Pazi Steklo -- Tugboat (live) (cover) (VIDEO) 12-28-2025

Описание: Pazi Steklo -- Tugboat (live) (cover) (VIDEO) 12-28-2025
(Dean Wareham)

Recorded live at The Crafty Rabbit Carrollton, GA 12-28-2025

Review:

There are songs that reward precision, and then there are songs that reward nerve. Galaxie 500’s “Tugboat” belongs firmly in the second category — a two‑chord hymn to drifting, dreaming, and dissolving into the moment. And on December 28th, 2025, at The Crafty Rabbit in Carrollton, Georgia, Pazi Steklo stepped into that moment with nothing but a guitar, a looper pedal he’d never used live before, and the kind of quiet confidence that only comes from decades of musical wandering.

The performance is intimate in the way only a room without a PA can be. No safety net. No reverb. No volume to hide behind. Just the soft hum of the amp, the murmur of the room, and Pazi’s voice threading itself through the hypnotic simplicity of those two chords. It’s the kind of setting Galaxie 500 themselves would’ve approved of — small, human, unvarnished.

What makes the performance remarkable isn’t the technical execution, though that’s solid. It’s the risk. Pazi doesn’t just strum the chords; he builds a loop — live, in front of a crowd, with a pedal he’s still learning to tame. The loop becomes a soft drone, a pulse, a bed of sound that turns the song into something larger than the room. It’s fragile, imperfect, and absolutely alive.

There’s a moment — the kind that only happens once — when the loop wobbles, threatens to drift, and then locks into place. Instead of panicking, Pazi leans into it. He rides the instability the way Galaxie 500 rode their own limitations: with grace, humor, and a kind of cosmic shrug. It’s lo‑fi transcendence, the kind that can’t be rehearsed.

Vocally, Pazi doesn’t imitate Dean Wareham. He doesn’t need to. His delivery is warmer, more grounded, less detached. Where the original floats above the water, Pazi’s version feels like it’s sitting on the deck of the tugboat itself, watching the shoreline fade. It’s a reinterpretation that honors the spirit without copying the form.

The Crafty Rabbit crowd — already softened by the all‑acoustic, PA‑less chaos of the night — leans in. This isn’t a bar cover. It’s a moment. A musician stepping into vulnerability, trusting the room, trusting the loop, trusting the song.

And when it ends, it ends the way all great lo‑fi performances do: suddenly, quietly, like a thought dissolving.

In a night defined by improvisation, accidents, and community rescue missions, Pazi Steklo’s “Tugboat” stands out as the performance where everything unnecessary fell away, leaving only the song, the loop, and the artist brave enough to try something new in front of people.

If Galaxie 500 taught us that two chords can be a universe, Pazi reminded us that a single performance can be a world unto itself.