No Leak Club

[Tass Man]

This is weird. Everyone here loves Pearl Jam but at the same time you voluntarily forbid yourselves the very thing you love. What kind of masochistic perversion is this? Are you the same people who couldn't contain their joy from being able to download and listen to CC and LIR - two leaks? Aren't you still going to buy the album when it drops anyway? Why deny yourselves the pleasure of hearing it the soonest time possible? At the first opportunity that presents itself? What is the purpose of this bizarre musical celibacy?

I want my first listen, this time, to be with my wife (we met because of PJ). I want it to be on a stereo and not just privately in my headphones. I want my first listen to involve the the album sleeve, artwork, liner notes. I don't want my perceptions to have been coloured by the leak's lower quality and the general RM discourse around what we might get ('this album is going to suck'). I want to listen to it and see if I like it. If I do, I do. If I don't, I don't, but it'll all be easier without feeling any pressure to join in any group-think. On one level, I'm worried about this album. I'm worried that it'll be more self-indulgent than Backspacer on BO'B's part, and I'm worried that songs have been recycled (even if I like them). But I also find the negativity completely out of proportion, and some of the reasons people have for preemptively hating this album are stupid and illogical.

pretty much this..

and also, it brings me back to a time when listening to new music was much more of an experience/ritual... i miss taking a new album home, struggling to get the packaging off and immersing myself in everything (music, lyrics, artwork)... when i listen to a leak nowadays, it's playing out of a shitty speaker on my computer in the background while i'm doing something else.. it's not quite the same.

[hlniv]

I was just going through this little exercise to figure out how many PJ songs I heard prior to getting the official album:

Ten - 1 (Alive, MTV video)
Vs - 1 (Animal, '93 MTV music video awards)
Vitalogy - 3 (STBC/Tremor Christ CD single, Betterman from the Hallucinogenic Recipe Box Set, Bad Radio demos, "Standby")
No Code - 1 (Who You Are, radio single)
Yield - 1 (Given To Fly, radio single)
Binaural - 2 (NAIS and Thin Air, '99 Bridge School Benefit bootleg)
Riot Act - 15 (total leakage)
Pearl Jam - 13 (so close, a few days away, but still leakage)
Backspacer - 0 (very proud of myself with this one)
Lightning Bolt - 4 (if I count FD and LB - 1 listen each, and SBM - a few listens to uke songs)

I miss my pre-Internet days when I would just walk into a record store and find the new PJ album sitting there waiting for me.... That beautiful experience is long gone but I wanna fight to get it back again...

Don't forget SNL '94, like 8 months before Vitalogy. Not For You played

And you didn't see Grievance on Letterman?

[EJ]

Don't forget SNL '94, like 8 months before Vitalogy. Not For You played

And you didn't see Grievance on Letterman?

These, and maybe The Fixer would've been tough to avoid. And, actually, they were playing MFC quite a bit on the radio before Yield was released.

[VinylGuy]

This is weird. Everyone here loves Pearl Jam but at the same time you voluntarily forbid yourselves the very thing you love. What kind of masochistic perversion is this? Are you the same people who couldn't contain their joy from being able to download and listen to CC and LIR - two leaks? Aren't you still going to buy the album when it drops anyway? Why deny yourselves the pleasure of hearing it the soonest time possible? At the first opportunity that presents itself? What is the purpose of this bizarre musical celibacy?

I want my first listen, this time, to be with my wife (we met because of PJ). I want it to be on a stereo and not just privately in my headphones. I want my first listen to involve the the album sleeve, artwork, liner notes. I don't want my perceptions to have been coloured by the leak's lower quality and the general RM discourse around what we might get ('this album is going to suck'). I want to listen to it and see if I like it. If I do, I do. If I don't, I don't, but it'll all be easier without feeling any pressure to join in any group-think. On one level, I'm worried about this album. I'm worried that it'll be more self-indulgent than Backspacer on BO'B's part, and I'm worried that songs have been recycled (even if I like them). But I also find the negativity completely out of proportion, and some of the reasons people have for preemptively hating this album are stupid and illogical.

pretty much this..

and also, it brings me back to a time when listening to new music was much more of an experience/ritual... i miss taking a new album home, struggling to get the packaging off and immersing myself in everything (music, lyrics, artwork)... when i listen to a leak nowadays, it's playing out of a shitty speaker on my computer in the background while i'm doing something else.. it's not quite the same.

Yeap. Same here.
Its nice to hear this people, glad we have this safe place.

[Lounge Lizard]

OK, what I've been able to gather so far is that people are mainly driven by pre-digital age nostalgia (I'm dismissing the "I want to listen to it with my wife" argument, because... well, I won't go there lol). So fine, maybe that makes sense to some. Not me, though.

I think it's like "I refuse to send emails because I'm in love with my fax machine". There are albums I first heard when I unpacked the actual CD which I later grew to hate or become indifferent about, and there are albums which I first heard as a leak and ended up buying and loving forever and ever. I never had an actual Lost Dogs double CD untill last year, but it's a favorite. I bought "10 000 days" long after I had it in full on my laptop, and I really can't say that those "3D goggles" they put in the package did anything to make me even more fond of the material on that disk. On the contrary, my first listen of "Avocado" was off an official CD, and I grew uninterested in it very quickly.

I would say these things are independent of each other and depend mainly on the quality of music. If it's there, it's there, and it can't be taken away because it came without a wordbook or was in mediocre mp3 quality instead of vynil grandness. And if so, to me it makes no sense to postpone the meeting. It looks to me like what you "No Leak Club" members are trying to do is create some artificial ATMOSPHERE to make SURE that you'll love it, because you're worried now that in the end you might not. Reminds me of a girlfriend from my student years who would try to postpone sex to make it perfect in all regards: "But understand, honey, I want a special atmosphere, I want everything to be like in a romantic movie, I want to be ready and enjoy it to the full..." Oh, shut up, bend over and fucking enjoy the process, it's not all that different than if we had goddamn candles lit all around the flat!

Just my two cents.

[liebzz]

I think you hit the nail on the head *except* I will have years and years of hearing the album on mp3, on an ipod, in a car on the road, and on the turntable while I am doing something else, but won't have the opportunity to create my artificial atmosphere much again after that first listen. And it truly is recreating, by nostalgia, the actual event of getting a new Pearl Jam album. To me, this is like 5 Superbowl Sundays combined with Wrestlemania, the NBA Finals, and the World Series. It's a big deal. Maybe artificially so, but it is nonetheless.

[harmless]

It's nothing to do with the technology. It's to do with wanting a communal experience that I can share with others, rather than a private one in my headphones. I don't want to play it to myself and then go 'Yeah, it's good, you should listen as well sometime.' It's also about prolonging the excitement until I can experience the music and artwork as a physical, tactile object. If I listen to a leak, I'm experiencing part of the album, not the whole of it. Lastly, there's a bit of the fact that as Autumn comes, the sun disappears and my mood is lower, I want something to look forward to and get excited about. If I use all that up now, I'll have nothing then. You can disagree, but it can't be boiled down to 'nostalgia for a pre-digital age'. We've been in a digital age for a long time, therefore we're as much products of it as anything. This is not how I've experienced every PJ album, it's how I want to experience this one.

[harmless]

Also, you probably should've waited for your girlfriend if she wanted you to.

[WaitingForBluey]

Don't forget SNL '94, like 8 months before Vitalogy. Not For You played

And you didn't see Grievance on Letterman?

These, and maybe The Fixer would've been tough to avoid. And, actually, they were playing MFC quite a bit on the radio before Yield was released.

Yea, I forgot about Not For You on SNL. The funny thing is... when I first watched that with a friend of mine, I was like "what the hell was that?" And he was like "I think that was Yellow Ledbetter. I saw it listed as a b-side on the Jeremy single". So we both ran to the mall and bought a copy of the Jeremy CD single hoping that one of those b-sides was what we just heard on SNL. Ha ha.... that's what I'm talking about right there. Pre-internet fun!!!

And no, I bought The Fixer 7" but I never listened to it.
I even remember watching Got Some on Letterman/SNL with the volume muted. Ha ha...

[EJ]

It's also about prolonging the excitement until I can experience the music and artwork as a physical, tactile object. If I listen to a leak, I'm experiencing part of the album, not the whole of it.

I think this is the biggest factor for me and I would guess most of us holding out. I just like to experience it all at once. I guess there is some nostalgia associated with it - this is the only band I'll do it for.

[WaitingForBluey]

Nobody in the no leak club has to explain themselves... if you don't get it, then you just don't fuckin' get it man... this is NOT FOR YOU!

[VinylGuy]

OK, what I've been able to gather so far is that people are mainly driven by pre-digital age nostalgia (I'm dismissing the "I want to listen to it with my wife" argument, because... well, I won't go there lol). So fine, maybe that makes sense to some. Not me, though.

I think it's like "I refuse to send emails because I'm in love with my fax machine". There are albums I first heard when I unpacked the actual CD which I later grew to hate or become indifferent about, and there are albums which I first heard as a leak and ended up buying and loving forever and ever. I never had an actual Lost Dogs double CD untill last year, but it's a favorite. I bought "10 000 days" long after I had it in full on my laptop, and I really can't say that those "3D goggles" they put in the package did anything to make me even more fond of the material on that disk. On the contrary, my first listen of "Avocado" was off an official CD, and I grew uninterested in it very quickly.

I would say these things are independent of each other and depend mainly on the quality of music. If it's there, it's there, and it can't be taken away because it came without a wordbook or was in mediocre mp3 quality instead of vynil grandness. And if so, to me it makes no sense to postpone the meeting. It looks to me like what you "No Leak Club" members are trying to do is create some artificial ATMOSPHERE to make SURE that you'll love it, because you're worried now that in the end you might not. Reminds me of a girlfriend from my student years who would try to postpone sex to make it perfect in all regards: "But understand, honey, I want a special atmosphere, I want everything to be like in a romantic movie, I want to be ready and enjoy it to the full..." Oh, shut up, bend over and fucking enjoy the process, it's not all that different than if we had goddamn candles lit all around the flat!

Just my two cents.

mm nope. Example:

I already bought the album, the vinyl and i will have the mp3s download before the vinyl arrives home. If they provide some kind of Booklet pdf or something i might listen to it, because i really want to inmerse on the artwork, lyrics, additional information.
Pearl Jam´s albums always have that kind of extra bonus that you get once you really listen to the music and the artwork and i want to still be a part of that.

[Lounge Lizard]

It's nothing to do with the technology. It's to do with wanting a communal experience that I can share with others, rather than a private one in my headphones. I don't want to play it to myself and then go 'Yeah, it's good, you should listen as well sometime.' It's also about prolonging the excitement until I can experience the music and artwork as a physical, tactile object. If I listen to a leak, I'm experiencing part of the album, not the whole of it. Lastly, there's a bit of the fact that as Autumn comes, the sun disappears and my mood is lower, I want something to look forward to and get excited about. If I use all that up now, I'll have nothing then. You can disagree, but it can't be boiled down to 'nostalgia for a pre-digital age'. We've been in a digital age for a long time, therefore we're as much products of it as anything. This is not how I've experienced every PJ album, it's how I want to experience this one.

Can't you listen to the leak as a communal experience and look at the artwork at the same time? It's already out there, you know.

[Lounge Lizard]

Nobody in the no leak club has to explain themselves...

[EJ]

Can't you listen to the leak as a communal experience and look at the artwork at the same time? It's already out there, you know.

You have all the pages in the album's booklet, eh? You must be the only one.

[harmless]

It's also about prolonging the excitement until I can experience the music and artwork as a physical, tactile object. If I listen to a leak, I'm experiencing part of the album, not the whole of it.

I think this is the biggest factor for me and I would guess most of us holding out. I just like to experience it all at once. I guess there is some nostalgia associated with it - this is the only band I'll do it for.

'Nostalgia' is used negatively when someone's arguing against something, though, so it doesn't work here. I don't even have a PJ 'tradition' in terms of listening to records. When I was a kid / teenager, I would go with my dad to the shops and buy it, then we'd drive around blaring it in the car. Since then, there's been no tradition. I can't recreate that old experience with my dad, and wouldn't try to. I downloaded the last two albums as leaks. That did nothing to make me like or not like the albums, and waiting for this one won't either. There's every chance it'll suck, but how I choose to experience it first time has nothing to do with the outcome.

[harmless]

Can't you listen to the leak as a communal experience and look at the artwork at the same time? It's already out there, you know.

You have all the pages in the album's booklet, eh? You must be the only one.

EJ's right. And we have no official lyrics either, just a lot of shitty guessing by people apparently with glue-ear.

[harmless]

It sounds like you don't see albums as visual art pieces as well as aural musical pieces, Lounge Lizard. You may not even care about art in general, I don't know; but it sounds like this album will really fuse the two together, they will be all of a piece; so listening to a leak spoils that.

[Shaun Jam]

It's also a big deal for me, I make a real big deal out of new albums after they've not released anything in ages. That's what bummed me out when a couldn't leave my fingers away from King Animal and ...Like Clockwork and just spoiled myself. I'm not too bummed when I hear a song beforehand on a TV show, radio or a gig (LB and Future Days for example) but after King Animal, I thought I could learn and wait till Like Clockwork and it didn't work.

I'm scared I'll do the same with LB, let's hope not. I'm contemplating listening to it with my girlfriend, I took her to Berlin last year and that's where we came together but once that Motherf'er is in my hands, it's going in that CD player regardless of if she's here or not. Damn me.

I asked for that soundcheck of Infallible on the German Vitalogy forums, I haven't got an answer yet and I hope it stays that way, don't want to spoil myself on that too.

[stip]

It sounds like you don't see albums as visual art pieces as well as aural musical pieces, Lounge Lizard. You may not even care about art in general, I don't know; but it sounds like this album will really fuse the two together, they will be all of a piece; so listening to a leak spoils that.

see, in a way a leak enhances all of this for me, because then when you finally get the actual album you are already familiar with the songs and are in a better position (or I am, anyway) to appreciate the missing lyrics, the art, the aural surprises in the better mix. It's like getting the album twice.

Of course the real reason I'll listen to the leak is because I'm an impatient bastard