Post Random Pearl Jam-Related Thoughts You Have

[96583UP]

they belong on regular walls with regular enormous amounts of scotch tape

and sometimes duct tape

Thumb tacks

yes i think tacks were involved at one point too

[96583UP]

Randomly check old poster prices on Ebay and holy crap some folks have too much money. The PJ20 'billboard' posters are worth a fortune.

ey i got those from both nights, but my ex took one of them

Welp time to get a high res scanner and visit my local print shop because I've got a mortgage and $2,000 a pop is just tempting enough. I'm flooding the market, boys and girls.

brilliant

[Matters]

Ten or Dark Matter, which album was better produced?

[epilogue]

Ten and it's not even close.

[Ms Harmless]

Ten was immaculately produced, even if its production style is dated

[VinylGuy]

very weird comparison. DM´s production or mastering is a product of its time, as much as Ten was maybe.

[Buby]

Dark Matter sounds better to me now, than it did on release day (maybe I just got used to it).
I'd still pick most of the Ten Redux versions over the original drowning in reverb mixes on Ten.

[Matters]

very weird comparison. DM´s production or mastering is a product of its time, as much as Ten was maybe.

To me this statement suggests that the comparison is interesting rather than weird.

[Matters]

Ten and it's not even close.

My thought as well.

Ten was immaculately produced, even if its production style is dated

Hell yes.

[Birds in Hell]

Ed during that one line in Johnny Guitar:

[Matters]

They’re both Iggy Pop fans.

[RockPusher]

Ten or Dark Matter, which album was better produced?

Ten is way easier on the ears because loudness wars but beyond that it's a more nuanced discussion. There's a good argument that Parashar over-produced the hell out of that album, and I get the sense the band feels that way because they never went back to that way of doing things. I think at the time, the slick gloss that was applied to everything benefited the band, because there was kind of a glam rock giving way to grunge thing happening, and this was part of its transition.

While I could never say that Dark Matter is better-produced than Ten, I have no qualms about saying that if you took Josh Evans' strengths (mostly perfectly mixing stuff and letting the band be the band) and combined them with Andrew Watt's strengths (band member ego death, focus on riffs, jamming, and mining the band's history for those idiosyncrasies that make them who they are), you would have the aesthetic ideal of Pearl Jam record production.

(Incidentally, I think No Code era BO'B was very close to exactly that)

[VinylGuy]

my 3 fav PJ produced albums:

1- Vs and No Code
2- RA
3- Gigaton

[RockPusher]

my 3 fav PJ produced albums:

1- Vs and No Code
2- RA
3- Gigaton

Solid

[epilogue]

I'd put RA at #1, personally, but otherwise I can't really argue with that list.

[Matters]

Gigaton gets a nice bump for not sounding like it belongs in the Post Riot Act era and how refreshing that was.

[lvc]

I don't know about best produced because I'm not educated enough in that respect to know what's production vs. mixing vs. mastering, but best overall sounding I'd have to say:

1) Riot Act
2) Yield or No Code
3) Vs
4) Vitalogy
5) Ten

I really like the instrumental parts on Dark Matter and I always lament that I can't hear the guitars more distinctly/separated in the mix. Maybe it's my ears getting old or something, but I actually find the record sounds much clearer when played at lower volumes.

[Kevin Davis]

Ten or Dark Matter, which album was better produced?

I think DM is Pearl Jam’s worst-sounding studio album by considerable distance.

Every album bears the signature of its era to a degree. With Ten’s it’s in the mixing, the effects, the decorative fads of the time; I find this kind of thing increasingly precious, as it really adds a sense of time and place to the work. An album can be dated and still sound great. Ten certainly is and does.

With DM, it’s in the mastering, which just makes the album sound hard on the ears and unnatural.

Perhaps in 20-30 years this style will feel as time/place reminiscent as Ten’s style does now, but I doubt it; records have been mastered this way for a long time now and I’ve never felt nor seen anyone else feel a creeping sense of nostalgia about it.

I think No Code, Yield, and Riot Act are their best-sounding records.

[tragabigzanda]

pearl jam sucks now

[Kevin Davis]

That is a good question that probably has a less good answer. Vs. is an amazing-sounding record. I think that list to some degree reflects my bias toward what I like about the records overall, and to that end I feel like those albums are just a bit more of a sonic feast in terms of the variety of sounds and styles, on top of being recorded really well.

But all the 90’s albums really sound great to me. Sometimes it feels wild to go back and listen to original issues of CD’s from the ‘90’s after becoming acclimated to modern production values. We had no idea how good we had it! (Or maybe you did — I certainly didn’t!)