The most embarrassing thing from PJ’s career - RESULTS

[Strat]

lol. I guess it's impossible for someone to like both Springsteen and the frogs ! Who knew!

Frogs rule. The live shows they've been releasing lately are wild as fuck.

[McParadigm]

These guys are a mainstream, popular band. They play arenas and stadiums and there's no delusion to me what I'm following.

I think one of the reasons I consider them the best American rock band is that they have done such a fantastic job of fusing “classic“ rock arena-filling sensibilities with the quirkiness and egoless artistry of the DIY-era underground.

If you come in wanting nothing but big beautiful hooks and easily consumed singalongs, you’re gonna get a little of that…but not on the level you wanted. If you come in wanting twisted, oddly-constructed songs that exist on their own internal logic, you’re going to get some of that….but not as much as you wanted.

If you can enjoy both of those things happening at once, this is the place for you.

I don’t think they differentiate between U2 bombast, Talking Heads twitchiness, and Bad Religion battle cries. Hot funk, cool punk, even if it’s old junk, It’s all valid and rock ‘n’ roll to them.

If you can come in with that same attitude, then they’ve got the best catalog in town. If you can’t, then you’ll probably feel frustrated or left out from time to time.

A lot of people found no code unpalatable. Not enough arena sized welcome. Some people find dark matter unrelatable. Too big and poppy. Not meandering enough.

Personally, I like both sides of that coin…and I especially like that sometimes when they flip it, it somehow lands with both sides showing at the same time.

They're not some mom-and-pop show. Whenever I watch something like that Zane Lowe interview at their warehouse, the thing that stands out to me is that they are a freakin' business operation. They have employees and hundreds of people that rely on them for their livelihood.

This is exactly why stuff like the target ad doesn’t bother me. In the 21st century, every band of a certain size was trying to figure out the new math equation. Album sales evaporated and royalties became less and less lucrative. The number of bands licensing their songs to commercials for pharmaceuticals and whatever else increased 10 times over in the span of 12 years. Etc.

In all honesty, that Chris Cornell Walmart video is more embarrassing to me than the target ad, because it pretends to be something it’s not. It offers itself as an intimate performance, when the item on Chris’s itinerary for that day was “shoot video for Walmart.“ It packages the corporate license in a disguise of emotional resonance, which is much grosser to me.

I prefer the Pearl Jam approach to corporate entanglement (which is “get in the back boys, we’re going off-roadin!”) to somber, serious performances that have WALMART slapped in the corner. Something about treating your art as art at the same time you’re doing the corporate outreach thing is so much grosser to me than screwballing your way through The Fixer.

You’re going to find a there are plenty of times when you have to compromise your ideals. Keep the things that matter out of those moments. Protect them from it. Don’t sing Two Drink Minimum for fucking Walmart. Give them the fixer instead, motherfucker.

In a world where Bob Dylan, Neil Young, Paul Simon, Bruce Springsteen, the Chili Peppers, and Alice In Chains have all sold their catalogs to corporations and other entities that aren’t interested in them as anything other than assets….this shit feels a lot more like “trying to figure it out as we go,” and a lot less like cashing out.

And I think a big part of why they're not hiding from it is because it's mostly socially okay to take that approach now vs. the early 1990s.

I think this is unavoidably true

[Kevin Davis]

I think something that often gets forgotten relative to the Target deal is that the exclusivity partnership was relative to big-box stores only -- the album was still available at indie shops, on the band's website, iTunes, Amazon, etc.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backspace ... _promotion

Basically this deal just meant that Best Buy, Wal-Mart, Barnes and Noble, etc. couldn't carry it. None of the small business or more artist-direct channels were affected, at least no more than they theoretically would have been anyway by competition from big-box retailers. So while I don't think this is necessarily the most admirable moment in the band's history, I don't really care that the band picked one corporate fatcat to do business with instead of five or six.

As for the ad itself, while I agree that there are elements to it that are tacky and embarrassing, I disagree that it is a commercial "for Target." It is an ad for the Pearl Jam album, with clear messaging that Target is where the album is for sale. It's not like there are cutaways to people perusing cleaning products, filling their carts with mineral water, or rifling through promo racks of amazing back-to-school deals; the advertisement features the band performing (such as it is) its own music, and advertising only its own product. Yes, it's inconsistent with the values they espoused very loudly and for a considerably brief period of time twenty-five years ago. But sweeper is right -- this was not an unprecedented thing for bands of Pearl Jam's stature to do at the time, something that in hindsight I think can pretty clearly be seen as one of many bizarre extinction-burst-type things happening in the record business during that period.

I dunno, I'm glad it didn't become a lasting partnership but I don't think it holds a candle to suing a little girl's charity.

[Jorge]

I will stick with my original choice of the "mosquito bites" rant as the most embarrassing moment

[LoathedVermin72]

I will stick with my original choice of the "mosquito bites" rant as the most embarrassing moment

seconded, surprised this isn't in the poll

[tragabigzanda]

pearl jam sucks now

[tragabigzanda]

pearl jam sucks now

[wease]

I’d like to remind everyone rushing to defend the new distribution era as an excuse for the Target thing that this was the same era when Radiohead, NIN, Gorillaz, and U2 offered the “pay what you want” or “free” models. They seemed to understand that ticket sales, merch, and film licensing would be sufficient revenue streams.

Anyway, probably the most embarassing thing for me is when it came out recently that they’re paying poster artists in merch rather than cold hard cash. “It’s exposure for you” is the same thing porn producers say to get girls onto the casting couch. This abuse of power seems utterly ridiculous in our modern era.

Pearl Jam sucks now, even if I do really like some of the songs on Dark Matter.

Wonder whose idea this was

[tommy]

Anyway, probably the most embarassing thing for me is when it came out recently that they’re paying poster artists in merch rather than cold hard cash. “It’s exposure for you” is the same thing porn producers say to get girls onto the casting couch. This abuse of power seems utterly ridiculous in our modern era..

Did this really happen? If so then this is 100% the answer. What a shitty thing to do.

[tragabigzanda]

pearl jam sucks now

[tragabigzanda]

pearl jam sucks now

[tommy]

Anyway, probably the most embarassing thing for me is when it came out recently that they’re paying poster artists in merch rather than cold hard cash. “It’s exposure for you” is the same thing porn producers say to get girls onto the casting couch. This abuse of power seems utterly ridiculous in our modern era..

Did this really happen? If so then this is 100% the answer. What a shitty thing to do.

https://www.webworm.co/p/pearljam

Wow, that's really embarrassing

[tragabigzanda]

pearl jam sucks now

[Bammer]

Bammer we need a recount

You had your chance.

Honestly though, blame Stip. He got all intimidated and sensi-poo and really squashed this whole process. He did not like the thought of May Madness overshadowing March Madness.

Fkn Stip.

[Kevin Davis]

I’d like to remind everyone rushing to defend the new distribution era as an excuse for the Target thing that this was the same era when Radiohead, NIN, Gorillaz, and U2 offered the “pay what you want” or “free” models. They seemed to understand that ticket sales, merch, and film licensing would be sufficient revenue streams

I get your point and appreciate the sense of conscience to the approach taken by these artists (though U2 were certainly shilling for Apple via a commercial not dissimilar to the PJ Target ad just a few years prior), but ultimately I see these as equally bizarre things that are equally reflective of the floundering happening in the record business at that time. I also think it's relevant that Radiohead, NIN, etc., were not offering "pay what you want" for physical product, and the Target deal was solely relative to physical product. In fact, I bought physical copies of both In Rainbows *and* Songs of Innocence at Wal-Mart, so it's not like all these bands just completely cut ties with all corporate partners (I do think the NIN records, Ghosts and The Slip, were only available physically through the band's website, but I could be wrong).

None of this may affect whether the Target thing strikes you as icky, but I don't think it's the apples-to-apples comparison that it may appear to be. And ultimately all of these things were one-off business experiments, clearly none of which had much staying power.

I agree with the payment-via-merch thing. That's gross.

[tragabigzanda]

pearl jam sucks now

[tragabigzanda]

pearl jam sucks now

[96583UP]

to think that only selling a PJ album in Target is somehow good for fans

what if you live in a town that only has a walmart

assholes

[Jorge]

I will stick with my original choice of the "mosquito bites" rant as the most embarrassing moment

seconded, surprised this isn't in the poll

Meh. She wanted to objectify herself in a public place. Just as an artist no longer controls the narrative once they put their product out there, I think it’s unreasonable to expect some level of sensitivity around bodily autonomy when you’re flashing your tits in front of 10,000 people unsolicited.

"If every girl who pulled her top up educated herself and voted!"

That's where the cringe really hits

[96583UP]

Ed the Mansplainooooor / Womyn’s Liberatooooooor