  Chris urlLink asks a good question. I myself was gonna mention this soon too as I picked up the super extended reissue of Slanted and Enchanted just before my trip to Japan. The liner notes to "S+E", as it's so affectedly self-referenced, act as if it were some kind of watershed album in the indie scene, busting down barriers and changing lives.
It is a really good album, no doubt about it. But a revolution? I don't think so. Jen heard it the other day, and actually asked me if it was Lotus Dinner. This doesn't surprise me, as Pavement couldn't play their instruments either. Why didn't we get into Pavement sooner? Two related reasons; exposure and lack of separation. I never heard a Pavement song until Haircut from Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain . I saw the video on MTV, read the review in Rolling Stone. This is where you get music information in small, central Wisconsin towns before widespread Internet.
The Rolling Stone review got me interested in the album, but I ended up purchasing PJ Harvey's To Bring You My Love instead, and I can't say I'm any worse off for the decision. There's a million bands out there being talked about at any given point, and not many people in my milieu were even talking about Pavement, much less gushing about them in the extravagant ways mentioned in the hipster liner notes.
Pavement never really separated themselves in our minds from a thousand other similar bands, who all basically had the same aesthetic and some exposure. S+E is a really enjoyable album and I am glad to get into their music, as nothing like it is really being made right now. Stuff I like lately, like urlLink The Shins , urlLink The Constantines , urlLink The Decemberists and urlLink AC Newman is all far more musical, well-produced and accomplished. I don't hear anybody making music like Pavement lately and that kind of sucks, but it's pretty understandable. The inevitable fate of bands who depend on lack of musicianship is their development of musicianship through rote repetition. It seems like bands are once again no longer becoming popular when they objectively suck and to me, having reached for musical maturity in the early 90s, there's an empty place.
I'm sure I'll pick up more Pavement as I get bored with S+E, but I have to confess a certain lack of concern over missing out on them the first time. I heard a lot of great music in the early 90s and that particular hunger was satisfied in other ways (coff, Lotus Dinner, coff). 
