Nastanovich alongside Malkmus and Berman in the early days of Silver Jews
On Tuesday, Drag City released Early Times, a 14-track collection of Silver Jews rarities culled from the early '90s releases Dime Map of the Reef and The Arizona Record. If you pick up a dead-tree edition of the Scene — or click on the link I've dropped in about three words to the right of this parenthetical phrase — you'll see
my feature on Early Times.
When we reached out to lead Silver Jew David Berman — who's now retired from the music industry — he declined with a really long, really interesting email that was entirely off the record (damn). Nevertheless, he pointed us in the direction of fellow Jews founder (and Pavement member) Bob Nastanovich. Nastanovich — who now works at a horse track in Altoona, Iowa, and spoke with me by phone — was as polite and sharp and funny as you'd expect Pavement's spirited percussionist/mascot to be. We talked about the formation of Silver Jews way back in their Hoboken/NYC days, the shoddiness of their equipment, recording songs on Sonic Youth's answering machine, whether or not Berman will ever return to music, the Puerto Rican family that was basically responsible for Silver Jews' formation, Nastanovich's locally legendary post-wedding party at The 5 Spot and more. Read below.
Nashville Cream: I talked to David [Berman] about the last Silver Jews show back at Cumberland Caverns in 2009, and he used the metaphor of the performance kind of being burying the band. So with a project like this reissue, does it feel a bit like exhuming a corpse, or sort of unearthing an old loved one?
Bob Nastanovich: [Laughs] Um, fair enough. That sounds good to me. I think that, first of all, that last show was really sort of a unique occasion, an unusual thing. I think David’s perception of what’s going on in the Silver Jews is probably an accurate one since he was really sort of at the helm for many, many years. I think sort of going back to the inception and those early recordings, sort of, is a totally different thing than how the band ended up. Personnel, style, everything about it. It grew into a pretty interesting thing. And I guess the singularity all the way through is David’s ability to write great song lyrics and sing them in his original way. The early stuff, bringing it back, to be honest with you, I think its sort of lack of availability and continuing interest in Silver Jews and that genre and era of early ‘90s poorly recorded music, it’s sort of still being celebrated — to the point of Drag City and so forth.
