Joined: Sun Oct 17, 2004 12:59 am Posts: 18643 Location: Raleigh, NC Gender: Male
Hey I, oh, I'm still alive
By Walter Tunis
Lexington Herald-Leader
What good is mathematics when Pearl Jam is involved?
The veteran Seattle band that helped define grunge at the dawn of the '90s with a multi-platinum debut titled "Ten" has become the only major-label survivor of the movement. Now that it has issued its 11th album, "Pearl Jam," does anyone still care?
It's a curious syndrome, to be sure. Pearl Jam is hardly the first band to attain stardom with its first album only to have the rest of its career viewed as a game of commercial catch-up. But it might well be one of the very few to answer skeptics with such an involving string of ferociously rocking, topically fueled and bizarrely introspective records.
Too bad most of them have more or less fallen by the wayside in the wake of a debut album that shook the world.
When "Ten" hit the charts in 1991, all arms were open to a brazen, punkish sound out of the Northwest. "Ten" was the sound of personal revolution, an upheaval of unease that roughed up the contours of commercial pop the way punk grabbed post-disco radio rock by the collar 16 years earlier.
Pearl Jam was far from the lone conspirator, of course. Fellow Seattle renegades Nirvana and Soundgarden and a brigade of others held high the ripped flannel banner of grunge. But Pearl Jam was somehow different. It's not like the other guys were fraudulent. But when you saw Eddie Vedder sing "Porch" as his eyes rolled back into his head on "Saturday Night Live" in 1992, you couldn't help but sense something seriously creepy was going on.
Misery is money
Misery, in those days, was quite bankable. Maybe it always has been. But when Pearl Jam started racking up serious sales figures for "Ten" (that now top 12 million), grunge became less of a revolt and more of a commodity. "Alternative" music — which meant just about anything that wasn't country, rap or spit-and-polish pop — was suddenly an accepted marketing genre.
Misery, it seemed, was also selling better than ever to a new rock generation. Or, as that great animated social analyst Bart Simpson once observed, "Making teenagers depressed is like shooting fish in a barrel."
Vedder says in the current issue of Rolling Stone, "These were pure feelings coming out from real individuals and were being co-opted quickly by the masses and characterized into a joke. And we weren't a joke."
But the thing is, neither were the ensuing albums — be they hits like "Vs." and "Vitalogy" or comparative misses like "No Code," "Yield" and the true sleeper in the Pearl Jam canon, "Binaural." Oddly enough, the closest thing Pearl Jam has had to a commercial hit in the past decade was a 1999 cover of the '60s teen anthem "Last Kiss" recorded as a benefit for the refugees of Kosovo.
A string of great songs
Peruse the almost universally glowing reviews for album No. 11, "Pearl Jam," and you would think that Vedder and company had just stepped out of a deep freeze. Granted, not all the music cut in the wake of "Ten" has made for easy listening. But in that time the band has fashioned one of its most melodic melancholy singles (1994's "Better Man"), one of its brashest and most punk savvy blowouts (1996's "Lukin," which is revived with ample angst on the just released EP disc "Live at East Street"), one of its most dance-savvy social snapshots (1998's "Do the Evolution") and one its most unapologetic political rants (2003's "Bushleaguer").
To be sure, the music on "Pearl Jam" is as mighty as many of those tunes. If you caught the band setting fire to "Life Wasted" last month on "The Late Show With David Letterman," you saw the birth of an anthem. If Vedder so chooses, the tune could be a touchstone concert-rocker for years.
If your head still bangs to the sound of "Alive," "Black" or any of the crowd-surfing classics from its debut album, that's cool. Just keep an ear out for the ear-splitters cut since then that the pop mainstream ignored.
You might discover the distance between "Ten" and 11 is delightfully vast indeed.
Joined: Sun Oct 17, 2004 12:47 am Posts: 46000 Location: Reasonville
maybe he included LO2L and both lost dogs?
_________________ No matter how dark the storm gets overhead They say someone's watching from the calm at the edge What about us when we're down here in it? We gotta watch our backs
Joined: Thu Dec 02, 2004 12:28 am Posts: 964 Location: Pittsburgh, PA
Is it possible that he gets 11 this way?:
1. Ten
2. VS.
3. Vitalogy
4. No Code
5. Yield
6. Live on Two legs
7. Binaural
8. Riot Act
9. Lost Dogs
10. RVM
11. Pearl Jam
Cheesy, to be sure if he did get that this way....but one could see how he got there if he only did mild research.
so why are the 11th albums part bolded....anyone with half a brain can go right here and notice that this is indeed their 11th album, not counting the boots
Joined: Sun Oct 17, 2004 7:19 pm Posts: 39068 Location: Chapel Hill, NC, USA Gender: Male
Molo Sessions
14
_________________ "Though some may think there should be a separation between art/music and politics, it should be reinforced that art can be a form of nonviolent protest." - e.v.
I think he counted the major releases excluding Benaroya.
The article is stupid but if I am reading it correctly, he as trying to give the band a compliment instead of putting them down. The problem is that he sounds like a schmuck trying to articulate his ultimate thesis (PJ has always been pretty good, people just weren't paying attention).
His perspective comes across as the objective viewpoint of a total outsider who happens to have kept up with PJ just a tad bit closer than the casual listener. Actually, it sounds like he just finally got around to checking out all those "other" albums and is surprised that he never realized they were still making good music.
And by God, if Walter Tunis from Lexington Kentucky didn't realize that PJ was still making good music then the entire rest of the country must have been in the dark for the past 10 years too. (sarcasm)
Joined: Sun Dec 05, 2004 5:47 am Posts: 27904 Location: Philadelphia Gender: Male
drifting away wrote:
I think he counted the major releases excluding Benaroya.
The article is stupid but if I am reading it correctly, he as trying to give the band a compliment instead of putting them down. The problem is that he sounds like a schmuck trying to articulate his ultimate thesis (PJ has always been pretty good, people just weren't paying attention).
His perspective comes across as the objective viewpoint of a total outsider who happens to have kept up with PJ just a tad bit closer than the casual listener. Actually, it sounds like he just finally got around to checking out all those "other" albums and is surprised that he never realized they were still making good music.
And by God, if Walter Tunis from Lexington Kentucky didn't realize that PJ was still making good music then the entire rest of the country must have been in the dark for the past 10 years too. (sarcasm)
That post was 10 times more intelligent than the article.
_________________ It's always the fallen ones who think they're always gonna save me.
Hey here is another thought. Maybe someone should paste this article in one of those "Why Doesn't Pearl Jam play shows in the South?" threads.
I will say this in defense of poor Mr. Tunis: Pearl Jam has only played the state of Kentucky twice in their entire career and only one of those shows was in Lexington (2003).
So in Water Tunis' sheltered little world it probably did seem like Pearl Jam disappeared.
Post subject: Re: Awful Lexington KY Times article...
Posted: Wed Jul 05, 2006 6:32 am
Stone's Bitch
Joined: Wed Mar 01, 2006 8:33 am Posts: 35357 Location: Los Angeles, CA Gender: Male
Athletic Supporter wrote:
Hey I, oh, I'm still alive
By Walter Tunis
Lexington Herald-Leader
What good is mathematics when Pearl Jam is involved?
The veteran Seattle band that helped define grunge at the dawn of the '90s with a multi-platinum debut titled "Ten" has become the only major-label survivor of the movement. Now that it has issued its 11th album, "Pearl Jam," does anyone still care?
It's a curious syndrome, to be sure. Pearl Jam is hardly the first band to attain stardom with its first album only to have the rest of its career viewed as a game of commercial catch-up. But it might well be one of the very few to answer skeptics with such an involving string of ferociously rocking, topically fueled and bizarrely introspective records.
Too bad most of them have more or less fallen by the wayside in the wake of a debut album that shook the world.
When "Ten" hit the charts in 1991, all arms were open to a brazen, punkish sound out of the Northwest. "Ten" was the sound of personal revolution, an upheaval of unease that roughed up the contours of commercial pop the way punk grabbed post-disco radio rock by the collar 16 years earlier.
Pearl Jam was far from the lone conspirator, of course. Fellow Seattle renegades Nirvana and Soundgarden and a brigade of others held high the ripped flannel banner of grunge. But Pearl Jam was somehow different. It's not like the other guys were fraudulent. But when you saw Eddie Vedder sing "Porch" as his eyes rolled back into his head on "Saturday Night Live" in 1992, you couldn't help but sense something seriously creepy was going on.
Misery is money
Misery, in those days, was quite bankable. Maybe it always has been. But when Pearl Jam started racking up serious sales figures for "Ten" (that now top 12 million), grunge became less of a revolt and more of a commodity. "Alternative" music — which meant just about anything that wasn't country, rap or spit-and-polish pop — was suddenly an accepted marketing genre.
Misery, it seemed, was also selling better than ever to a new rock generation. Or, as that great animated social analyst Bart Simpson once observed, "Making teenagers depressed is like shooting fish in a barrel."
Vedder says in the current issue of Rolling Stone, "These were pure feelings coming out from real individuals and were being co-opted quickly by the masses and characterized into a joke. And we weren't a joke."
But the thing is, neither were the ensuing albums — be they hits like "Vs." and "Vitalogy" or comparative misses like "No Code," "Yield" and the true sleeper in the Pearl Jam canon, "Binaural." Oddly enough, the closest thing Pearl Jam has had to a commercial hit in the past decade was a 1999 cover of the '60s teen anthem "Last Kiss" recorded as a benefit for the refugees of Kosovo.
A string of great songs
Peruse the almost universally glowing reviews for album No. 11, "Pearl Jam," and you would think that Vedder and company had just stepped out of a deep freeze. Granted, not all the music cut in the wake of "Ten" has made for easy listening. But in that time the band has fashioned one of its most melodic melancholy singles (1994's "Better Man"), one of its brashest and most punk savvy blowouts (1996's "Lukin," which is revived with ample angst on the just released EP disc "Live at East Street"), one of its most dance-savvy social snapshots (1998's "Do the Evolution") and one its most unapologetic political rants (2003's "Bushleaguer").
To be sure, the music on "Pearl Jam" is as mighty as many of those tunes. If you caught the band setting fire to "Life Wasted" last month on "The Late Show With David Letterman," you saw the birth of an anthem. If Vedder so chooses, the tune could be a touchstone concert-rocker for years.
If your head still bangs to the sound of "Alive," "Black" or any of the crowd-surfing classics from its debut album, that's cool. Just keep an ear out for the ear-splitters cut since then that the pop mainstream ignored. You might discover the distance between "Ten" and 11 is delightfully vast indeed.
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(sarcasm)
