Secret Knowledge: Malkmus Sings Silver Jews

Secret Knowledge: Malkmus Sings Silver JewsOne of the best bits of ye olde indie rock lore is that David Berman and Stephen Malkmus worked as security guards at the Whitney Museum of American Art back in the early 1990s. It almost seems too good to be true, like some Sundance-bound indie flick — I’m picturing Clerks as directed by Jim Jarmusch or Hal Hartley, with two semi-cerebral/fully baked slackers wandering the galleries and generally doing a bad job. I smell a Palme d'Or! But it’s a true story. “Those guys would talk about how arduous being a security guard was at the Whitney Museum while they were getting a full education on American art there,” fellow Silver Jew Bob Nastanovich later remembered. “I’d have to listen to them kind of moan about standing all day, and meanwhile I drove a bus all day.”A lotta water has come over the hill since those early times, but Malkmus is out on the west coast playing some rare solo shows this week, and he’s breaking out some vintage Silver…