You Never Forget Your First Time: No Code

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Share the story of the first time you heard this album

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I like how you differentiated between the first time you heard the album and the first time you got the album

I'm afraid I've never had that second moment

No Code came out my sophomore year in college. That summer I had gotten the who you are and habit single, and I was a little alarmed. I loved the music in habit but Eddie's shrieking was a bit much, and who you are was just bizarre. But I was still hopeful

Pearl Jam has been my favorite band since pretty much the first time I heard them but at this point Pearl Jam was also basically a perfect band. The first three records were arguably my top 3 records of all time, and they had never stumbled and never done wrong. But this also means they had a lot to live up to and a long way to fall if they didn't

This was also the first pearl jam record (and to this date the only, with the possible exception of avocado since I got to listen to that for the first time with all of RM pretty much) that I listened to with a good friend of mine, Sarah. We drove to a record store in main that was doing a midnight sale, got the cd, and went back to my dorm to experience the record together. And it was a disappointment. The songs were good, but not great, with some that were flat out boring (around the bend, which has grown on me a bit since) or just plain bad (mankind). I gave it a ton of listens, found the songs I really liked, and really tried hard but this just never quite made it into that level that the first 3 records did (and they never matched it again for me until S/T). So No Code will always be a bittersweet record for me, in that no matter how good it is (and I like no code a lot), it was the moment where pearl jam became human, where their status as the greatest band of all time was based on what they had done, not what they would do


So in that respect No Code was a bit like watching Star Wars episode 1 for this first time