Pavement Ready Best-Of Disc, Ask Fans to Guess the Track List

By Daniel Kreps

January 5, 2010 12:00 AM ET

Just one week after embarking on their anticipated reunion tour, Pavement will release their first-ever greatest hits compilation Quarantine the Past: The Best of Pavement. The collection, in stores March 8th, will span 1989 to 1999, from their debut Slay Tracks (1933â€"1969) EP to their curtain call Terror Twilight. Quarantine will contain 23 songs, but Matador Records isn't revealing which cuts made the final track list yet. Instead, the label is hosting a contest inviting Pavement fans to guess the track list, and the winner will be flown to New York to witness the band's first of four sold-out shows at New York's Central Park. Get the contest rules and a peek of the Quarantine cover over at the Matador blog. Because asking 1,000 Pavement fans what should be on Quarantine would result in 1,000 different track lists, Matador is also offering up a prize for the most inventive, imaginative playlist. The second prize winner of that sub-contest will see their track list being printed onto a limited edition double-vinyl that will be sold on the upcoming Record Store Day. The winner will receive five copies of that special-made double vinyl, plus a vinyl copy of each of Pavement's five studio albums, which will be reissued soon as lower-priced LPs. No unreleased material will be featured on Quarantine, however a two-disc reissue of Terror Twilight is still scheduled for late 2010.

As Rolling Stone previously reported, Pavement will launch their reunion tour with a March 1st concert in Auckland, New Zealand, and then play seven shows in Australia. In early May, the band will head out on a massive tour of Europe complete with headlining slots at the All Tomorrow's Parties fest in Minehead and the Roskilde Festival. It's not until their headlining slot at the Sasquatch! Festival in late May that Pavement will perform their first U.S. reunion show, but expect Malkmus and Co. to be featured at several major U.S. music festivals this summer prior to their Central Park shows in September. Matador says more Pavement U.S. dates will be announced shortly.