I've just re-read this page over at gremmie http://www.gremmie.net/bsides/guide.html and I love learning about the recording history, little facts like Brain of J being recorded during the No Code sessions or Thin Air being in existance during Yield. I was wondering if anyone knew of a continuation of it? Anything like this in regards to S/T or Backspacer.

Cheers, VFP

Well Just Breathe was kind of from the Into The Wild recording session.

I'd love to hear what Of The Girl sounded like in 1997.

Not quite; it wasn't written at the same time as the ITW tracks, nor recorded at the same time.

It's my understanding it was written around the same time as the other Backspacer tunes and recorded with them in the same sessions. It just took its initial inspiration from Ed playing with the same chord shapes as that Tuolome (?) tune from ITW, that's all.

Well yeah that's what I meant when I said "kind of."

That's a really cool page. Do we not know anything about the last 8 years?

Ah yeah. Sorry, didn't mean to get all school teachery on you.

I remember that page being great, it would be awesome to try and piece together the last few years.

Well we know Gone and Comatose were probably done a little bit earlier than the rest of Avocado(not so much recorded but at least worked on) as they were brought out live earlier than 2006. I cant really think of anything else.

A few things:

-Man of the Hour was recorded in October 2003.
-A recording of Severed Hand was attempted during the Riot Act sessions.
-The band began work on Avocado soon after the Vote for Change tour ended in late 2004. They worked on it on-and-off throughout 2005 and took a break to tour later in the year. They then finished the album in early 2006. It may be the album that took the longest to finish.
-Gone was a late addition to the album.
-Reign Over Me was recorded sometime in mid to late 2006 when the band had a break in touring.
-Work on Backspacer started in 2008, and consisted of writing and rehearsing. The album was then recorded in a short period in early 2009.

There's more about the development of each individual song from the past two albums that can be gathered from interviews.

That's all good stuff, but none of it rises to the level of detail on that gremmie.net page. How did we know what days they were in what studio, and then all of a sudden, all we know is x was recorded sometime in this year, or y was recorded between this date and that date?

Good question. When I was working on Pearl Jam's wikipedia articles I used the recording history page as a starting point. Going through some of the old article databases like the one at fivehorizons.com, I was able to see what articles they got some of their information from, but there are still details in the recording history that I wasn't able to source. My guess is that they had access to print articles and other articles that are no longer online. However, I've gone through recent articles and none really cover a lot of details about the the band's recording sessions like past articles used to, they really just cover general information about the band's recent sessions. It seems like most newer articles just want to cover old ground like the band's formation and their retreat from the limelight.

There's also this page: http://www.pearljamonline.it/RS.htm

I'd love to hear what Severed Hand sounded like with Riot Act production, even if it was just a demo.



Something is being lost here. Concert chronology is a huge part of a lot of a fan's Pearl Jam experience, so why not recording history as well? It's invaluable for tracking the evolution of a song like Yellow Ledbetter not to mention a great snap shot into recording methods (see Riot Act section) as well as the mind set of the band or how an album could have sounded. Its great to pour over little mysteries like "April Bear" and "Backfire" or "Islands" and just adds more to the holy crown that is The Vault. Imagine No Code with Brain of J or Vs. with Whipping, Yeild with Thin Air and Of the Girl, not to mention Vs., Vitalogy or No Code with Hard to Imagine. It just makes for a more rounded experience of an album, however I imagine the band has clamped down on securtiy in an attempt to stop leaks, as a roll on effect they don't even let detailed session info into the public.

thankyou, this has a lot of recent stuff!

i bet RA Severed Hand is nuts.

It's a shame the band are so secretive about stuff at times.

I'd happily trade my newsletter and "annual gift" for a running blog by the guys giving daily rundowns of what they're up to when they're in recording/writing modes with in-studio fly-on-the-wall videos.

I think the whole keeping everybody in the dark thing is a little played out. They're not the biggest band in the world trying to keep some sanity, their hardcore fanbase is pretty set in stone by now. There's no real reason to keep things so mysterious.

(On a side note, the way the PJ "organisation" went after those crappy, audience-recorded leaks of The Fixer around the time of the video shoot was really, really embarrassing as a fan. It's hardly as if a new Pearl Jam single is going to set the music world alight, nobody cares outside of Pearl Jam nerds, y'know.)

I don't think there's ever been any footage from any of their recording sessions released, which would be interesting to see. SVT, the one documentary of theirs that is supposed cover the making of an album, doesn't even feature any footage from the Yield sessions.

I can tell you the genesis behind "Backfire" and some others:

http://groups.google.com/group/alt.musi ... df4f?hl=en

Look at the songs that didn't make the cut in 2002!

February 2002, April 1 - May ?, 2002 - Studio X - Seattle, WA
Ed Vedder - vocals, guitar, background vocals, ukulele; Stone Gossard - guitar; Mike McCready - guitar; Jeff Ament - bass; Matt Cameron - drum kit, percussion, background vocals, guitar on 'Cropduster' and 'You Are'; Kenneth "Boom" Gaspar - organ, piano on 'All Or None'; Adam Kasper - piano on 'You Are'

* 1/2 Full
* 4/20/02
* All Or None
* April Bear
* Arc
* Backfire
* Better Days
* Brokenhearted
* Bu$hleaguer
* Can't Keep
* Code Red
* Cropduster
* Don't Follow
* Down
* Faster
* Get Right
* Ghost
* Green Disease
* Had Enough
* helphelp
* I Am Mine
* Islands
* It's Too Late
* Keep Goin'
* Levels
* Longing To Belong
* Love Boat Captain (a.k.a. Boom B3) {instrumental}
* Meteorologist
* No Good Reason
* Other Side
* Sad
* Satellite
* Save You
* Searchlight
* Spin Cycle
* Thumbing My Way
* Undone
* Upside Downside
* You Are (a.k.a. Undone)
* You're True

Now, they may well be a) shit, b) without vocals or c) merely song fragments, but I wanna hear em!

Brokenhearted, Satellite and Longing To Belong are all uke songs, and have been played by Ed live.