March Madness 2022 - Release Wins!

[stip]

couldnt be clearer

[wease]

You don’t give hidden tracks a courtesy other than having them be there and hidden.

You’ll not win this battle, friend.

[stip]

I am calm and secure in the perfect knowledge of my spiritual correctness.

[Farmer John]

It should have been a hidden track and stip is correcting Pearl Jam's mistake.

[tragabigzanda]

pearl jam sucks now

[Farmer John]

Now we're talking

[wease]

It should’ve been the opening track to weed out the pussies early on

Wow. That’s an idea

[liebzz]

So while Eddie isn’t singing on it, it has a clear point and placement on Vitalogy. Thematically, the album spends much of its time exploring the impact of abuse and the characters that give and receive it. Sometimes, Eddie - wisely or not - seems to equivocate it with his relationship with the media and the objectification and quantifying of his art. Not For You, Corduroy, Bugs, Pry to, and Immortality speak to his position juxtaposed to this. Better Man and Nothingman are nearly two characters in the same story of abuse and escape possibly meant to fit in the larger arc of the album. I have never taken the full time to fully digest it in this angle, but I am guessing Tremor Christ has a place with Better Man and Nothingman.

All of this tension and back and forth between abused and abuser culminates in that 7 minute recording, where a child’s voice is left to decipher what it all means - is it better to be abused when that abuse binds you to that person, even if that relationship isn’t built on a partnership and the power dynamic is objectively against the child - as if the abuse itself is proof that the other person cares enough to do it, and could that be better than a hug - a possible empty gesture that doesn’t communicate the same kind of intensity as lashing out. This is the track that ties everything together and paints a massively fucked up picture of the album itself and probably Eddie’s headspace at the time. Takes it beyond a mere collection of kick ass rock songs into a statement. This makes it the final track and not a bonus track on account of its purposeful unpleasantness. In other words, you can’t just toss it away because it’s unpleasant, which I also think may be a big lesson to learn in Vitalogy, because some of the music outside of this track is similarly meant to make you feel uneasy, uncomfortable, and tickle your nausea. Stupid Mop is the album closer.

[stip]

thats a game and interesting defense, and I like the framing of abuse, but immortality does a better job (i think) tying the larger themes together. Abuse is a part of that story, but it is not the principle theme

[wease]

thats a game and interesting defense, and I like the framing of abuse, but immortality does a better job (i think) tying the larger themes together. Abuse is a part of that story, but it is not the principle theme

You know what else it isn’t? The last track on Vitalogy.

[stip]

if immortality wasnt the closer how could it show up on my closer list?

[wease]

Shenanigans

[stip]

Someone needs to be held accountable for this!

[wease]

I’m sure b had a hand in it somewhere.

[stip]

Since neither of these are particularly close and I'm not going to be around at 9 I'm shutting this down about 30 minutes early

125. Immortality over Brain of J (26-18)
126. Release over Nothingman (28-12)



Which means our main bracket final is

127. Immortality vs. Release

[The Argonaut]

I was hoping it wouldn't come to this, but it looks like I'm going to have to end up voting for something out of the champions bracket.

[stip]

I was hoping it wouldn't come to this, but it looks like I'm going to have to end up voting for something out of the champions bracket.

I would have voted for Dance over either of these, and all the way through to the end.

[The Argonaut]

Certainly not Dance for me, but I would've kept voting for Brain of J with a clear conscience

[PHATJ]

Release is perfect

[Jorge]

Remember that thing we did where we went track by track assembling a PJ album, but every time a song won its corresponding album was taken off the table? Maybe we should do that again soon