Monkey_Driven wrote:Stip, don't take this the wrong way, but have you spent time with your family this week? Do they know if you're ok?
Sometimes I imagine Stip having tied his family to various chairs pointing furiously at charts like that Always Sunny meme while Pearl Jam plays.
I think my family (certainly my wife) is grateful for RM so this doesn't happen. They know almost nothing about Pearl Jam beyond it being that band daddy/my husband is obsessed with
Someday maybe we could get a guest post from your wife... what's it like living with the world's biggest Pearl Jam fan? But perhaps that would be 2 worlds colliding that should never meet.
Just the thought of my wife reading my RM posts would be akin to her finding my teenage journal hidden deep underneath my underwear drawer.
Hey I have one of those “teenage journals” lying around somewhere. Mine is a black and white Mead Composition Notebook so I could be like Eddie. Haha
Monkey_Driven wrote:Stip, don't take this the wrong way, but have you spent time with your family this week? Do they know if you're ok?
Sometimes I imagine Stip having tied his family to various chairs pointing furiously at charts like that Always Sunny meme while Pearl Jam plays.
I think my family (certainly my wife) is grateful for RM so this doesn't happen. They know almost nothing about Pearl Jam beyond it being that band daddy/my husband is obsessed with
Someday maybe we could get a guest post from your wife... what's it like living with the world's biggest Pearl Jam fan? But perhaps that would be 2 worlds colliding that should never meet.
Just the thought of my wife reading my RM posts would be akin to her finding my teenage journal hidden deep underneath my underwear drawer.
Hey I have one of those “teenage journals” lying around somewhere. Mine is a black and white Mead Composition Notebook so I could be like Eddie. Haha
You better go make sure you know exactly where it is right now... so you can bury it deep where it will never be found
mattyv1908 wrote:For real though, and not to start a discussion about consumerism and what not, I just wish this band would realize it’s good enough to do the upselling in a better manner.
Now I say this as an avid vinyl collector and with Pearl Jam as my favorite band. I just bought two variants of the new LP today at $45 a pop, but there’s ZERO reason for them to have to market themselves in the same way Taylor Swift, Lana Del Rey, etc. are doing multiple variants, multiple album covers and what not. Most of their fans will never play the vinyl and if they do it will be on some Crosley purchased at Walmart which will chew through them in real time.
Pearl Jam needs to recognize its core audience. Rather than 12 variants (I can understand one for RSD to continue supporting brick and mortar record stores), how about producing an audiophile pressing, half speed mastered, 45 rpm, master cut with care and pressed by either MOFI or QRP and sell it for $150. Offer it with the Blu-ray Dolby Atmos mix packaged together and they could probably get a guy like me (and others) to spend $200. Of course that would mean ensuring the signal recordings weren’t redlining the limiters and the mix wasn’t too dynamically smushed. They’ve done it in the past, as recently as their last album.
You could still have your mass production vinyl for the $35-45 price tag that less particular music listeners who still want the physical format to either collect or occasionally spin.
I guess I just feel that Pearl Jam is one of those bands who’ve earned their place as one of the top rock bands in history. Their fan base is mostly comprised of Gen X and early millennials at their peak earning periods of their lives. They can shell out $200-600 for concert tickets to see the band. They would appreciate the audiophile treatment of the bands music.
because the band themselves couldn't give two shits about this. if they did, what you're suggesting would be happening. instead they offload this stuff to whoever they're working with and go about their day.
i want to believe that with gigaton josh evans said 'i'm not letting this great fucking work i did be presented in a shitty way' and directed how that album was manufactured and sold. it definitely wasn't the band doing that.
Monkey_Driven wrote:Stip, don't take this the wrong way, but have you spent time with your family this week? Do they know if you're ok?
Sometimes I imagine Stip having tied his family to various chairs pointing furiously at charts like that Always Sunny meme while Pearl Jam plays.
I think my family (certainly my wife) is grateful for RM so this doesn't happen. They know almost nothing about Pearl Jam beyond it being that band daddy/my husband is obsessed with
Someday maybe we could get a guest post from your wife... what's it like living with the world's biggest Pearl Jam fan? But perhaps that would be 2 worlds colliding that should never meet.
Just the thought of my wife reading my RM posts would be akin to her finding my teenage journal hidden deep underneath my underwear drawer.
Hey I have one of those “teenage journals” lying around somewhere. Mine is a black and white Mead Composition Notebook so I could be like Eddie. Haha
You better go make sure you know exactly where it is right now... so you can bury it deep where it will never be found
I never kept a journal. I did not start to enjoy writing until graduate school, I don't think. It's also when I found RM. Could be a coincidence.
Within any argument there is a point at which the price of winning is so high, the damage so permanent, it is indistinguishable from losing. The word choice ‘wreckage’ is significant. This is a song of loss, but not absence. Absence would be easier, cleaner. But not better. Absence is a break in continuity. Wreckage lingers. It remains. It occupies space. You cannot passively forget. You must either put in the work to clear it away or incorporate it into what comes next. Dark Matter insists that there is opportunity in the mistakes we’ve made if we are brave enough to interrogate them. And as Wreckage builds to its climax it commits to that, “combing through the wreckage.”
So I finally got the time to settle in with this album on vinyl for the first time. I had the day off and managed to get to the Washington coast for the next three days. For a reference point I’m listening on a pair of KEF LS60’s, a pro-ject X2 turntable with a Sumiko moving coil blue low output cartridge and needle with a tube phono preamp.
For a point of reference I put on The Raconteurs Consolers of the Lonely. One of the greatest rock albums of the 21st century recorded entirely using analog technology. In other words, a pretty fucking high bar.
After its conclusion I gave Dark Matter a good wet cleaning and dropped the needle. While still a little hot in the mix, the stereo mix represented with the vinyl format produced a much more balanced presentation than any of the streaming options. The low end that is an inherent advantage of vinyl really helped with the shrillness of the songs and although still suffering from some of the mixing decisions it was a much more satisfying listen. I can’t say enough about the cohesiveness in the tracking of this record.
@stip - while we may not see eye to eye on Waiting For Stevie, I got it. With the bottom end present, the song really soars.
Waiting for Stevie does not sound like it belongs to Ten. It belongs to Dark Matter. It is still very much of this moment. But it captures, it evokes, it embodies everything that I felt back then and have been unconsciously chasing ever since. What Pearl Jam was. What Pearl Jam could be. What Pearl Jam is. Somehow in that moment, I was simultaneously the person I am at forty-seven, having lived a life I would not change, and sixteen once again, with an entire future in front of me, a world where anything and everything is still possible. I have never felt anything like it and must assume I never will again. But there are echoes of memory I will cherish every time they drift into focus. It was indescribable. What I wrote here is not enough. It was just a song. But somehow it was everything.
Man you ain’t lying. It’s true. Someone said it before. Something to the effect that this album is like an old friend coming back after being gone for a very long time and putting their arm around you and saying I’m ok and you’re ok.
Such a hard thing to describe and it’s so neat to come here and read your thoughts and the thoughts of others that are siimilar.
We have been given a gift that we get to experience this new PJ record in 2024 but also say hello to an old friend from long ago.
Maybe that person is us and the feelings we had all those yesterdays ago.
lol
