Pearl Jam (self titled): Official Album Thread

[Wendy Carlos's Twin]

Regardless of when the Life Wasted video was released (I remember it as being early on), it has no relevance to my basic point, so suck my dick.

[stip]

Your point being that if you like the music all their intentions are good and if you don't like the music they are money grubbing hacks for doing the exact same thing?

I'm glad we could find this common ground. That's been my point for years

[Leatherhead]

Your point being that if you like the music all their intentions are good and if you don't like the music they are money grubbing hacks for doing the exact same thing?

I'm glad we could find this common ground. That's been my point for years

Pretty much what I read too.

[epilogue]

Wait, there wasn't an official Life Wasted music video? I coulda sworn.... what was the video with all the heads and stuff from the inside cover art? The video shot by the South American (?) artist?

[epilogue]

Yeah, this thing.

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xedad_ ... sted_music

[stip]

That video sure was a thing that happened. You have to give it that

[epilogue]

I have no idea what's even going on in here any more.

Sorry, everybody!

[Wendy Carlos's Twin]

Your point being that if you like the music all their intentions are good and if you don't like the music they are money grubbing hacks for doing the exact same thing?

I'm glad we could find this common ground. That's been my point for years

My point is that the songs on Yield are excellent, and the songs on S/T are shitty, so your general comparison is ridiculous. You can argue that point all you want, I don't care. It's like comparing "Sticky Fingers" to "Dirty Work". There are people out there who really like "Dirty Work" a lot, but that doesn't mean that you should take their musical advice seriously.

[stip]

I wasn't comparing those records, just the promotional efforts behind them.

And making the point, helpfully illustrated by yourself, that the way we think about those efforts seems to be correlated to what we think about those albums

[bada]

I always thought the hate for gone was a little much. Seemed like for the longest time it was just a given on here that it was just the worst. Yeah it's a average paint by numbers song but nothing about it is worth hating.

[McParadigm]

Gone is problematic for being such a quintessential example of the band's "calculated songwriting" era...where coming up with a clever line or a motif change became an intellectual exercise, sometimes to such an extent that there was no longer a feeling of emotional investment. A song like Gone reeks of "I want the audience to feel and think..." rather than "I am feeling...," and it is a very rare songwriter who can do that well.

There are a lot of moments like that on S/T. Even in Army Reserve...probably my favorite post-Riot Act track....there are very ham fisted lines like "She tells herself and anyone else 'father's risking his life for our freedom'"....lines that don't do ANYthing to better emote us into the story than the preceding verse, and even take us out for being so "let me lay this out for you." Actually, one of the things I like about Backspacer is that very few of the songs (Amongst the Waves comes to mind) favor cleverness over drive.

We all be thinking with our different brain.

[Leatherhead]

Even in Army Reserve...probably my favorite post-Riot Act track....there are very ham fisted lines like "She tells herself and anyone else 'father's risking his life for our freedom'"....lines that don't do ANYthing to better emote us into the story than the preceding verse, and even take us out for being so "let me lay this out for you."

This line doesn't do anything for you? To me it illustrates the woman sort of feigning some pride in what her husband is doing. Trying to save face in front of all her friends and family, what she really wants is just for the bullshit to be over, tired of living in fear of her husband's death in some faraway place, doing something that she really wish he wasn't. Constantly trying to reassure herself that what her husband is doing is something good, something of importance, but she really knows it's just all bullshit and that he should be at home with her and their son. In front of everybody, and even herself, she is trying to make it seem like she supports what her husband is doing, but obviously, she knows it's just bullshit.

What previous lines in the song do you think emote this feeling?

[McParadigm]

"Mom, she reassures / to contain him / but it's becoming a lie" captures all of the duality you just mentioned, and does so in a far more gripping way because it focuses on an infinitely more powerful relationship than just "anyone else"...it focuses on a mother and her child.

Better still, it give a very descriptive sense of what it's like in the moment that the change is happening...the moment where she begins to feel one thing but continues to say another. This is just far more dramatic and personal storytelling than simply saying (directly, factually) that she does essentially the same thing with "everyone else," which is a line that doesn't add anything TO that moment.

[96583UP]

i think PJ may have felt a return to form during the Avocado sessions, and got all excited about it, but then the album they released wound up missing the mark on delivering that experience to others. The leaked/previously unreleased avocado demos tell a different story to that PJ era than one gets to see from the avocado album itself. if those sessions were more fully represented in the official release, then PJ's statements about returning to their roots and being so proud of themselves at that time would have made a lot more sense to me. instead, track after track i was waiting for that feeling to come and it never came. just one dry idea after the other. except for big wave. but still.

kind of like how the people in zoolander talked about how much fun it was to make zoolander, but then zoolander wasnt as funny as they thought it was when it was released, cause the movie missed all their funny stuff not on film

kind of like that

[Leatherhead]

"Mom, she reassures / to contain him / but it's becoming a lie" captures all of the duality you just mentioned, and does so in a far more gripping way because it focuses on an infinitely more powerful relationship than just "anyone else"...it focuses on a mother and her child.

Better still, it give a very descriptive sense of what it's like in the moment that the change is happening...the moment where she begins to feel one thing but continues to say another. This is just far more dramatic and personal storytelling than simply saying (directly, factually) that she does essentially the same thing with "everyone else," which is a line that doesn't add anything TO that moment.

I was kinda thinking this too, however "Mom, she reassures / to contain him / but it's becoming a lie" I'm not sure emotes the feeling of her trying to convince herself and everyone else that she supports what her husband is doing, but instead is only emoting the feeling that her husband may not be coming back.

[digster]

To be clear, I'm not criticizing any of this. I was thrilled to see them in MSG and to this day I show the DTE video in some of my classes. These were sensible positions. But they were a more dramatic walking back of core principles (albiet in some cases ones that were perhaps untenable) of anything that happened in S/T or afterwards.

Yield also had a major tour, and while S/T had 3 musical performances, Yield had an actual commercial for the record.

Not only did they do more for S/T, the band itself said they were doing more. From the Rolling Stone cover article...

The band members are showing a newfound willingness to promote themselves -- appearing on Saturday Night Live and Letterman -- in part because they want their political voice heard. "It seems like a critical time to participate in our democracy," says Vedder. "I think we're representatives of America. We certainly have as much clout as, well, Rush Limbaugh. So if he's gonna fuckin' blow hot air, using his platform, then we should be doing the same."

According to that, they wanted a larger megaphone, but whatever the reasoning, it seems like they saw S/T as something new for them.

[stip]

"Mom, she reassures / to contain him / but it's becoming a lie" captures all of the duality you just mentioned, and does so in a far more gripping way because it focuses on an infinitely more powerful relationship than just "anyone else"...it focuses on a mother and her child.

Better still, it give a very descriptive sense of what it's like in the moment that the change is happening...the moment where she begins to feel one thing but continues to say another. This is just far more dramatic and personal storytelling than simply saying (directly, factually) that she does essentially the same thing with "everyone else," which is a line that doesn't add anything TO that moment.

I was kinda thinking this too, however "Mom, she reassures / to contain him / but it's becoming a lie" I'm not sure emotes the feeling of her trying to convince herself and everyone else that she supports what her husband is doing, but instead is only emoting the feeling that her husband may not be coming back.

That one particular lyric is powerful, I think, for the way it takes this private experience and universalizes it. That this small personal and affecting story is being played out tens of thousands of times every day. Had the song started there I might agree with the critique, but it's an excellent place to end.

[stip]

To be clear, I'm not criticizing any of this. I was thrilled to see them in MSG and to this day I show the DTE video in some of my classes. These were sensible positions. But they were a more dramatic walking back of core principles (albiet in some cases ones that were perhaps untenable) of anything that happened in S/T or afterwards.

Yield also had a major tour, and while S/T had 3 musical performances, Yield had an actual commercial for the record.

Not only did they do more for S/T, the band itself said they were doing more. From the Rolling Stone cover article...

The band members are showing a newfound willingness to promote themselves -- appearing on Saturday Night Live and Letterman -- in part because they want their political voice heard. "It seems like a critical time to participate in our democracy," says Vedder. "I think we're representatives of America. We certainly have as much clout as, well, Rush Limbaugh. So if he's gonna fuckin' blow hot air, using his platform, then we should be doing the same."

According to that, they wanted a larger megaphone, but whatever the reasoning, it seems like they saw S/T as something new for them.

More press/live performances, sure. But when someone starts ranting a la WCT I think they aren't usually complaining about live appearances.

[stip]

We might be talking past each other at this point digster. I'm not disagreeing that there was more active band participation promotion for S/t (performances,etc.). I'm just saying yield, not S/t was the first time the 'return to form promotion machine' was engaged, and was engaged in ways that should be theoretically more disturbing if you are offended by the idea of musicians promoting their music (which I am not. I think most of this is nonsense). The yield stuff was not just an extra appearance on SNL and Jools Holland as opposed to the standard letterman. It was a video, it was a TV commercial, it was a ticketmaster tour. It was a series of steps that directly contradicted stances that had defined what the band 'stood' for, and done at a time when pj was still a household name people did not need to be reminded of.

But yield is beloved, and S/t is flawed, and so we criticize the later and ignore the former.

[VinylGuy]

I agree with stip. they even did SVT with the band talking, something weird at the time.

I love both albums.