LOUDER THAN YOU THINK: A LO-FI HISTORY OF GARY YOUNG AND PAVEMENT

(Check out Don Lewis’s movie review of Louder Than You Think: A Lo-Fi History of Gary and Pavement Jed I. Rosenberg’s doc on the early days of the band Pavement. It’s available now to own or stream via Factory 25. Seen it? Join the conversation with HtN on our Letterboxd Page.)

I am a pretty good sleeper these days but for some reason, I was having trouble falling asleep for like, 4 hours one night. At around 2:30 am, like a good sleep hygienist, I decided to get out of bed and do something else till I was sleepy. Earlier in the week, Matt Grady from the fantastic Factory 25 who have released the film Louder Than You Think: A Lo-Fi History of Gary and And Pavement, Jed I. Rosenberg’s doc on the early days of the band Pavement, specifically about their first drummer, Gary Young. So I pulled it up in the wee hours which, as it turns out, this was the perfect condition for me to watch the film. Slightly groggy but alert, ready for a positive distraction and a nice (or, not so nice) bedtime story.

As Louder Than You Think opens, we meet modern day Young, the original drummer for seminal 90s indie rock band Pavement, a band I truly love. However, apparently I don’t love them as much as I think I do because I didn’t realize there was an original drummer. Nevertheless, the first thought I had was, “jeez, that guy is really old…that means Pavement are really old thus, I too, am really old.” While all of these things are indeed true, also true was that Young joined the band as a 40-year-old when the rest of the group- at first just Stephen Malkmus and Scott Kannberg- were maybe 20-years old. That in and of itself is an intriguing rock story and it only gets crazier from there. Or rather, Gary Young does.

I won’t spoil the story here but I will say, Gary Young was truly a one-of-a-kind rock and roll kook. He played the drums with reckless abandon and was never afraid to come out from behind his kit and do a handstand for several minutes. That is, if he could stand at all as he was, as one bandmember says, “the first real alcoholic I’d ever been around.” As you may guess by now, Young’s time in the band was limited.

The rock and roll road map is littered with the carcasses of drug and alcohol addled musicians that died way too soon. Some of my favorite musicians of this sad fate include Keith Moon of The Who, Bob Stinson of The Replacements and Doug Hopkins of The Gin Blossoms who, if you’re unfamiliar with, is one of the saddest musicians dying too soon things you’ll ever read. Yet here Young’s story remains always uncommon and unusual, even as he tells us he did LSD 365 times in high school. So, if Gary is still alive and Pavement are still a band, what the heck happened?

Off we go on the stranger than fiction story of Gary Young who still lives in Stockton (where the band famously formed) and is still married to his high school sweetheart Geri (either the moist patient, loving woman alive or the most co-dependent) and still ambling around his once nice little house. It’s worth noting that he also seems to subsist on nothing but cheap vodka and orange soda as his crumpled, abused body relays endless stories of an unlikely rise to fame and an extremely unceremonious departure, all wrapped in a doc that’s at once alarming and kind of sweet.

I really love this film. One thing I found very clever was the way Rosenberg makes Louder Than You Think a kind of breathing music zine in that he uses archival footage from the 90s which is mostly Hi-8 digital video (or, worse) alongside psychedelic cartoon renderings as well as puppets and mannequins to tell this story. This is all held together by more up to date, hi-def video interviews with Malkmus, Scott Kannberg, Bob Nastanovich (who was ostensibly brought on to babysit Young as well as play “percussion” in case Gary is unable to drum), bassist Mark Ibold and newer drummer, Steve West. Much like Pavement themselves, there’s a low-fi/DIY quality to the film that belies an entertaining, hardworking and well thought out piece of art.

All the members of Pavement are present and accounted for in the doc as is Matador Records founder Chris Lombardi which again, makes for a very interesting rock doc. Throughout I kept thinking, “if all of the people involved are all present here, is there no bad blood? No sour grapes?” Even if you’re not a fan of Pavement you’ll want to find out and Rosenberg’s doc delivers.

Factory 25; Jed I. Rosenberg; Louder Than You Think: A Lo-Fi History of Gary and Pavement

Liked it? Take a second to support Hammer to Nail on Patreon!