axl Rose is some hayseed with chops like Chopin. We labeled these individuals Renaissance Men. Or, to use the parlance of our times, Idea Birthing Persons. I first met the writer, musician, and surprisingly nimble dancer himself, James Greer, ...
Big Slack Attack: Our 1994 Pavement Interview
This interview originally appeared in the April 1994 issue of SPIN. I’ve been coming up with lots of theories lately, for no special reason except maybe to kill time between episodes of the Larry Sanders Show. Here’s one: When I first heard Pavement‘s new album Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain, I was convinced it was secretly an answer record to R.E. M.’s Reckoning (“Range Life” was “(Don’t Go Back To) Rockville,” “Cut Your Hair” was “Pretty Persuasion,” umm. . .). This isn’t as stupid an idea as you might think: Pavement contributed a song to the recent AIDS-benefit compilation No Alternative called “Unseen Power of the Picket Fence,” a paean to the Athens, Georgia, combo, and specifically to Reckoning (from which we learn that “Time After Time (annElise)” was singer-guitarist Stephen Malkmus’s...
