You Never Forget Your First Time: Pearl Jam

[LoathedVermin72]

Yeah he's right, Binaural and Riot Act are what you appreciate when you hear the good songs so much you are tired of them and desperate for something, anything, that's different.

omg

[LoathedVermin72]

[digster]

In the larger context of "music fans who were casual PJ fans", stip is absolutely right about people's reaction to Binaural and Riot Act. A perfect example of this is the piece that Steven Hyden wrote a few years back. The following relevant section is what most people "out there" think about Pearl Jam. Whether you agree or not is a different story.

That's the thing; I don't think people had a reaction to Binaural, or Riot Act. Or, for that matter, S/T, Backspacer and Lightning Bolt. I think we may generally overrate the importance of a PJ album release. They're not really a band known for their records, and I'm not sure they have been at any point in their career besides the beginning. That's not to say those records aren't good or important, but as I said before, if something like Binaural was so weird to some listener that it was impossible for them to take from a band like Pearl Jam, then I don't really know what to say.

[E.H. Ruddock]

Yeah he's right, Binaural and Riot Act are what you appreciate when you hear the good songs so much you are tired of them and desperate for something, anything, that's different.

omg

You can tell he's new to Pearl Jam.

[E.H. Ruddock]

jk, mikejasond, you like what you like!

[LoathedVermin72]

Like what you like but don't tell other people they only like something because they're desperate

[E.H. Ruddock]

Like what you like but don't tell other people they only like something because they're desperate

Especially us old AF Pearl Jam fans.

[tragabigzanda]

pearl jam sucks now

[darth_vedder]

Always remember: RM is a very insular community of highly-attuned weirdos, and assholes and nice people (me).

FTFY

[darth_vedder]

A guy at a place I used to work at got me an advanced copy of this. I remember putting it on and instantly liking it more than RA and Binaural. Kinda like that quote that evenslow posted, I at the time felt similar. Avocado for me was instant gratification. It was rawk. It's what I wanted.

The honeymoon was pretty short though, as I dove back into RA / Binaural / 2000 tour / 2003 tour, and really started thinking those albums aged better. The more I got into those album, the more I started to dislike S/T. After LB and the brickwall version, I kinda came back around, and it's one I certainly revisit more often than the last two.

[Wendy Carlos's Twin]

Does it really surprise anybody that the average person has a hard time "moving on" from the same old shit?

Look at what happened to The Beach Boys in America. They had the nerve to start singing about things other than surfing and cars. How dare they!

And what finally revived their careers? That's right! A compilation of surfing and car songs that was sold on TV.

The same thing is happening here, except instead of selling compilations on TV, they are trying to "re-create" a vibe from 20 years ago and failing miserably at it.

The people who complain about Pearl Jam being "too weird" on "Binarual" are the same type of people who would have been listening to Frampton Comes Alive and Eagles Greatest Hits on repeat in 1977.

[stip]

i wonder what time signature WcT posts in?

[Norah]

7/8

[LetMeSleep]

5/7

[Sgt. Crackpot]

142/8

[Kevin Davis]

This album came out during a lull in my PJ fandom, which had been going full throttle since 1995 and reached a critical mass of sorts with the 2000 and 2003 bootlegs, so though I listened with love and liked more than a few of the songs, my mind was ultimately craving other things. It wasn't uncommon to find a handful of songs on a new PJ album relatively lackluster at first (on S/T there were about 5-6 that just struck me as duds), but I didn't have the investment in the band at the time to really probe the material for virtue. It was pretty easily my least favorite album to that point, but not in a way that reflected any real passion on my part -- it was just sort of there, my favorite band's newest album.

It wasn't until the following summer that the songs on this album started opening up for me, when I started downloading the boots from the 2006 tour, which completely passed me by as it was happening (it didn't even register with me that they were playing nearby). As I made the 45 minute commute back and forth to school, I listened to these shows, a new one each day, and I really began to grow fond of many of the S/T songs. The "brickwall" business didn't -- and still doesn't really -- register with me in those terms, but there was definitely a natural energy and presence to the live versions of these songs that didn't come across on the record (which is how I've long felt about Pearl Jam in general, honestly, which is why I've spent so much time listening to bootlegs).

The album still signals a change in PJ's career that I don't think was for the best, but I do feel like I've gotten out of these songs everything I can. Accepting that PJ's career has taken the course it has, it's not a bad collection of songs.

[Brett]

I don't remember much about my first time, but I do remember not liking what I was hearing. Stip and mikejasond talk about how this album was a breath of fresh air for them, a "return to form" for the band. For me, it was the exact opposite. It was Pearl Jam making the same sort of boneheaded aggro alt-rock that was on the radio.

Sure, in retrospect, a lot of their music wasn't much beyond what was contemporaneous and even preceding them in the popular rock sphere, especially Ten and Vs., but at the height of my fandom, it felt very different. They had started out making riff-heavy emotive and angsty rock, but had spent the next five albums peeling that away, seemingly revealing their true identity as ragged and energetic, but also awkward and quirky. It felt charmingly relatable to me.

That was the band that I had fallen in love with, and to me, that was the "real" Pearl Jam. The self-titled record took pretty much all of that and binned it. And they haven't really gone back that way, since. Was it a contrivance, just a put on? Now that we've had access to some of the material left on the cutting floor during those sessions, it's easy to see that the band could have taken a different direction, but appeared to have consciously chosen to shift back to an extension of their early work. I guess it was a change of needs and priorities.

[LoathedVermin72]

I don't remember much about my first time, but I do remember not liking what I was hearing. Stip and mikejasond talk about how this album was a breath of fresh air for them, a "return to form" for the band. For me, it was the exact opposite. It was Pearl Jam making the same sort of boneheaded aggro alt-rock that was on the radio.

Sure, in retrospect, a lot of their music wasn't much beyond what was contemporaneous and even preceding them in the popular rock sphere, especially Ten and Vs., but at the height of my fandom, it felt very different. They had started out making riff-heavy emotive and angsty rock, but had spent the next five albums peeling that away, seemingly revealing their true identity as ragged and energetic, but also awkward and quirky. It felt charmingly relatable to me.

That was the band that I had fallen in love with, and to me, that was the "real" Pearl Jam. The self-titled record took pretty much all of that and binned it. And they haven't really gone back that way, since. Was it a contrivance, just a put on? Now that we've had access to some of the material left on the cutting floor during those sessions, it's easy to see that the band could have taken a different direction, but appeared to have consciously chosen to shift back to an extension of their early work. I guess it was a change of needs and priorities.

Man, you make sound even more depressing than I already thought it was.

[numbers]

This idea that people that like Binaural and Riot Act a lot only like them because they are sick of the hits is ridiculous. I like them because they are great fucking albums, not because I'm sick of Jeremy.

[LoathedVermin72]

Also, I'm not even sick of Jeremy