After 1992’s critics started writing about Pavement as the voice of the slacker generation, and on the 1994 followup , frontman Steven Malkmus seemed to take that tag seriously. Alongside “state of alt-rock” addresses like “Cut Your Hair” and “Fillmore Jive,” Malkmus wrote the country shuffle “Range Life,” which for most of its five minutes is an earnest meditation on how the desire to live freely conflicts with a yearning for security. Then in the final, semi-improvised verse, Malkmus laconically lashes out at Smashing Pumpkins (singing “they don’t have no function”) and Stone Temple Pilots (dismissing the group as “elegant bachelors”). The Pumpkins’ Billy Corgan was reportedly so irritated by the song that he kept Pavement off the Lollapalooza bill in 1994. Malkmus later told Melody Maker that the insults were meant to be “playful.” But there’s definitely a cool-vs.-uncool line being drawn. “Range Life” appeared to declare how right-thinking folks should feel about two of the most popular bands of the early ’90s. [Noel Murray]
