It must be very strange to live in the world of Willie Nelson or Bruce Springsteen or Pearl Jam. I don't know what kind of handle they have on their own loss of talent.
The overlap between Pavement's fan base and people who liked Silver Jews was total. In my mind, even a local band with 20 fans had more unqualified support.
I still believe in putting something out and not asking people to buy the record, then buy a ticket to my show and then buy a t-shirt and then a, like, copy of the show they just saw on CD. That's undignified to me.
That's the way I've always been, between the albums: For two- or three-year gaps I wouldn't pick up a guitar. And when I don't pick up a guitar for a year or two, that's when the songs fall out.
My faith was undermined by the same sort of things that make people skeptics of religion in general. Part of it was, there was no real place for me in Judaism. Maybe if there was I would've hung in there, but I was attracted to the social-justice aspects of Judaism, and I was attracted to the prophets.
The world of commerce is a kind of a purgatory itself.
