Pearl Jam - C or D?

Unemployable, The Fixer, Get Right, and 2 others... maybe Parachutes.

I never get the urge to listen to Ten.

Ten is the reason i am cautious not to overplay albums i love. it was my first favorite album, and the first album i ruined for myself with overexposure.

granted, i owned like ten CDs at the time, it's easier to rotate different records now.

yeah i don't listen to it much now, it's permanently in my head forever

I think Ten is fine, when I play it. It's such a definitive outlier in their catalog, like, I dunno, Appetite for Destruction.

I remember when the album came out and they played the Troc in Philly and all of my friends were too cool to come along so I stayed home. Or even, I'm not sure too cool is the right way to put it. Just on a totally different plane. But then, I didn't want to go see Nirvana when they played JC Dobbs, so I guess we're even.

I don't think Pearl Jam could have sustained an entire career with their Ten sound. I love the album, it has great songs, but I do feel like the production makes it dated, and I think the world would have passed them by completely as opposed to now, where they're still a fairly successful band, but don't do the major numbers they did at the onset of their career.

Admittedly, I'm mostly a fan of Ten through Vitalogy, Yield, and Riot Act, but I think they easily made the right career mood. and most 'diehard' PJ heads fav albums/tracks are usually not from Ten.

tbf pretty much every big alt band that made a big breakthrough album in '90-'91 made a major adjustment in their studio sound/production choices by the next album to adjust to the new status quo. of course, a lot of them adjusted to sound more Butch Vig/Nirvana, while Nirvana chose to switch it up from that.

My problem is that PJ post Ten worried too much over what they didn't want to be, rather than accentuate the strengths they did have. As a result I see a patchy back catalogue with a lack of real identity and band whose legacy is destined to be Ten...and some other stuff that was less anthemic but did ok.

The thing is I can get PJ's post-Ten sound and songwriting better elsewhere.

Watched PJ20; I admit I had no idea about Vedder's real-life dad issues. In any case, the whole band seem like pretty genuine dudes.

My problem is that PJ post Ten worried too much over what they didn't want to be, rather than accentuate the strengths they did have.

diff strokes, I guess, but to my ears they stopped worrying and learned to love their bombs around '98.

I concur w/ that, I much prefer the stuff they've done post-hysteria.

same here, never really had time for them til vitalogy

yeah the dad thing I knew from the Ten liner notes : the lyrics to Alive ended with "Edward Louis Severson III" and he said in interviews about his dad and stuff

he famously sent Pete Townsend a father's day card as a teenager, thanking him for Quadrophenia <3

tbh their discomfort with where they were coming from and what they were becoming circa Ten is what makes Vs, Vitalogy and No Code such electrifying, intriguing records for me. And that's part of their natural evolution - kudos to them for developing beyond the sound of their smash hit debut, for having complicated feelings about that sound, for not being satisfied with it.

ps does anyone know if no code might be reissued, deluxe-style, in the future? i am jonesing for a copy on vinyl but the prices on ebay are way, way beyond my comfort zone.

I wonder if the dudes did have problems with it, or more that they were willing to compromise to keep Eddie happy. Like, I'm sure half the guys would have been happy staying in "Ten" mode, esp. given how cheeseball rocker they get on stage.

Who was the first to cut their hair?

their fans

Stephen Malkmus' girlfriend.

When I interviewed them in 2009 for MOJO, Mike for one admitted that he wanted to do more, to tour more, to release Black as a single and keep making videos. the piece is up here, https://steviechick.wordpress.com/2011/02/15/pearl-jam/, but specifically he said “I wanted to do more of it... I remember thinking, this is our big shot; let’s not piss it away, let’s enjoy it…”

Who was the first to cut their hair?

― Josh in Chicago, Sunday, July 7, 2013 9:55 AM (17 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

it's sad that I know this, but: Stone!

http://www.virginmedia.com/images/archive-pearl_jam-431x300.jpg

hard to say for sure since Jeff has hidden his hairline under all sorts of headgear over the years, though.

hmmm the hair is the least of their problems in that photo

Yeah, talk about stuck between stations.

stone totally did cut his hair first, and sort of signalled in interviews that he was more into funk and hip-hop at that point than rock. jeff's hairline and the hats... it's weird. He's sort of stopped wearing them in recent years and seems to have a fine head of hair. maybe its plugs? i remember kim gordon and julie cafritz ragging on him for being bald circa the first free kitten record. but maybe he was never balding and just liked wearing hats.

I more I read about the Sonic Youth folks, the more and more they sound like big assholes.

For the longest time people thought Neil Peart was dying just because he liked wearing a hat.

its hard to stay humble when you have the ability to kill people with your big fucking dick xpost

not people, christgau

i had a 'jeff hat' that I wore through senior high school and my first year of uni

I own a pair of Target shorts a lot like Gossard's.

I have Dave Abbrusseze's shrunken skull in a jar on my bedside cabinet.

In case you were wondering whatever happened to him.

does the hair keep growing

only the soul patch, bizarrely enough

lmao this thread

Ditching Dave was sort of an early mistake on purpose. This band really needed a great drummer, and didn't get one again until Matt. Iirc correctly, Dave was fired for being too good, basically. Like these dudes weren't already a bunch of mega-musos.

I think Dave was fired for not really fitting in with the band, in terms of their beliefs and personalities. Glorified g was partly inspired by Dave's offhand comment that he owned a gun and thought nothing of it, which shocked Vedder.

Also, in terms of 'mistakes', I think Jack Irons was a great drummer, and his work on No Code in particular is fine.

will not take this Jack Irons slander

*air drums to "in my tree"* *literally can't*

loool i'm sure *Dave* said he was fired for being too good

Jack Irons on No Code unfuckwithable

Abruzzese has some amazing performances on Vs/Vitalogy but his rototoms and splash cymbals and stuff really were a little too flashy and cheesy for the band's sound, he coulda been in the Spin Doctors or something.

i've been meaning to make playlists of, like, the top 10 PJ songs from each of the 4 major drummers (Kruzen, Abruzzese, Irons and Cameron), i really feel like they were a different band in each of those lineups. loved Vedder's comment in the doc about how each drummer change was like a heart transplant.

I thought the breaking point with Dave, as reported, was when he consented to an interview with a drum mag without the band's permission.

Jack Irons is a plodder. Which perhaps suited the group, but not as well as, say, Matt Cameron or Edie Brickel's drummer.

'plodder' isn't really right but he certainly had the right feel for some of their most Neil Young-like tracks (plus their album backing Neil himself, who had nice things to say about Irons)

this Spin interview has most of the band, incl Dave, agreeing that it was his lack of ideological sympatico with the band that saw him leave http://www.fivehorizons.com/archive/articles/spin801.shtml

jack irons a plodder? that's unpossible!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wvYVLfFZmEg

That's cool, but Dave does the exact same thing but groovier on "W.M.A."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Z3t32wlItI

if you love dave so much why dont you marry him

Yesterday it was "they should have made an Automatic For The People" today it's "they should have kept Dave." Excited for tomorrow.

Look at the photos again.

xpost