On Facebook I was asked to list my top ten all-time albums that most influenced me. Since I can't list anything without a huge explanation, this is it. Not only that but I'm writing about my Top 19 instead of my Top 10.
Here's what I wrote on Facebook today: "Here's another quick story: for a long time Pearl Jam was my band. For a long time, Pearl Jam was everyone's band. When I rolled up to Merrimack College in the fall of 1992, it seemed that everyone had one CD: Pearl Jam Ten. It didn't matter where you were from, what you looked like, you had Ten. And you played it, a lot. When you got drunk, you tried to sing like Eddie Vedder. When you went to a bar and there was a cover band, they played Pearl Jam songs. Then Kurt Cobain died and Eddie Vedder decided to live and people sort of forgot about Pearl Jam. But like the Simpsons, Pearl Jam continues to pump out new material and while they're nowhere near the zeitgeist anymore, they're still alive."
Yes. I ended that post of a Dad Joke. I don't care, the opportunity was there and you're god damn right, I took it.
I think that Pearl Jam gets a bad rap sometimes. And it all comes back to the fact that Kurt Cobain died at 27 and Eddie Vedder didn't. I'm not the world's biggest Bill Simmons fan, but a number of years ago he wrote something to the effect of before Cobain died, Pearl Jam was indisputably the biggest rock band in the world. Nirvana released "In Uetero" and Pearl Jam lapped them with "Vs" until April 5, 1994. When Cobain died by suicide, he--and his band--was frozen in amber and instantly propelled into the "voice of a generation".
Pearl Jam? They released some great stuff, got into a fight with TicketMaster, famously didn't make any videos and just kept trucking along. The general public forgot about them, which is something that I think that they wanted, and then the backlash began, which is something I don't think that they wanted but at the same time I don't think that they really cared about. The backlash basically centered around Pearl Jam not being Nirvana. Which I think is a little unfair.
Pearl Jam and Nirvana will always be intertwined. There are reasons for that and some of them are valid, but there were also a lot of differences between the two groups. Even though they hailed from the same city, were cornerstones for a "new" kind of music and had a lot of the same friends and influences, PJ and Nirvana wasn't Yankees-Red Sox, Dodger-Giants, Cardinals-Cubs, no matter how much the press tried to present them as such. Yes, Cobain called them frauds or something similar, but he recanted.
Pearl Jam and Nirvana got famous at about the same time but once they reached their pinnacles, they chose different paths to being remembered.
I've been a Pearl Jam fan for a long time, I'm not as much as a fanatic anymore, but I still really like them. The reason? Hearing Ten brings me back to college. It reminds me of the times when as a scared freshmen, I'd wander from room to room on the hall looking for people who were similar to me. Even though it was ubiquitous, hearing "Ten" was a sign post. I mean, if they liked Eddie and the boys, how bad could they be?
Yes, Pearl Jam was grunge, but I think that they thought that they were more than that. I think that they wanted to follow in the footsteps of The Who rather than The Ramones. And they did. They still sell out shows every time they play. They still put on great concerts (I've been to six). They give a shit about their fans. The one thing that they carried from the 1990s that I wish more bands would do is their sincerity. They stand for something and I think that Pearl Jam believes the things that they say which is refreshing.
Call it corny if you want (and plenty of people will) but I wish that more bands did that.
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