Stereo Embers The Podcast 0488: Kelly Foley (A Low-FI History of Gary Young And Pavement)

“Louder Than You Think”

Like many Gen Xers, I knew Gary Young as the drummer of Pavement, but for anyone from Stockton, he was way more than that. Let me back up. A key figure in the Stockton underground, Young played in a bunch of bands like The Fall of Christianity and he was responsible for bringing Black Flag and the Dead Kennedys to play shows in Stockton. Though almost twenty years older than the guys in Pavement, Young was their original drummer and played on their first few EPs and the seminal Slanted and Enchanted record. Young was one of the great characters of rock and roll and to get a real idea as to how charismatic, magnetic and mercurial he was, the documentary Louder Than You Think traces his life in art and music with unvarnsihed honesty and shambolic joy. The soundtrack, which features The Authorities, Edward Dahl, Pavement, Hot Spit Dancers, and Gary Young’s Hospital, among others, is a wonderful tour of the Stockton Underground. Yes, Young got fired from Pavement, but what’s cool about his story is that he stayed connected to the band–and that’s the secret with all these Stockton kids–they stuck together even when some of them fell apart. As for Kelly Foley,
the former singer of The Torn Lords had a career in Forensic Psychology and when he retired, he devoted himself soley to making art. Kelly knew Gary for decades and even had a project called Blue Boy Cometh which featured Young on drums just before his death. Foley is a lovely guy and he’s kind of become the forensic archivist of the Stockton underground, making sure the paths of all the artists he knew–from Grant Lee Phillips to Crill–have their work preserved.

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