Stephen Malkmus knew what we wanted. And it wasn’t just to fist-pump the sky and yell proudly: “I KNOW WHAT THE SENATOR WANTS! WHAT THE SENATOR WANTS IS A BLOW JOB!”

It wasn’t the hipster bros bro hugging in front of indie rock royalty. It wasn’t the country twang of “Lariat” or the smoove groove of “J Smoov.” It wasn’t the beaming face of Jick Mike Clark or bemused slim grin of Joanna Bolme. It wasn’t the bigness of “Jenny & the Ess-Dog” nearly wrapping up the set. It wasn’t Malkmus loping around the stage, grinning with that half-stoned, great-haired, awesome face that hasn’t changed since the dawn of time. It wasn’t him using his mic as a slide, or throwing the horns after wailing on his guitar. It wasn’t the perpetual noodling.  It wasn’t EVEN, though it almost was, that the last song was Pavement’s “Box Elder” resulting in a tripling of the aforementioned bro-huggery.

No, what it actually was, was Geddy Lee. Sort of. Twice.

“What about the voice of Geddy Lee? How did it get so high? I wonder if he speaks like an ordinary guy?” he asked, and the Pavement classic “Stereo” bounced like a happy indie rock ball around the room. And we did, with it. And if that was the first of enormous (in a night of truly rad) moments, NOBODY saw the second one coming. coming. Hot on “Stereo”‘s heels, came drummer Jake Morris channelling Rush’s Lee himself, for a wild cover of “Fly By Night.” Whaaat? Perfect eh?

And what it actually was all about was Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks being the most relaxed, most playful and most Canadian they could be in Vancouver, and that, that is what we wanted. And Malkmus knew it. \m/

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