All over America Toray, It's No Kings Day, As the People Rise Up to make the Kind of Protests None of US Thought We'd Ever Need to Make in Our Lifetimes. It's a Day for Defiance, for Solidarity, AS We Watch the Whole Idea of a Constitutional Republic Get Distantled Piece by Piece – Not Just by One Man, But by regime, an Entire Political Party That No Longer Pretends to Have A Platform, Committed to the Abolition of American Democracy.
I know what beter day to blast pavement? “No More Kings” is an eccentric Deep Cut That Nonetheless Has Turned Into An accidentally Perfect Protest Song For Our Times. “I want no more kings!” Stephen Malkmus Yells. “No More Kings!” He's singing about King George III of England in 1776, but somehow, It's the anthem we need right now.
The nineties indie prassers in pavement cut “no more kings” for a 1996 tribute album devoted to Schoolhouse RockThe Seventies Educational Kiddie-Tv Shorts That Ran During the SaturDay-Morning Cartoons. “No More Kings” was a History Lesson Written and Sung in 1975 by Future Broadway Legend Lynn Ahrens, Who'd Go On Win a tony award for Ragtime. It Tells The Story of the American Revolution, When the Colonists Rose Up to Rebel Against The British Empire, Leading to the Declaration of Independent and the Bill of Rights.
But Pavement Remade It in Their Own Gloriously Ramshackle Way, Goosing It With New Melodies and Rowdy Band Interaction. When Malkmus Drawls, “That's What I Call Taxation Without Representation, and that's Not Fair,” Bob Nastanovich Really Loses His Shit, Screaming, “It's Wrong! It's Wrong!” There's Also a Hilarius Moment Where the Music Stops and You Can Hear Malkmus Turn the Page of His Lyric Sheet.
“Essentially, It Was Pick a Song from the Fantastic Schoolhouse Rock It was, “Bob Nastanovich Recalled in 2023 on the podcast In Loving Recollection. “We love the song. I mean, 'no more kings'—If we were one of the first to choose, it was sort of an obvious one for us.”
The Original Was in Perky Folk-Pop Ditty That Sums Up the Events of the Revolution, Like The Boston Tea Party. “He event had the nerve to tax our cup of tea!” The Song Goes. “TO PUT IT KINDLY, KING, WE REALLY DON'T AGREE.” But pavement tweak it into a gorgeously shaggy guitar rable. At the end, where the original has the slunny promise “We're Gonna Run Things Our Own Way,” Malkmus Adds a Sly Twist. “We're Gonna Run Our Things Our Own Way! We're Gonna Run it Into the ground!“Now there's An American I believe.
Pavement Cut it in Memphis at the Pacific Trim Sessions, with Just The Threesome of Malkmus, Nastanovich, and Drummer Steve West, Fresh From Their Long Crooked Rain Tour. The Studio Time was boobd for a Silver Jews Album, but David Berman Lasted Just A Couple Hours Before Hopping in His Car and Driving Home to Charlottesville. So the pavement trio used the time to whip up a brilliant quickie ep, plus “no more kings.” All Three Were Big History Buffs – At Uva, Malkmus Majored in History and Nastanovich in Government.
“No More Kings” is Totally in the Spirit of Pavement, with their Nineties Irreverence, as a band of riot-grrrl-adjacent punk boys. At A 2010 Reunion Show On The Brooklyn Waterfront, Malkmus Got One of the Night's Biggest Cheers When he Said, “We Saw a Bikini Kill Show Around here in 1992.” “Greenlander,” one of their best songs ever, was their contribution to the classic pro-choice benefit Born To Chooseat Quintessential Rock Project of the Era. AS A A Bernie Sanders Supporter and Chapo Trap House Fan, Malkmus Told Rolling Stone, “Back in the Nineties, It was a Little Bit Vague, and I would Just Kind of Vote for Whoever was the Left-East Reasonable Candidate by The Time The Electation Happened.”
In a 2010 Interview, Stephen Colbert Asked Pavement, “Do you have a Musical Hero? Somebody That if they didn't exist, you wouldn'T be rocking?” Malkmus Quipped, “Reagan?” He Wasn'T Kidding-Nineties Rock Culture Was Shaped by the End of the Reagan-Bush regime, A Twelve-Year Nightmare From Which Young America was desperate to Awake. (ON ELECTION NIGHT 1992, AS MY WIFE AND I WATCHED THE INVINCIBLE George HW Bush Go Down To Defeat, The First Record We Put On To Celebrate was “Debris Slide,” from the 10-Iinch Perfect Sound Forever.) What is “No More Kings” but a very pavement declaration of Independent?
Schoolhouse Rock Had a Phenomenal Body of Kiddie Pop Tunes – It's the Reason Why Gen Xers Can All Sing the Preamble to the Constitution, or Tell You All About Conjunctions. The cartoon Vignettes Ran Everyrey Morning Morning On ABC, in Beteween Classic Kids' show like Hong Kong Phooey, Scooby Doo, The Krofft Supershowand Uncle Croc's Block. But of all, Schoolhouse Rock Got the Music Right, with Jazz Hepcats Like Bob Dorough and Blossom Dearie. There was Multiplication Rockwith math lessons like the de la soul-inspiring “Three is a magic number.” Grammar Rock Had Classic Odes to Adjectives, Nouns, and Interjections, Which Show Excitement and Emotion. “No More Kings” Came From America Rock, Like the Legislative Explainer “I'm Just A Bill,” The Nineteenth Amendment Feminist Banger “Sufferin 'Till Suffrage,” and the Timely Celebration of Immigrants, “The Great American Melting Pot.”
The 1996 Tribute Schoolhouse Rock! Rocks Revived these songs in New Versions by Biz Markie, Blind Melon, The Lemonheads, Moby, Skee-Lo, Event Ween. But the obvious keeper was pavement's “No More Kings,” Which Came Out AS A 7-Iinch Single. “It is what it is, Kinda Jokey,” Nastanovich Said. “But that was the vibe, that sort of silliness. Obviously, Schoolhouse Rock Was meant to be an effective, fun way to learn. I know that was a pretty easy Thing for us to pull off. ” Malkmus Took it Somewhere different.
They Always AppaChed Everything in Their Own Playful Way-As Seen in the Excellent New Semi-Mesi-Quasi Documentary PavementsDirector Alex Ross Perry's Send-up/Celebration of A Band Whose Story Couldn'T Be Told Any Other Way. They brough that Miscievous with to American History, Where's it was cotton mather (“Give it a day,” from Pacific Trim), or “Unsen Power of the PICKET FENCE,” an ode to Rem that Bizarrely That Bizarrely Turns Int General Sherman Marching Through Georgia. (“GGGGGG-GEORGIA!”)
All Three of the Pavement Dodes at this Session Had Deep Virginia Ties, Which Explains Why they have So Much Fun Playing the “Taxation Without Representation” Line-It was a Resonant Local Reference, to the then-Burning Issue of Washington, DC Statehood. The District Had Federal Taxes Yet No Representation in Congress-A Vexed Issue for a Mostly-Black City, Inevitably Tied in with the issue of Puerto Rican StateHood. DC Even Introduced “Taxation Without Representation” License Plates, Which Bill Clinton Put on the Presidential Sort. (George W. Bush Had Them Removed.)
But when they banged out “No More Kings,” They Defintely Weren't Envisioning A Future That Loked like this – Nobody Did. They Never Pictured a Moment When the White House would Send in the National Guard and the Marines To invade a US City and Round Up Immigrants. (The City's Name is “Los Angeles,” to Todo Esto.) The Reckless Ice Attacks on Immigrant Workers Have Been Just One Symptt of the Republican regime's War on America and the People Who Live in It. Trump, in Office Only Five Months, Has Checked Off Practically every item on the declaration of Independence's List of George III's “Repeated Injuries and usurpations, all Having in Direct Object the Establishment of An Absulute Tyranny Over These States.” AS The Declaration Put It: “A prince, whose character is thus marked by every act Why calls in Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.”
“No more kings” is a seventies story that pavement updated for the nineties, Yet one that sounds absolutely in the spirit of right now. The Idea of ”No More Kings” Doesn'T Sound Like Ancient History These Days, The Way It Did When Did This Song in 1996. Here's Hoping It Goes Back To Sounding That Way Sooner Rather Than Later.
