This thread deserves to be sticky...

*jerks off on thread*

This thread is definately worthy of Frank's skeet

Great write up for Jeremy too, I never reall thought of that "the wicked ruled his world" line in the 2nd way, and it makes a lot more sense now (even though the first way was the one I thought at first.

stip, you’ve done it again, and we love you for it. Your extended blackboard metaphor is poetic in itself.

I was thinking about JEREMY in terms of your write-up and some of the previous comments, and it really took me a while to clarify my feelings. Why does Jeremy move me the way that it does? Why do so many Eddie characters inspire me? Do I, as tyler has suggested, relate to them because I, too, see myself as a victim? The answer is that an Eddie character is fully alive. His gift is empathy of such depth that even the smallest details he provides give them the appearance of life beyond the confines of the song. They may or may not be victims, but they are always in the midst of what may be the most stressful moments in their lives. Often, as in Jeremy, the character may be coming to understand the truth for the first time as we meet him or her. We will never see these characters in triumph. We see only a snapshot of them at their most vulnerable. Maybe it is the moment in which they are making the decision that will change their lives. To me this moment is the most meaningful and the most relatable.

My other comment about Jeremy is that the vocals are mind-blowing. If the previous five tracks hadn’t convinced you, this one leaves no doubt that you are in the presence of greatness. If all you heard was the vocalization at the end, you would know instantly what a rare talent you had come in contact with.

I love the '94 Atl version where he just "ooh ooh"s his way through 2 minutes even though Dave tried to get him to move on by that drum fill. its SO powerful.

and listening to this song on the cd, as I did yesterday at the gym, GOD it's so good. i really do love it, and don't get tired of it, nor skip it. i mean close to half the song doesn't even have real lyrics, just music and moaning. THAT is an impressive feat.

their MTV performance was pretty rawk, though Ed looks a little too serious.

I love what he does without words.

This is just to add a little more to the JEREMY story. This is from an article in Blender 2002.

On January 8, 1991, Jeremy Wade Delle, a student at Richardson High School in the Dallas suburbs, showed up late for his second-period English class. The troubled boy was sent to the administrative office for a late-admittance pass, but he returned with a .357 Magnum. He spoke just one chilling sentence - "Miss, I got what I really went for" - and then, as his classmates watched in horror, put the gun in his mouth and pulled the trigger.

When Eddie Vedder read a newspaper account of the incident, he found himself so moved that he had to react. "I wrote the song that night, I think," Vedder has said. "I thought of calling up and finding out more, like, 'I wonder why that happened?' I wonder why he did it. Richardson sounded to me like a decent suburb, middle- if not upper-class. The fact is, I didn't want to. I thought that was intruding."

Instead, Vedder drew on his recollection of junior high in San Diego, where a schoolmate had brought a gun to class and started firing, with less-disastrous results. "I remember being in the halls and hearing it," Vedder said. "I had had altercations with this kid in the past. I was kind of a rebellious fifth-grader, and we got in fights. So [the song is] a bit about this kid named Jeremy, and also a bit about a kid named Brian who I knew."

At a rehearsal shortly after he wrote the lyrics, Vedder showed the news clipping to Pearl Jam bassist Jeff Ament. "I already had two pieces of music that I wrote on acoustic guitar," Ament says, "with the idea that I would play them on a Hamer 12-string bass I had just ordered. When the bass arrived, one of [the pieces] became 'Jeremy.'"

When asked why the song has remained so memorable to many, this is what Jeff said:

"I think mostly because of what Ed brought to the song. You can feel the anger and despair of a fucked-up situation in his voice."

And that bass riff with the harmonics.

Interesting, i didn't know that it was partly autobiographical...but it helps me understand the second verse a little more, and where Ed was coming from.

I've always though those bass harmonics kinda sound like school bells ringing out, based on that evidence i guess that was purely coincidental. Either way, it's become an iconic PJ riff. I think Ed is definitely responsible for taking it to the next leevl though.

I didn't know that, and I like the harmonics/bell thing too




SLH16-in regards to Tyler's comment, I am pretty much in agreement with you. I tend to find characters that are in the middle of a bad place AND trying to find the strength to leave it are more interesting to me than the ones who have made it out--and you expressed why that is really well

Oceans

At first oceans feels a bit out of place on Ten, given the general darkness that surrounds most of the other tracks, but it is still addressing the same themes, albeit from a slightly different angle. Most of the album is about betrayal, but Oceans is about trust, the opposite side of the same coin. Its placement is also perfect as Porch will address a number of these themes, but in the midst of crisis

Oceans is a love song, dealing with the fear and uncertainty that surrounds love, the need for trust and the way it makes you vulnerable. Eddie is one of the few writers out there who really understands that any love that will survive must be grounded in trust, and that it needs to be strong enough to resist the ways life is constantly trying to undermine it. In oceans the threat comes from distance, but the distance is a metaphor—any kind of stress and uncertainty will do. Oceans is a promise, assuring us that love is worth enduring what needs to be endured, that it will be worth it in the end. It’s a reminder of how precious and fragile love is, and how important it is that we remember that. The song is a plea for faithfulness, and there is an urgent fragility to Eddie’s vocals here, especially on the ohhhhhs after each verse. Eddie’s vocals are extremely powerful to the point of overwhelming the song on many of the tracks on Ten, but that isn’t the case here. There is doubt and insecurity softening it. He knows exactly what he wants and asks for it with force, but he also is all to aware of how difficult it will be to hold onto, and how lost he will be without it (as the previous songs have all made very clear), and it makes him nervous and tenuous while he is trying to be assertive. It creates the tension that propels the song along

As usual the music does a terrific job conveying the mood (I’m not sure any of the records do this as well as Ten). It is warm and gentle, but with a sense of motion and instability to it, moments of calm battered about by currents that are largely beyond the control of the people adrift. It is supposed to sound like rolling waves, and it does. Close your eyes and you can picture two people standing on distant shores, looking out over the water towards where they know the other one is, reminding themselves that even though separation is a trial, it is one that needs to be endured because what will be otherwise lost is far too precious to give up.

I like the situations Ed writes his characters into but it's nearly always the same character dressed in different clothes. The same "I'm a victim mindset". I want to make clear that I think Ed's a great lyricist but onlt that he should expand his female characters. There's a large contingent of people who feel life is what you make it and not what happens to you. I'd like to see Ed try to write from a character perspective of this more often.

Not surprising since the majority of the music was written first with Eddie matching words to music which is much easier than the other way round.

Great write up. Looking forward to the rest of the songs on the album.

Oceans is the song that, at some level, made me understand (WAY before Spin The Black Circle) that Pearl Jam still looked at their records as albums, not just CDs.

Actually, I can't even remember now if Oceans is in fact the first song on side B of the Ten vinyl, but it certainly is conceptually. Even on the CD, the song has the effect of slowing things down, calming the mood, and introducing another "side" of the album that is fundamentally different from the first half.

I actually think Oceans in more successful to this extent than it is purely as a song. It's a decent little track, and I enjoyed it very much as an opener last year (especially as it was in San Diego), but it seems like the weakest song on Ten, and moreover, weaker than Footsteps and Wash and Yellow Ledbetter. But none of those B-sides would function the way Oceans does. Wash and Footsteps are too dark, they wouldn't offer the necessary respite before diving back into some of the darker themes of the record; Yellow Ledbetter is lighter, but maybe too light. (As a side note, the only other way i could really imagine the album working as well as it does would be to drop Oceans, move Release to that spot, and close with yellow Ledbetter. But even that would be an entirely different experience. And, yes, YL wasn't even an option to be on the album, I know.)

Actually, I think that writing words to pre-existing music is much harder, in general, although the fact that vocal melodies didn't exist before Eddie wrote the lyrics lessens that somewhat. There was a special on Richard Rogers on PBS in which he talks about how much he enjoyed working with Oscar Hammerstein because he was one of the few lyricists that he worked with who was able to write lyrics after the music had been written.

I also dispute the mood issue. Their control of mood has deepened and increased over the years. There are times on Ten when I feel that they are almost out of control. On this particular record that is sometimes a good thing.

Interesting...i only really class Black, Oceans, Release, and Garden as songs where the music reflects the mood. Perhaps Alive, for the solo at the end...and maybe Once at a stretch.

That said - music conveying mood isn't really something pj seem to concentrate on. Unless it's an Ed song, lyrics tend to be written after the music, and therefore the music can only really influence a lyrical direction.

The thing to remember is that when writing music you are always writing in your second language. Some people are amazingly fluent in it but it's still their second language. When the lyrics are written first you are basically asking someone to do a transalation job, which is a whole other skill from speaking in the language. It is the rare musician who is really fluent in the language of their instrument and a skilled translator. For most bands they seem to get around it by having someone who's skilled at matching exisiting words with existing music. But I think most homeruns are hit when the music inspires the words.

Would you consider REARVIEWMIRROR, CORDUROY and BETTER MAN homeruns? A single songwriter developing the music as the lyrical phrase line is developed is basically working with playdoh rather than trying to redesign a model airplane in which the frame has already been glued together.

Are you serious about teaching me how to surf?

Yes to the surfing. I'd never lie when it comes to that. The west coast of Canada is magical, I think everyone should experience it, even if only for a weekend.

I think singer songwriters basically do the matching of existing words to exxisting music or use very barebones music that try not to get in the way of the emotions the words are setting forth. It's not very often that a singer songwriters music can stand on it's own, whereas a song like Even Flow is still a strong musical statement without the words.

Fact: writing music to match lyrics, very hard. Writing lyrics to match music, far easier.

I concur.