Song of the Moment: Present Tense

[stip]

me too, these days, although once upon a time I would have put Present Tense in my top 3 No Code tracks. Today it's probably 5 or 6.

[dimejinky99]

Cod-profundity

i love you Spenno

[LetMeSleep]

We need a 4.5 option.

[tragabigzanda]

pearl jam sucks now

[BurtReynolds]

It's fallen pretty far on my favorites of No Code list. I wouldn't call the lyrics trash, but they are kinda cheeseball. It's alright. I would really like to hear it live one day.

[stip]

This has me thinking...

Anybody know about how many originals there are in the PJ catalog? And how would one actually go about ranking them -- I mean, would 1/5 of all the songs get a 5, 1/5 get a 4, and so on? Or is the number of five-star songs hypothetically limitless? In the other thread where people were making their top 25 lists, I had no problem finding about 35 songs that are what I'd consider five-star tracks. But one-star songs? I could maybe only identify several. Hmm...

There is a master list of every song that has surfaced, with all known versions, stickied at the top of the page.

[Kevin Davis]

I think its one of Pj's all time greats..i just hate the way ed insists on cursing in it these days...ruins the whole song

I agree mate. It's so detrimental to the vibe of the song.

It's definitely a bit silly.

The thing I like about this particular lyric change is that, instead of simply cramming a curse word into the existing lyric (a la "In Hiding" or "Last Exit") or a total find-and-replace (like "Comatose"), here he changes a portion of an existing word to create an entirely new, more or less nonsensical word: "all encompassing trip" becomes "all en-fucking trip." This opens the door to a lot of interpretive possibilities: What is "enfucking?" Or is it "in-fucking?" "In-fucking" strikes me as an uncouth euphemism for incestuous practices, as in, "Well, there does seem to be a history of genetic defects in that family, but to be fair, there was a lot of in-fucking going on." Of course, an "all in-fucking trip" makes it sound like the band is going on tour for the exclusive purpose of having physical relations with each other, so perhaps I have mishyphenated and it's actually "all-in fucking trip" -- as in, "Life is a fucking trip, man, and I'm ALL IN!" That seems like precisely the sort of surfer dude pseudo-wisdom that belongs in this song -- unless it's meant to be "enfucking" after all, in which case I welcome further interpretation. In any case this is lexical pioneering on par with "surflaced" and "perfect-toe-ly" and should not be so readily dismissed. It clearly contains multitudes.

[epilogue]

I don't have a clever, puny, pearl jam-ish way of saying this, but: thank god for Kevin Davis.

[EJ]

Not to rain on KDs post, but pretty sure he's always singing, "all big fucking trip."

[epilogue]

That's because the brain tries to automatically make sense of Ed's nonsense. I get it. But he's definitely speaking gibberish.

[Kevin Davis]

Not to rain on KDs post, but pretty sure he's always singing, "all big fucking trip."

Oh, no raining at all -- "all big fucking trip" makes even less sense. I like it.

[tommymtcom]

What about "whole big fucking trip"?

[EJ]

What about "whole big fucking trip"?

I hear that too. In either case, I don't think it really differs from "encompassing." It's just a bit Joe Dirtish and just another way to pander to the audience.

[LetMeSleep]

Not to rain on KDs post, but pretty sure he's always singing, "all big fucking trip."

I don't hear that. Of course there's dozens of versions I haven't heard.

[Norah]

I've always heard all en-fucking trip.

[epilogue]

Pete's gots ears like a bat-bat!

[LetMeSleep]

I've always heard all en-fucking trip.

Aw huh.

[LoathedVermin72]

haha "Joe Dirtish"

[Jorge]

"all in fucking trap" is what I hear.

[epilogue]

guys, it's clearly "almond fucking tarp."