over at the other board, they have this discussion about a rolling stone article that has Stone saying he hopes it does a little better commercially.

http://forums.pearljam.com/showthread.p ... 708&page=2

I just had a couple points about it:
1. why are pearl jam fans so against the band doing things differently?
if the band wants to make movies, videos, cd's, to reach a wider audience and get paid big time for that, why is that an issue. This is rhetorical because i don't want to even hear the retarded answers.
2. people who worry about pj selling out always puts it on Epic's shoulders for making the band do things they didn't want to do. Truth is no one really knows what the deal is. The band doesn't really trash epic and epic doesn't really bad mouth the band. So can people keep quiet about what labels do in terms of stifling a band's creativity. We just don't know.
3. People who want to see PJ as a more relevant band to more people often talk about Riot Act only selling 500,000 albums. here is something i'm thinking about. In 2002, the napster thing was in full effect. I remember getting all the songs of kazaa early. i sure enough bought the album openning day. But Kazaa wasn't inundated with label feeds of false songs at the time. so a casual fan who would want one or two songs, could get it free. Now that itunes and alot of other technology is more accepted and free music sharing is much harder to do, i'm sure this album with automatically be higher. There aren't going to be as many free copies available.

Sure i should have posted this on their board at synergy, but i don't have an acct and didn't feel like getting flamed.

Thanks for your time.

the answer to your question and most questions probably is: people are stupid

I'm just going to say:

this band wants to keep getting their message to a large audience and they obviously love playing 15.000 - 20.000 capacity arena's so they want to keep doing that.

And for the rest, I really don't care.

They probably like people hearing them, and money.

You hit it right on the head -- this band does things differently. At this point, it's EXPECTED that they be "under the radar" and "uncommercial", it would be more independant of them at this point if they went out on a limb and went for a double platinum. That would fucking shock people, and it would be a very rock n roll thing to do at this point in ther career. Everybody is too comfortable now, I want them to fuck things up a little bit, or else I might get bored.

the problem in most people's eyes is a question of hypocrisy. I don't think they're hypocritcal for wanting to do a little better and with more exposure comes the chance to do more things. But in the eyes of many people once you take a stand on something you are never allowed to do anything different or grow or change. Your stand gets frozen in time.

many times these are the same people concerned about things like street cred (which is a pretty meaningless term).

As long as they don't compromise their artistic or political principles and the music is good I don't care.

i just want a good album

Here in the UK Binaural debuted at no.4. Riot Act debuted at something like 34. Most bands would get worried by that fact.

that was basically what i was trying to get at. one of the things anyways. i don't care what happens. i just want an album that sounds good to me. if that works for everyone, great. if it doesnt, great. i think all of us RM'ers would fall into taht to some degree.

Whatever keeps them making music is fine by me.

They should rerecord their hit album Ten acoustically, and then play the halftime show at the Super Bowl.

First of all, "selling out" is a pretty juvenile issue to be concerned about. There are basically two types of people who would care about that
1. High school kids 2. Insecure indie music snobs who are constantly chasing the next cool sound - only to abandon it once it becomes popular.

Neither of these groups is likely to care much about PJ anyway regardless of what they do. Pearl Jam has been around for over 15 years, the "selling out" thing just doesn't seem to fit. They already made millions. In the music business, the real money is in touring, not album sales and PJ has NEVER had a problem selling tickets to their shows.

So the motivation behind promoting the album is not money. It is pride in their music. They want people to be aware that they are still writing new material and that it is music they are genuinely proud of.

"Relevance" is another buzz word used by the indie music snobs. From what I see, "relevant" has become increasingly synonymous with "unlistenable" as the term is used by critics. Example: Radiohead - they supposedly represent the epitome of artistic integrity but to me it sounds like a bunch of strange blips and bleeps and nonsensical lyrics. I used to like their music until their departure from the sound of their first 3 albums. If they went back and recorded a rock album ala Pablo Honey would they be selling out? Would they no longer be relevant?

You don't need to change your sound to be relevant. You need to make good music. Pearl Jam thinks they have made a damn good album and they want more people to hear it. I don't call that selling out and I don't think the band is feeling insecure about their "relevance" as artists.

if someone's big concern is "are they going to sell out?" or "are they selling out?" then they need to get a fucking clue. if thats the sort of thing that determines you being a fan then what kind of fan are you anyway? if they make a record you enjoy, yet it does well commercial...are you going to suddenly start hating it?

besides...it's been my experience that the term "sell out" is used a majority of the time by people who don't even understand what it actually means.

I agree 1,000 percent. You can already feel the buzz in my office when I was telling luke warm fans about PJ's remergence.

*waits for ipod commercial*

Hellllooooo Helllloooooo

If the albums good enough, it wil have no choice but to be relevant, and recognized. How many really, really great albums by already atleast slightly recognized bands in the last say, 10 years have gone unnoticed, despite being great? I can't think of a single one. The only "great" albums that go un-noticed are by bands that nobody knows or cares about to begin with, and odds are the album wasn't really that good anyway.

Binaural and Riot Act weren't good enough to be recognized as such... especially since the general public already has an opinion formed about Pearl Jam. Which is, that their first few albums were good, and they went downhill from there. Just like Radiohead is going to have to put out a really bad album to be thought of as anything but a genius band (it's started a little bit with HTTT), Pearl Jam is going to have to put out a Really great album to hammer into the minds of the general public that they are still capable of making great music.

If s/t is anything less than an 8/10 album, it will be no bigger of a blip on the radar than the last two were.

You hit it right on the head. This is why I never even consider this topic. They can sell more records without compromising their beliefs and I can't imagine anyone could realistically hold it against them that they want to sell more records.

I think there's a pretty significant difference between doing SOME publicity and being shameless about it. I think when this topic comes up, some people are getting way ahead of themselves.

I can't and don't believe that PJ have the inclination to "sell out" .For one, to totally sell out you have to become the whore of whatever record company you're signed to.(U2).

Secondly,you have to sell all your image rights to the highest bidder.(U2)

Thirdly,you have to keep putting out sub-standard music and claim that you've found a new voice and sound.(U2)

Lastly,you have to hang on to the coattails of every major western leader to beg and grovel for money for good causes that should have already been donated by the western governments.Then take all the praise and benifits (self-promotion) that come along with it.(U2).Cunts.

I'm a sellout guys