We tried to present an emotional scrapbook of what it felt like to be a band member on this 20-year journey.

I just wish Crowe wasn't so into himself in terms of the role he assumes he has in their history.

Cameron Crowe making a movie about Pearl Jam is like any one of us writing an album review. It's going to be full of bullshit fanboi bias.

But he involved himself far too much in the story. To its detriment i think.

Cameron Crowe making a movie about Pearl Jam is like any one of us writing an album review. It's going to be full of bullshit fanboi bias.

If the goal is to chart what it was like to be in the band and describe the journey in part from their perspective then that insider connection is helpful. Think of it like this. I write those absurdly long walk throughs for this website, and even my album reviews are long. If you just want the experience of the album as an album you are better off not going to me since i'm going to bring all the baggage of the back catalog with me. However, if you really want to understand a record in the context of pearl jam's career arc you are probably better off reading one of mine (or another long post by most people reading this) than going to Rolling Stone or All Music or Pitchfork or whoever. And that is more perspective than bias.

Some Albinism disciples take their indie sharpened axes to PJ20 and all involved. Fun read

http://www.electricalaudio.com/phpBB3/v ... =6&t=58127

I'm watching the documentary now, it's on youtube, and I've never seen a music documentary so disinterested with music. Cameron Crowe is more concerned with the mythos of the band, and Eddie Vedder, than anything to do with the music. The music is there to frame their need for success. It's mind boggling.

The Pearl Jam guys are that bland. It might not be them, actually, but between what Crowe is doing, and the things the guys say, they come off like they're just talking about transistor radios, or what they had for lunch. It's so self satisfying you forget the mastermind behind it is a guy not in Pearl Jam, but he's willingly masturbating them.

Some excellent posts in there, this one in particular:


Guy nailed it with his first sentence.

They still assume they are a relevant, forward thinking rock band, and don't seem to want to realize that their concert audience are nothing more than gen x-ers reliving their glory days like a crowd ten years older does at a reunited Poison tour.

Yes. Being there is an amazing experience.

Because of this thread I watched about 20 minutes of this over my lunch break. I made it to the "have become famous" part and so far this is what I've noticed:

In Green River and Mother Love Bone, Bruce Fairweather was an essential member. It's my understanding that he would have been "guitar hero #2" of the Pearl Jam if he had shown interest in joining, but didn't, so McCreedy was called. The only reason I know this is because Bruce lived here for awhile, was a great guy, and we became friends. He never bragged on it. In fact, I didn't even know he was *that* Bruce until I knew him for a bit. Maybe he didn't want to be interviewed for this doc, but he was essential to them becoming what they became. A mention wouldn't have only been nice, but relevant.

Same with "session drummer looking dude with the soul patch."
So far this doc would have me believe that Pearl Jam were a four piece with Some Dude Liberally Using a China Type Cymbal Until Matt Cameron Joined on drums. Even if he's not in the band anymore it's kinda important that he was the drummer on one of the best selling albums of that era. Maybe you could, you know, mention his name.

I also thought it was funny that all of the intro music was a "scanning the dial" melange of Seattle bands - The Kingsmen, Heart, Hendrix, and then, inexplicably, you hear Breadcrumb Trail to take us into the film. Was that so we would associate them with indie cred bands? Plenty of those in the Pacific Northwest, so why use Slint? It just seemed weird. It was particularly funny because I had just seen Brian Pauslon not three minutes earlier.

I'll chip away at the rest of this over my next three or four lunch breaks. So far it seems to be a "history is written by the victors" piece. I thought it was especially funny that they had so much footage of their early shows, and that there was almost no time between them forming and being huge. I think they were primed for fame. I don't hold that against them at all, but what usually makes these things great is the "struggling against all odds" story. While they did experience tragedies as another band, the story of Pearl Jam seems to be the story of going ahead and getting to getting famous because everybody knew it was going to happen.

I have no problem with Cameron Crowe when he's good. I liked Almost Famous and Fast Times was great. Plus he gets to hang out with Nancy Wilson all of the time.
This film just seems to be "meh."