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Two Pavement Members Arrive at Conclusion Their Band ‘Could Have Been as Big As Weezer’

Pavement are re-releasing a series of early b-sides and outtakes this week as a standalone compilation called The Secret History Vol. 1 and as such a few of the bands members have been enlisted to look back on their strange history as a cult band who never quite made the leap to radio and MTV success that some suspected them capable of. Curiously, as Washington Post‘s David Malitz noted on Twitter, that’s involved at least two of the members have had Weezer on the brain while evaluating their successes.

In an interview with Vulture, while talking about the Terror Twilight standout “Major Leagues,” guitarist Scott Kannberg says that it might have been huge, had they had the music business apparatus behind them powered the Blue Album boys up the charts.

“I think if that song came out three to four years prior, it could have been as big as Weezer or Smashing Pumpkins,” the man known as Spiral Stairs explained.  “But we didn’t have management; we just got together and jammed, made a record, went on tour, and then went back to our lives because we all lived in different cities and were happy doing what we were doing. Those bands had management and they all wanted to be rock stars.”

Singer Stephen Malkmus didn’t say anything quite as explicit, but in an interview with Rolling Stone he did offer what might have been a subtle barb at Rivers Cuomo and co.

“In a way, it happened anyway, for a band like Weezer, which was a band that had some of the signifiers of Pavement, at least on the outside,” he says of his own chances at hitting the radio waves. “I like them. And I think in the wake of Pavement, a band like Weezer could really make sense to a radio programmer or an A&R guy.”

Read their full comments over at Vulture and Rolling Stone respectively. The tone’s a little too cordial to be explicit Weezer shade, as Marlitz mused, but it is a funny coincidence that they managed to come up twice in just a couple of days. (h/t Stereogum)