Badradio approached me with this idea during the olympics, and it is a great one (I think). A series of threads for reminiscening about the first time you heard each record. We'll do a new album a week. This is basically Badradio's baby so if you wanted to do the lead post for an album contact him (I'm not sure what has already been claimed.

Anyway, he asked me to write up Ten, so here we go

I've told this story on here before, but I got into Pearl Jam via Weird Al Yankovich. In 1991-1992 my music tastes were still stuck in 80's radio hits and holdovers. I still loved hair metal and people like Michael Jackson, Prince, and Madonna. My two favorites artists (and I use the term loosely with the first one) were Poison and Weird Al Yankovich. I had heard of the band nirvana but knew none of their music. Then one fateful day I saw the video for Weird Al's Smells Like Nirvana. And not only was it funny as hell but I actually really liked the music in the song. So I went out and bought a cassette of nevermind (I didn't own a cd player yet).

I was immediately hooked, and I think I played nothing but that tape for two-three months over the summer. Then the fall came around and I got my first job (this would have been the start of my sophmore year of high school), and with the money I made I bougth my first cd player. Now I needed cds to go with it, so I joined Columiba house--and I got my favorite poison records, prince and madonna's greatest hits, and nevermind. I also was vaguely familiar with REM so I got eponymous. I had one selection left and I had heard that this band Pearl Jam sounded like Nirvana. I had not heard a single song by them but I decided to get it on a whim.

So the cds came and I was in my room doing homework one night and decided to listen to this pearl jam record. It was on as background. Once came on and it was pretty good, and then Even Flow started and before the song was over I knew that I had found a new favorite band and that I would never be able to listen to half the shit I used to ever again (it was still too soon for me to appreciate it ironically or nostagically). I had never heard anything like it and it really was one of those "I'm never going back again" moments. I was just utterly blown away by pretty much the whole record. The only other specific moment I remember was listening to Garden, which started skipping really cleanly early in the song (before the lyrics) and because there was no noticable pause I just thought this song was like ten minutes long before I bothered to go look at the timer.


Other people's first times?

It was in 1999 and I don't remember it. They were in my top-3 bands after discovering Ten. They were my favourite band when Nothing as it seems came out.

a buddy put even flow and alive on a mix tape that included things like a so what'cha want remix and en vogue (weird time, freshman year). i got ten on cassette and listened to it quite a bit as i got my driver's license in jan 92. other than the singles; once, black, garden and release stuck out the most to me. i remember hearing the weird intro before once and was like WTF is this?

i also remember seeing the movie singles at an advance screening and loving the soundtrack. i was stoked when i got it seeing it had 2 PJ songs.

got the import version of the jeremy single either junior or senior year, and the 2 bsides were played millions of times senior year.

this post sucks, but it's 8am after a long holiday weekend so my apologies.

Nice idea ! I'll try it.

Before finding about Ten and Pearl Jam, I used to be exclusively into Guns n' Roses, like, huge fan and all, t-shirts, jewels, posters on the wall, you get the picture. I knew about Nirvana and hated them, probably just because they were already very popular, but I'd never heard about Pearl Jam before one day, must have been 91 or 92, when I was hanging out just before class with a friend (François) and his cousin (Franck), who was into music a lot and played guitar. The teacher we were supposed to have on this morning wouldn't show up so finally we ended up at Franck's house which was just a few minutes from the school, although I didn't quite like the guy since he used to make fun of GNR all the time . Anyway as he was playing guitar, I started browsing through his CD collection and I noticed Ten and this band I had no clue about. So I asked Franck what it was and he told me it was pretty cool and that I could take it to my home to listen.

So by the evening, back to my place, I listened to Ten and I was totally in awe, it really blew my mind like nothing before, the emotion through Ed's voice was just incredible. I listened to this record every day for weeks and bought it.

It sounds cliché but something changed in my life at this point. I still feel weird when thinking about how it was back then.

I don't think I can recall this moment

I had Ten but was not a huge fan until around 1997-- few months before Yield.

Great record. I will say this, after listening to Ten - and all the PJ records - often in 1997, it inspired me to write, and that's what I've been doing since.

* contributes *

Ten was the first cd I ever bought.

It was 1999, I was in 7th grade. My teacher would turn on the radio during class and that's how I first heard Alive. I thought the vocals and the music were great, all in all an awesome song. I asked some friends if they liked it, but they didn't; they were into Puddle of Mud, Papa Roach, rave music, Guns N roses, etc. Anyway, after hearing Even Flow, Black, and Once all from the radio during class, I decided to buy the record.

So I go into Sam Goody with my mother, and buy Ten for like $14. I rip the plastic off and look at the cd insert. I remember loving that it was a poster on one side (which I immediately put up on my wall) and lyrics on the other. I had Ten in my cd player for god knows how long and memorized the lyrics to the entire album in a short time. I'd bring it everywhere and listen to it anywhere.

For a really long time, I didn't know anyone else who listened to them. Except for Steven, but he worshiped Creed. It wasn't any different in high school. It kind of sucked not having anyone to share this thing I though was so great with .

It was the summer of 2001, and I had been listening to Nirvana a lot that summer, so I decided to give a try to another Seattle band named... Pearl Jam. I had briefly listened to No Code some months ago, but my feelings then were mixed. So I found Ten in the local CD store in "nice price" and bought it...As a result I bought all their albums within a month...Pearl Jam became my favourite band.

i was probably 8 or 9 in 1992. my brother is 10 years older than me and lived in my basement at the time. i can remember going down there and seeing my brother and his friends hanging out listening to evenflow. this was the begining of what we be my love affair w/ pearl jam.

That's kind of the same for me, but I was 12. My sister was 15 and loved them, they were always good to me, but I didn't really get into music until a few years later.

*waits for First time:Vitalogy thread*


5000th post

i got Ten in 00 or 01, i had only heard Binaural and the Pinkpop 00 boot. i had heard Alive a couple of times on the radio and i loved it but had no idea who it was by until i bought Ten. i listened to Ten for a good week straight and was pretty much done with it, and went back to Binaural.

I was in 9th grade and at the time I was pretty into NWA, Public Enemy, I believe Bell Biv Devoe was just about my favorite thing going at the time. Our school had an assembly for doing something positive academically (who knows what) and a band came a did a bunch of covers of songs that were big at the time, like Metallica, Alice in Chains, and did Even Flow. I asked about Even Flow and someone said it was Pearl Jam, so when I saw a buddy of mine's brother had Ten in his room, we decided to listen while we played catch in the backyard. From the opening chords of Once I was blown away. I'll bet since that moment, I've spent over half my music listening time listening to PJ.

I was in probably 7th grade and my friends were obsessed with these bands Nirvana and Pearl Jam (and AIC, Soundgraden, Pavement, etc etc). I had heard "Alive" on the radio and didn't really like it, but I remember loving "Teen Spirit." Nirvana had a more aggressive, angry sound and I liked that then. "Alive" sounded like classic rock, which is ironically what I came to love most about PJ. So I had the tape of Nevermind, and made a big deal about how Pearl Jam sucked, etc. (Granted, this is probably only a time period of a couple weeks.)

Then I heard Even Flow on the radio, and liked it a lot more than I liked Alive. Then a friend had me listen to Black and I made my parents take me to the mall that same night so I could buy the tape. I loved every song on it, although ultimately it wasn't until Vs. that I gre to love Pearl Jam more than Nirvana.

Back in '92 there used to be a chick on BBC radio 1 called Jakki Brambles. She had the early afternoon slot and played a load of cool stuff. Anyhow one day she announced she was going to play the next big thing from Seattle or something like that, she played alive. I was a mailman at the time, I had to pull the van over and listen. It safe to say, and I know it's over used, I was blown away.

Like many people, Ten was the first PJ album I got. Unlike many of you though, it wasn't Alive or Even Flow or Black that convinced me I should buy it. A few years ago, my friend Nick, who introduced me to most of the music I love today, put those songs on a burned CD for me along with some Nirvana and some Soundgarden. Along with the previously mentioned PJ songs, Jeremy was also on the disc, and that was the song I loved first. I took the CD with me on a brief vacation and listened to that one song for five days straight. When I got back, I had to decide which to buy first: Ten, Nevermind or Superunknown. I went with Nevermind, which I can now see was a mistake. A week later, I went to the mall to pick Ten up. During diner at a reasturant in the mall, I excused myself from the table to go off and listen to Jeremy, saying that I had to wash my hands, which I had already done once. When I got home, there was a filing cabinet on my porch that, for some reason, I had to clean. So I sat on the porch, cleaning the filing cabinet, listening to Once. I listened to the rest later that night. Within a month, I had everything else.

I was 14, my mom got it for herself around Christmas time, I snuck it and loved it.

My sister was giving away a whole box of her CD's because she was moving, and she let me take my picks first, before going to friends and whatnot. I grabbed Smash by the Offspring, a Beastie Boys album, and some other CDs of bands with names a 14-year old would recognize. She told me to take TEN and VS. because they were the albums that "got her back into music." I took them and after letting them sit on my table for 2 or 3 months, I finally took a listen to TEN. I intended to listen to both, but specifically remember wanting to do them in order. I remember looking at the album booklet/poster thing and trying to decipher the chicken scratch lyrics as I listened. A couple of weeks later, I told a friend that my favorite song of theirs was Evenflow. Ten still holds a special place in my heart, and is still quite the rock-out awesome album.

My first intorduction to PJ was through the Nirvana: Live Tonight, Sold Out video. There was a 3 second clip where it played the Even Flow riff when talking about other bands that came from Seattle. I loved the riff, and that was it. Then i bought some magazines which featured Nirvana and the grunge movement (at the time being obsessed with Nirvana and knowing nothing else of the other bands of the time) and i kept reading about Pearl Jam and Eddie Vedder. I read about early PJ gigs, and i'd see pictures of Eddie diving around crowds, surfing on crowds, and speaking to crowds outside gigs. He was such a compelling figure. I heard how he had such an assertive voice, and tackled social issues more openly than Kurt...so i was naturally intrigued. I ended up getting Ten for Xmas 2003 and thought it was...pretty good. It was more a fascination with the band and that whole early 90s period at the time that hooked me and got me into PJ. The music was good, but it wasn't till i started looking into the lyrics, and the voice of PJ (which i discovered after a few more listens of Ten, and after buying the other albums) that i became 'obsessed'.

This is going to be one of those threads you read where you get chills all the time. I like those threads

My parents' bought me the cassette for my 14th birthday (I told them that's all I wanted, which made their wallet/pocketbook rather happy). I immediately fast-forwarded to Alive, listened to that about 4 times, then played the album in full a few times while playing Nintendo. I didn't like all of the songs, but the ones that did hit me (Black, Oceans, Porch) hit me hard. Oddly enough, it wasn't until a few years later than I started to really like Release, which today is easily my favorite song from the album. I guess I couldn't relate to the "oh dear dad, can you see me now?" line because my dad slept about 15 feet from me at the time.

Riot Act was the last CD released when I first got into them.

I watched MTV a lot in the nineties, and chorus for Alive was often stuck in my head, but I didn't buy records a lot back then.

I actually for a while thought that Pearl Jam and Faith No More were the same band, for example I thought that Epic was Pearl Jam's song.. for my defense, I was so young!

Then, back when Yield came out and they were on tour, I read a Pearl Jam concert review from Metal Hammer, a european rock magazine. PJ got ten out of ten for the gig(I remember that it was a show in Melbourne) and they had a full page pic of Ed, and I remembered the band. Then after a year or so I was browsing music in a store, and decided to buy Ten.

I was surprised to find out that Jeremy was on the cd with Alive, because I thought that Jeremy was from another album of theirs. Alive and Even flow were my fave songs, but what really turned me (and two of my friends!) into HUGE fans was watching the MTV Unplugged show in maybe 2000 or 2001, the intensity of Porch was something we had never seen before..

By the way, the order I bought PJ's albums:
first Ten, then
No code
Binaural
Yield
Vitalogy
VS
Riot act
Self-titled