"Love is a Mix Tape" on Pavement

A friend gave me "LOVE IS A MIX TAPE" and halfway through, I can attest that Rob Sheffield's bittersweet memoir of love and loss is a mighty fine book.
Rolling Stone writer Sheffield shares the story of his late wife Reneé by relating the mix tapes the couple shared and other ways music impacted their lives.
In a memorable passage I read at lunch, Sheffield describes the moment in 1991 when PAVEMENT became the couple's new favorite band. "The night of the show, the floor was abuzz with anticipation. None of us in the crowd knew what Pavement looked like, or even who was in the band. They put out mysterious seven-inch singles without any band info or photos, just credits for instruments like 'guitar slig,' 'pseud-piano gritt-gitt,' 'keybored,' 'chime scheme' and 'last crash simbiosis.' We assumed that they were manly and jaded, that they would stare at the floor and make abstract boy noise." Pavement's actual appearance came as a shock: "They were a bunch of foxy dudes, and they were into it. As soon as they hit the stage, you could hear all the girls in the crowd ovulate in unison. There were five or six of them up there, some banging on guitars, some just clapping their hands or singing along. They did not stare at the floor." Sheffield eventually obtained "a third-generation dub" of the Pavement album, "Slanted and Enchanted." "Reneé and I decided this was our favorite tape of all time. The guitars were all boyish ache and shiver. The vocals were funny bad poetry sung through a Burger World drive-through mike. The melodies were full of surfer-boy serenity, dreaming through a haze of tape hiss and mysterious amp noise. This was the greatest band ever, obviously." I am beginning to love "Love is a Mix Tape," almost as much as I love Pavement.