So Ed really thinks Self Titled works as a concept album, but it couldn't be presented in order because the flow just didn't work (I'm guessing he means musically). I'm curious to try and put this together...certainly, most of the songs share a common subject (the trauma of being a soldier and a soldier's family, both at war and at home), but I'm still struggling to put together a fluid story:

Soldier at war:
Severed Hand
Marker?

Family at home:
Army Reserve
Parachutes??
Come Back
WWS

Soldier at home:
Inside Job
Unemployable
Gone
Life Wasted

Not sure where they fit:
Comatose
Big Wave

The more I think about this record and read how proud the band is of it, the more I think it was so close to being as good as they think. Take out Gone, Big Wave (sorry Spenno), and Inside Job, improve the production, and you have a really good set of songs (albeit only 9).

he does?

my take on that although I didn't frame the record as a concept album at the start, and think calling it that probably goes too far.

if a bunch of antiwar anti-republican songs counts as a concept album, sure why not.

But how would you sequence it to make sense? That's what I'm not clear about, and it seems that Ed really thought there was a clear sequence.

Note: Sorry I didn't look through all 23 pages of that thread to see if you had already posted this, although I do enjoy those threads.

I don't see either of those being at all representative of the album. I guess you could argue anti-war, but really he is discussing the causualties of war, and not so much war itself (even Parachutes says that he'll go to war if you give him a good reason).

Per the PJ20 book.

If it was intended as a concept album, there's a chance that--once they realized it wasn't going that direction--they omitted songs that would have been key to the sequence, and/or chose to include others that really didn't fit it. That's my guess.

thanks

it does? i seriously doubt he feels that way.

If it's a concept album at all, it's because it's basically formed around a concept... I don't think that concept has to be a narrative to qualify.

But yeah, Big Wave is that moment of calm, where the soldier goes surfing and feels the need planted in him two million years ago can't you see.

I agree in general, but in the book (don't have it on me, or else I'd supply the quote) he says that there was a narrative. It wasn't intentional from the outset, but realized as the songs came together.

I don't care how he feels...I'm interpreting the lyrics, not his stage banter.

I'll bite. Which songs are obviously anti-Republican?

Well, if it just emerged in his head as a narrative as the songs came together, then it's just his subjectivity working to put the songs together. If it wasn't planned that way, there's no way we'll be able to figure out what his version of the narrative is. We could quite easily form our own version of a narrative, I think. Incidentally, Platy might laugh but I really think my surfing soldier moment-of-calm subplot is something worth mulling over.

Is this just a circuitous way to make a retrack the album thread?

I'm not asking what exactly was Ed's narrative. Unless we ask him, we'll never know his exact narrative. I recognize that.



Yes, I am asking you to propose your own narrative.

No, but I fear this sort of thing will be happening a lot now with new info coming out from the book and the movie. Every time someone reads a "new" tidbit, a thread will be made about it.

FWIW, I think this was a good thread topic.

Yeah, that's what I thought. Can we do this for a better album?

Here is my concept. I hope you can get on board with it:

1. Big Wave

Our burly, six-packed hero goes surfing, in celebration of a million adaptations etc. He has no idea about the calamities which await him.

2. Inside Job

Our burly, six-packed hero is still in a state of calm; however, a lull in the surf means that he has time to sit back and think upon his life. So we have flashbacks, about feeding insecurity, pride and shame, and how he used to try and kill love etc. How he chooses to feel is how he is.

3. Unemployable

Oh, btw, this guy is so fuckin' unemployable.

4. Comatose

Dude has serious injury. We don't know yet. It may be a jellyfish. He might've hit his head on a rock. But due to themes which will appear later, the most obvious explanation for his comatose state is a bullet to the head by an enemy soldier. Yes, it's in this scene that we find out what this man's (inside) job is. He is an Army Reserve.

5. Marker in the Sand

He sees one. He doesn't know what it is (and Ed struggles to describe what it is) but God is nowhere to be found conveniently. He'll have to find help somewhere else. Will he?

6. Severed Hand

He wakes up in hospital, and realises he has a severed hand. But DOES HE? OR is he just hallucinating from all the morphine? And is that morphine or psychotropics? He's been so baked on so many things for so long, he can no longer tell the difference between them.

7. Life Wasted

He begins to really think about drugs and stuff, and how he has wasted his life with the drugs and stuff.

8. Wasted (Reprise)

He's still thinking about the drugs and his life wasted and stuff, but in a slightly more melancholy way, with the sun streaming through the hospital windows, and a pretty nurse smiling at him from the corridor.

9. Army Reserve

We've had an introduction to the character so far. In this song, we meet him fully. This song also introduces the fact that he was recently drafted to Afghanistan, away from his family, and that if he was to pursue a relationship with this pretty nurse, we would have an affair on our hands. Conflict is introduced (or rather, domestic conflict, because we already have national conflict).

10. Gone

Our burly, six-packed soldier gets so bored of hospital, he wants to be gone. He enlists the help of sexy nurse to help him escape. Luckily he is still able to drive, and she is very much able to sit in the front seat looking very sexy. There are a few gunshots fired at their car door during the journey, but that doesn't phase them. There is a war on.

11. Parachutes

There is a love montage, during the car journey through the desert.

12. World Wide Suicide

The lovely events of the car journey are horribly interrupted by a band of masked and machine-gunned terrorists who drag the soldier and his sexy nurse girlfriend out of the car. Events spiral, and one thing leads to another. Everyone begins fighting until they have virtually nothing left and consider a world wide suicide. They don't consider that for very long, however, because they do commit worldwide suicide, and as such, are no longer able to consciously consider anything.

13. Come Back

This is a plea from Pearl Jam themselves that all of the characters in the story they've just told would come back. They have the sads.