Red Mosquito

dimejinky99 wrote:

Birds in Hell wrote:

dimejinky99 wrote:I heard I got shit at my first ever Pj show and they nailed it that night. But they've never managed to conjure up whatever magic it has ever since I don't think.

Jack Irons: there's your missing ingredient.

Wow. Never actually even thought of that. Spot on spenno!


(It's a reeeeeaal possibiliteeeeeee)

Jack is the missing ingredient for everything Pearl Jam does.

we all got shit, both good and bad

It's kinda crazy but I can still remember when I first heard this song on the radio back in '95. And I'm pretty sure that I was disappointed by what I heard. It's not because I thought it was a bad song, it just wasn't the direction that I wanted to see PJ move towards. I was kind of done with the anthemic sing-along choruses by that point. There was something about it that just sounded "too poppy", and after my distaste for recent PJ stuff like Yellow Ledbetter, Small Town and Betterman, I wanted PJ to distance themselves as much as possible... I wanted a dirtier, messier, more rockin' PJ... Blood, STBC, etc. (DISCLAIMER: At that point, my favorite bands were Fugazi and Sonic Youth and I just started getting into some hardcore and emo music as well, so 'poppy' PJ was a major turn-off for me.) Man, was I an idiot or what? Nowadays, anything '95, be it Merkinball, Mirrorball, Monkeywrench Radio, or the '95 tour... is one of my absolute favorite moments in time for PJ. When I listen to Merkinball with headphones, I hear an incredible quality in the music that is hard to explain. If only they could have captured that sound, that vibe, whatever it was and made a full length album with it.