Rate PEARL JAM (the band)

[The Argonaut]

Tom Waits comes close, but the only band that really challenges Pearl Jam for my top spot is Talking Heads. And even Talking Heads has an album and a half that is unnecessary/un-listenable. And just like Eddie today is not the Eddie of 1994, David Byrne today is not the David Byrne of 1984. He didn't become quite as insufferable as Eddie, though. I think the totality of the career deserves some weight, but the length, strength, and output of the peak is what should matter most. I would still give Pearl Jam 9 stars. They're good.

[LoathedVermin72]

Ten - Riot Act, one of the greatest bands of all time. Of course. S/T is all right. I seriously do not care about BS and LB. If I stumbled across any of those songs on YouTube and they were by some random band, I would move on after 10 seconds.

Overall, I went with 8.

[96583UP]

3 stars, shining brightly over us all

[96583UP]

[Kaius]

Ten - Riot Act, one of the greatest bands of all time. Of course. S/T is all right. I seriously do not care about BS and LB. If I stumbled across any of those songs on YouTube and they were by some random band, I would move on after 10 seconds.

Overall, I went with 8.

I concur.

[evenslow]

I went with 9 only b/c the Beatles get the 10 for me.

[stip]

I said 9. They're my "favorite band," inasmuch as any one band fits that bill, but very few bands deserve a career-spanning 10/10.

what bands do?

Beatles, Zeppelin, Coltrane -- some others I'm sure if I thought about it harder. I never said that it was a theoretical, impossible score, just that I didn't think Pearl Jam deserved it -- they are not a band whose career I look at and think, "Man, here is a band whose body of work is as flawless as I have the right to expect from error-prone human beings." Something close to that, perhaps, especially when I factor in my own sentimental biases in favor of the band, but their last decade has been pretty creatively bereft. That isn't insignificant.

If the sentimental bias is all that matters, what the hell, give 'em a ten.

that wasnt a hostile question. i was curious. I kind of want to say REM

[stip]

Pearl Jam are better than Led Zeppelin. There I said it.

Joey.

he's right. Zeppelin just came first

[stip]

i gave them a 10 for sentimental reasons. Pearl
Jam had an untouchable 3 album run, and then put out consistently good to near great albums the rest of their career. Each album after vitalogy has 4-6 songs I love, and a bunch of songs that work fine in their albums but I dont seek out.

[VinylGuy]

i gave them a 10 too...im not sure if they are my favorite band, but its the one that i keep revisiting for sure. And yeah, their studio albums are great. I love all of them.

[stip]

you're good peoples, VG

[Brett]

Usually around 7 or 8. Like many have stated, they had a run of great albums, though I personally narrow it to Vitalogy through Binaural. I like to revisit them here and there, and am often reminded why I liked them as much as I did in my short bout of intense fandom.

[Kevin Davis]

I said 9. They're my "favorite band," inasmuch as any one band fits that bill, but very few bands deserve a career-spanning 10/10.

what bands do?

Beatles, Zeppelin, Coltrane -- some others I'm sure if I thought about it harder. I never said that it was a theoretical, impossible score, just that I didn't think Pearl Jam deserved it -- they are not a band whose career I look at and think, "Man, here is a band whose body of work is as flawless as I have the right to expect from error-prone human beings." Something close to that, perhaps, especially when I factor in my own sentimental biases in favor of the band, but their last decade has been pretty creatively bereft. That isn't insignificant.

If the sentimental bias is all that matters, what the hell, give 'em a ten.

that wasnt a hostile question. i was curious. I kind of want to say REM

.

Sorry if the response seemed hostile. I think I was using your question as an opportunity to respond to Joey, who wasn't being hostile either but for some reason I felt compelled to clarify that I wasn't holding the band to an impossible standard. I just don't think I'd give their career as a whole a perfect score.

To elaborate a bit, I get that not every Beatles or Zeppelin song is a perfect 10/10. My thought process was more along these lines: Both of those bands arrived as essentially fully-formed but mechanically and artistically superior versions of things which were already on the scene at the time, spent a couple albums mastering those things before carrying them into newer, lesser-charted territories, and closing up shop once that arc had run its course. Not everything they did was perfect, but little if any of it was disposable or particularly ill-advised. Coltrane fits this description to an extent as well, though his catalog is less defined by touchstones now that his every note and squawk has been reissued. But Pearl Jam are reaching a point in their career where they seem so disengaged creatively that the music they're releasing, good to great though some of it may be, is more or less disposable; it could be omitted from their discography without really changing their story. And really, it's "Lightning Bolt" alone, somewhat combined with the 6 years of total creative inactivity on either side of it, that makes me feel that way; up through "Backspacer," which plays a role in PJ's discography not entirely dissimilar to the role "In Through the Out Door" plays in Zeppelin's, I felt like their artistic progression more or less made sense. It wasn't really until "Lightning Bolt" that I found myself looking back and seeing an increased trend of divestment, where "S/T" really represented a line in the sand between "eras" of the band's music and the increased wait time between albums a clearly diminished vitality in the creative process. And while I agree with Argo that the peak should matter most, I don't feel bad docking them one point for ten years of minimal creative engagement.

[darth_vedder]

^^ I docked 'em two points b/c of that and pretty much this:

Ten - Riot Act, one of the greatest bands of all time. Of course. S/T is all right. I seriously do not care about BS and LB. If I stumbled across any of those songs on YouTube and they were by some random band, I would move on after 10 seconds.

Overall, I went with 8.

[Norah]

I said 9. They're my "favorite band," inasmuch as any one band fits that bill, but very few bands deserve a career-spanning 10/10.

what bands do?

Beatles, Zeppelin, Coltrane -- some others I'm sure if I thought about it harder. I never said that it was a theoretical, impossible score, just that I didn't think Pearl Jam deserved it -- they are not a band whose career I look at and think, "Man, here is a band whose body of work is as flawless as I have the right to expect from error-prone human beings." Something close to that, perhaps, especially when I factor in my own sentimental biases in favor of the band, but their last decade has been pretty creatively bereft. That isn't insignificant.

If the sentimental bias is all that matters, what the hell, give 'em a ten.

that wasnt a hostile question. i was curious. I kind of want to say REM

.

Sorry if the response seemed hostile. I think I was using your question as an opportunity to respond to Joey, who wasn't being hostile either but for some reason I felt compelled to clarify that I wasn't holding the band to an impossible standard. I just don't think I'd give their career as a whole a perfect score.

To elaborate a bit, I get that not every Beatles or Zeppelin song is a perfect 10/10. My thought process was more along these lines: Both of those bands arrived as essentially fully-formed but mechanically and artistically superior versions of things which were already on the scene at the time, spent a couple albums mastering those things before carrying them into newer, lesser-charted territories, and closing up shop once that arc had run its course. Not everything they did was perfect, but little if any of it was disposable or particularly ill-advised. Coltrane fits this description to an extent as well, though his catalog is less defined by touchstones now that his every note and squawk has been reissued. But Pearl Jam are reaching a point in their career where they seem so disengaged creatively that the music they're releasing, good to great though some of it may be, is more or less disposable; it could be omitted from their discography without really changing their story. And really, it's "Lightning Bolt" alone, somewhat combined with the 6 years of total creative inactivity on either side of it, that makes me feel that way; up through "Backspacer," which plays a role in PJ's discography not entirely dissimilar to the role "In Through the Out Door" plays in Zeppelin's, I felt like their artistic progression more or less made sense. It wasn't really until "Lightning Bolt" that I found myself looking back and seeing an increased trend of divestment, where "S/T" really represented a line in the sand between "eras" of the band's music and the increased wait time between albums a clearly diminished vitality in the creative process. And while I agree with Argo that the peak should matter most, I don't feel bad docking them one point for ten years of minimal creative engagement.

Shit, I docked them three points for it.

[stip]

I said 9. They're my "favorite band," inasmuch as any one band fits that bill, but very few bands deserve a career-spanning 10/10.

what bands do?

Beatles, Zeppelin, Coltrane -- some others I'm sure if I thought about it harder. I never said that it was a theoretical, impossible score, just that I didn't think Pearl Jam deserved it -- they are not a band whose career I look at and think, "Man, here is a band whose body of work is as flawless as I have the right to expect from error-prone human beings." Something close to that, perhaps, especially when I factor in my own sentimental biases in favor of the band, but their last decade has been pretty creatively bereft. That isn't insignificant.

If the sentimental bias is all that matters, what the hell, give 'em a ten.

that wasnt a hostile question. i was curious. I kind of want to say REM

.

Sorry if the response seemed hostile. I think I was using your question as an opportunity to respond to Joey, who wasn't being hostile either but for some reason I felt compelled to clarify that I wasn't holding the band to an impossible standard. I just don't think I'd give their career as a whole a perfect score.

To elaborate a bit, I get that not every Beatles or Zeppelin song is a perfect 10/10. My thought process was more along these lines: Both of those bands arrived as essentially fully-formed but mechanically and artistically superior versions of things which were already on the scene at the time, spent a couple albums mastering those things before carrying them into newer, lesser-charted territories, and closing up shop once that arc had run its course. Not everything they did was perfect, but little if any of it was disposable or particularly ill-advised. Coltrane fits this description to an extent as well, though his catalog is less defined by touchstones now that his every note and squawk has been reissued. But Pearl Jam are reaching a point in their career where they seem so disengaged creatively that the music they're releasing, good to great though some of it may be, is more or less disposable; it could be omitted from their discography without really changing their story. And really, it's "Lightning Bolt" alone, somewhat combined with the 6 years of total creative inactivity on either side of it, that makes me feel that way; up through "Backspacer," which plays a role in PJ's discography not entirely dissimilar to the role "In Through the Out Door" plays in Zeppelin's, I felt like their artistic progression more or less made sense. It wasn't really until "Lightning Bolt" that I found myself looking back and seeing an increased trend of divestment, where "S/T" really represented a line in the sand between "eras" of the band's music and the increased wait time between albums a clearly diminished vitality in the creative process. And while I agree with Argo that the peak should matter most, I don't feel bad docking them one point for ten years of minimal creative engagement.

I can see the argument that lightning bolt is disposable. Right now it feels like something of a stand alone record - a middle aged album made by middle aged musicians that is informed by what had come before, but it isn't really indebted to it. Most of the other PJ albums prior to L-bolt cannot fully be understood without referencing what came before (including Backspacer - backspacer more than most, perhaps). It's the first album that's not in direct conversation with the others. that may change depending on what else we still get from them, and the themes it explores (you can always pick up a conversation, after all), but for now it really stands alone. Not helped, as you say, but the sheer amount of time straddling either side of it.

[tragabigzanda]

pearl jam sucks now

[stip]

Ten-Vitalogy: 11/10
No Code - Riot Act: 7
S/T - Lightning Bolt: 8

[Strat]

lol stip

[bodysnatcher]

PJ is a 9 for me. They were a 10 for the longest time. But as they changed, and my musical tastes evolved and changed too, they slipped. Radiohead is my 10.