Yield was released 20 years ago today

[Bammer]

God damn.

5 great albums in 8 years.

Can any other band touch that run?

[tragabigzanda]

pearl jam sucks now

[epilogue]

I got it the day it was released. Class got out at 3pm. I had an hour to kill before rehearsals started. I drove to Best Buy and straight back to school. I wanted to listen to the whole thing in one clip so I didn't listen to any of it in the car because I knew I didn't have enough time to hear all of it.

After rehearsal I went home. Had dinner. Finished some homework and then listened to the album front to back without interruption at like 9pm or so. The record was great. I loved every track but I also had the very strange and specific feeling that I was instantly ready for the next album. I thought to myself, "This is great but I'm satisfied. What's next?"

I called my best friend and we chatted about the album for a while. He wasn't really into it. He thought each new Pearl Jam album was a little worse than the one before. (Ten was a 10, Vs a 9, Vitalogy an 8, etc...)

I continued to Yield off and on over the rest of the school year. Usually skipping over songs. I didn't listen front to back often, which was weird for me at the time. New things revealed themselves but the album never got better overall. I had a long chat with a friend about Do The Evolution. She wasn't a big Pearl Jam fan but that song really moved her.

That summer I left the church because the Youth Group minister went on a rant bashing Pearl Jam and saying we were anti-Christian if we listened to them. It was all based on ignorance and a gross misunderstanding of lyrics. I defended the band and tried to open up a conversation about what they meant to me and how I understood their lyrics and messages. The minister gave me a really sinister look of pity and told me I had a lot to think/pray about. I told him I disagreed. I said, "I'm done," and walked out of the Youth Group meeting. I never went back.

I owe Pearl Jam a lot.

Now I'd say Yield is #4 in my PJ rankings. But it took along time for it to climb that high. I don't think I really started to appreciate the album until post-Backspacer.

[liebzz]

By the time Yield came out, I was a huge fan. I had seen them for the first time in 1996, and was at that point fully enthralled with collecting as many Pearl Jam shows as humanly possible. On cassette, I had amassed the entire 1996 US Tour (and actual thing to work for in those days), and had quickly gotten my hands on a VHS tape of Pearl Jam opening for The Rolling Stones in Oakland in 1997, which I believe exposed me to Do the Evolution for the first time, and I had already heard Given to Fly as the single.

The first time I heard the album through was at the local FYE in the Albany area. They had a listening party a few days before, and gave out a bunch of silly promo items like an oversized Yield sign sticker with “PEARL JAM” replacing “YIELD” and mock backstage passes. It was a fun evening. Bought the album at a midnight madness release party a few days later at Best Buy. I was blown away on this album from the jump and have always been high on it. It is a phenomenal album.

Ended up going to three shows on the Yield tour: both MSG shows and Hartford. All great nights in my life. From this point through the 2003 tour would be the pinnacle of my Pearl Jam fandom.

[Bammer]

I got both of these bad boys still rolled up in a tube if you can believe it. For whatever reason I never chose to frame them.

[VinylGuy]

those two are beautiful

[Hatfield]

I don’t remember buying or first hearing Yield. I remember it dropped the day before my birthday, and that it was love at first sight.

It was on the radio all the time as I was driving the 50 miles between dorm and job, which was great because I didn’t have a car with a working player of any kind in it and there were not a lot of good radio station choices in South Dakota in those days.

My best friend from high school and I road tripped to see our first Pearl Jam concert in Rapid City on that tour, in a venue that felt like we were in a high school gym or something.



We were staying on a military base. There was a thunder and lightning storm crackling over the Black Hills as the venue opened. And those bored-ass South Dakota kids got drunk as hell and just went for broke. They had the ugliest, scariest pit I’ve ever seen in my life. They all showed up for the opener (I mean, holy shit there’s a fucking rock concert coming HERE?!), and they were wild from jump.

Then the band came out and just owned them. It was like watching my grandpa break a horse. They ambled up, greeted us with a terse “ok fuckers,” and proceeded to spit fiery versions of Evolution, Animal, Last Exit, and Brain of J without another word. By the time that opening run ended, the kids were alright. They’d had their catharsis, they’d sweat it out and gotten some bruises, and they understood who was in charge here. Everyone settled in with the band for a run of great, close-quarter performances (Betterman from that show is on lo2l).

It was such a great time to be a fan of the band that I think the constant excitement of it affected my view of the album for years. An immediate, artistically confident record coming just a year and a half after the last one. A big tour. A documentary that was fun to watch. The wildest music video. A live album. It was just a constant run of great new things happening, which is a rare experience with this band.

These days Yield is probably my fifth favorite Pearl Jam record. But it’s also something of a centerpiece. I can hear the band who made No Code in it. I can also hear the band that made Backspacer. I can hear Glorified G echoed and Dance of the Clairvoyants foreshadowed. It’s mostly a nostalgic work for me now...maybe moreso than any other Pearl Jam record....but it’s still syrupy good.

Such quality posting. I love that concert description and the part in bold is spot on. I remember driving 4 hours from college to my buddies house so we could hear the Monkeywrench Radio broadcast and record it. There was excitement around each corner during that period.

[dad]

The tour that followed is one of the best they've ever done.

[ilpazzo]

I went to Best Buy the day it was released, waiting for the store to open, because they had advertised that the first X number of people to buy it would get a free copy of 'Give Way', which was a recording of most of the Melbourne show. I get to Best Buy and there are like 15-20 weirdos already waiting there for the store to open. Then someone puts a sign on the glass that they won;t be giving out 'Give Way' because the record label objected. Then they opened the store and I bought Yield.

Later I guess some folks elsewhere managed to get their hands on 'Give Way', prob some Best Buy employee who didn't return them / destroy them. They were going on eBay for some huge number. Back then when you searched for 'Pearl Jam' on eBay you'd get like 100 listings. I'd always go through and look at them all. These days you search and get 17,768.

I’m stuck on how they’d give away a live show that hadn’t happened yet.

Yield released on 3 February 1998.
Melbourne show for Give Way was 5 March 1998.

Did an Australian time traveler come back and give it to Best Buy?

Another demonstration of the fallibility of memory.

dad’s right: Give Way accompanied the Single Video Theory VHS, which came out later in 1998.

I went to Best Buy, though it was totally out of my way, specifically to get SVT because of Give Way... A VHS AND a live CD for $14.99? Killer deal.
Of course when I got there there were signs all over saying that Give Way would not be released, but they did give us a free copy of Charles Peterson's Pearl Jam: Place/Date which KINDA made up for it. Did any one else experience this, or was this unique to my Best Buy?

[VinylGuy]

It took me so much to get Place/Date...i bought it trough Ten Club maybe in 2003? it was impossible to find here. I love it so much, its a treasure for me.

[ilpazzo]

It took me so much to get Place/Date...i bought it trough Ten Club maybe in 2003? it was impossible to find here. I love it so much, its a treasure for me.

Absolutely. It's such a fantastic document of the band...and the transition they were in at the moment. I don't have many books that I owned in High School, but I still have that one on a book shelf.

[epilogue]

It took me so much to get Place/Date...i bought it trough Ten Club maybe in 2003? it was impossible to find here. I love it so much, its a treasure for me.

Love that book

[Leatherhead]

I really like Yield. At least, I think I do. I don't listen to it much, at one time I did, but nowadays it's typically Binaural or Gigaton. I should to listen to this one more. It's really bright sounding, and I've been leaning towards darker sounds nowadays, I guess.

[Norah]

God damn.

5 great albums in 8 years.

Can any other band touch that run?

Have you heard of the Beatles?

[Norah]

[dad]

[Got Some]

I was working in the city at the time so I headed to a music store at lunch the day of release and thru it in my DISCMAN(remember those). I Listened to the album eating lunch in a crowded food mall, it seemed cool with everyone walking past oblivious.

Do The Evolution is my fav Pj song ever

[tragabigzanda]

pearl jam sucks now

[tragabigzanda]

pearl jam sucks now

[tragabigzanda]

pearl jam sucks now