Post Random Pearl Jam-Related Thoughts You Have

[Val]

Oh yeah yeah I used to have a copy of Live On Two Legs but fuck me if I remember where I bought it

[Brett]

My Pearl Jam story is kinda similar to Mike's, at least in terms of timing. I think the first song I actually heard was "Better Man," but I didn't know who the artist was or even the song name. It was just the song about dreaming in color, dreaming in red that was played sometimes on the popular music station that we listened to on the school bus in the mid-late '90s. When I first heard of Pearl Jam, the band, "Last Kiss" was getting heavy radio play, and I picked up that it was a cover, so my initial concept of the band was that they got popular doing covers of other artists' songs (it was a really weird extrapolation to make in hindsight).

Around this time I was getting heavy into Nirvana and I eventually learned that Pearl Jam actually got their start pretty contemporaneous to them. I started hearing "Alive," "Even Flow," and, most importantly, "Jeremy" on the rock radio station and I realized these guys might be almost as good as Nirvana. I got Ten from Walmart in 2001 or 2002 and I became obsessed. I later got Vitalogy from the same Walmart and Vs. from a pawn shop, though I don't recall which I obtained first. Either way, Vitalogy cemented them as my favorite band and showed me that they had a much broader palette than I initially realized as well as allowing me to put a name and artist to that song from the bus radio.

I do know that Binaural was the fourth album of theirs that I purchased, this one from a shop that sold secondhand CDs, comics, trading cards, tabletop gaming paraphernalia, etc. It was the first and only album of theirs that I entered entirely blind having heard nothing from it beforehand. Around the same time I had been reading up on the band wherever I could, mainly online, so I started to pick up on their history and some of the prevailing opinions about their work in various communities. Because of this, I mythologized No Code and Yield in my head before ever hearing them, and they were the last two I listened to in full shortly before or around when Avocado came out and at that time my fandom was beginning to wane. Riot Act was the last mainline album of theirs that I bought (in September or October of 2003) for several years. I finally picked up physical copies of No Code and Yield around 2010 or so when somebody on another forum was downsizing their physical collection, and I've yet to pick up legitimate copies of Avocado through Lightning Bolt.

So for me, while I definitely came at the band through their earliest albums first, it was also at a time when they had several other albums already out, and as much as I loved the power and drama of their music, I was even more drawn in by their ability to color outside the lines with their sound and find sonic spaces that most of their contemporaries could not.

[coptheriotact]

as a child listening to radio TV

animal 93 MTV awards
daughter
spin the black circle
(i mainly watched music videos on rage)

as a teenager with a computer and job in 2001
Ten CD
Vs CD
Riot Act mp3s
then i bought all the other CDs

[liebzz]

Just wanted to note that I was looking at the photos and coverage of Goose’s show last night at the Capitol Theatre in Port Chester (first show with new drummer), and their keys player is wearing a stickman t-shirt.

[stip]

I just had the following run of songs come up on shuffle: Get it Back -> Hitchhiker -> In the Moonlight, and I thought of how happy it would have made so many folks here who aren't me. I also didn't realize how similar the vibes are in Get it Back and In the Moonlight until just now

[Birds in Hell]

I just had the following run of songs come up on shuffle: Get it Back -> Hitchhiker -> In the Moonlight, and I thought of how happy it would have made so many folks here who aren't me. I also didn't realize how similar the vibes are in Get it Back and In the Moonlight until just now

The Lord works in mysterious ways.

[Mike]

I often enjoy fan recordings of shows more than the official bootlegs. Somehow the official bootlegs lack the energy/power/energy of how they really sound? I am not sure why

[stip]

crowd noise is a part of it, i think. but i agree they often do a better job capturing the energy

[Matters]

I’ve been putting a different pj album on after each listen of Dark Matter.
Vs. was great. Backspacer follows it well too. Riot Act and Binaural not as much. I love them but they each felt kinda lethargic after DM.

Gigaton now and up through Quick Escape it’s pairing really nicely. One day in the near future, SoF or WES is gonna come up on shuffle and during the intro I’m going to have trouble recognizing which song I’m hearing.

[bodysnatcher]

Every time I see a pic or video of Ed with a trucker hat on, I think of Tom Waits’ “What’s He Building?”

[rick malone]

Eddie was a topic of discussion at the end of Laura Ingram's show on Fox News regarding his comments about the Chiefs kicker. They played the Hershey '03 clip.

[Leatherhead]

Eddie was a topic of discussion at the end of Laura Ingram's show on Fox News regarding his comments about the Chiefs kicker. They played the Hershey '03 clip.

Ha!

[Ms Harmless]

I just accidentally wrote "Ted Mosquito" into the URL box and then thought, what if there was a Ted Mosquito?

[Rangi Guy]

Vinyl roulette seems to have been on a bit of a PJ buzz lately - 4 of the last 5 albums have been Vs, Vitalogy, Give Way and Riot Act

[oasisfan35]

Vedder's vox lost me in '08

[96583UP]

I just accidentally wrote "Ted Mosquito" into the URL box and then thought, what if there was a Ted Mosquito?

we should find him and have him post here

[lvc]

All the talk about the new album and what people want from Pearl Jam made me wonder how much how you got to know Pearl Jam influenced your opinion and your taste regarding Pearl Jams music. For many reviewers Pearl Jams definite best period is always 1991-1994 and here we have many fans of the middle period as well.
I got to know Pearl Jam in a pretty uncommon way. My first contact was downloading random Pearl Jam songs from Kazaa in 2002/2003 when I was 13 when someone on a forum talked about how great they are. Coming from germany, I actually never heard of them before. I didn't even know their biggest hits as they're very rarely played on the radio here. Pretty much no one else around me listened to them or knew about them which is probably pretty different to the U.S. My journey into Pearl Jam fandom was almost completely uninfluenced. After downloading some songs (I think it was Porch and Better Man) I just started to buy Pearl Jam records whenever I saw one in a record store. I had no idea which ones were the good/popular ones.
Due to this, Lost Dogs was just as influential in my Pearl Jam journey as Ten was and I never held a notion about how Pearl Jam SHOULD sound. I got to know Riot Act around the same time as I got to know Vs. Twenty years later I know all of the history and which albums are held in which regard, but I think about Pearl Jam completely differently than how they are talked about when reading reviews for example. To me, No Code or Riot Act are not experimental middle era Pearl Jam but just Pearl Jam how I got to know them from the beginning. There were already eight albums including Lost Dogs for me to discover at the same time at pretty influential teenage years. Undone is quintessential Pearl Jam to me just as Porch is.

I think this is why I'm always a bit weirded out when there is talk about Pearl Jam returning to form or Pearl Jam focusing on what they do best. Not intellectually weirded out, as I now know Pearl Jams story, but more emotionally as that is not my Pearl Jam story.

This is strikingly similar to my pathway into Pearl Jam. Except I was in America, but I didn't know Pearl Jam because I was listening to Star Wars and X-Files soundtracks when they were huge and then Dave Matthews Band and Third Eye Blind when they were shaking the press off their tails. I got into Pearl Jam in 2002 and saw them in early 2003 on the Riot Act tour and was able to buy one album at a time in no particular order other than picking records that had a song I like from Live on Two Legs.

I whole-heartedly agree that if you had the experience of digesting Pearl Jam's entire discography without any nostalgia attached, the records' merits change, sometimes considerably.

[stip]

wnat is your ranking, given your journey

[Matters]

What is the greatest Pearl Jam story ever told?

[blueviper]

What is the greatest Pearl Jam story ever told?

That weird long winded post (I think copied from the Pit)

I can’t find it.