Happy Birthday, Pearl Jam!

Happy Birthday, Pearl Jam! I was wondering what to write, and how to fully capture what the band has meant to me over these last 35 years. And then I remembered I did just that in the epilogue of 'I Am No Guide - Pearl Jam Song by Song'. So in honor of this momentous day, here it is: 

I discovered Pearl Jam through Weird Al Yankovich. In 1992 I was 15 years old (days away from 16) and my musical tastes were still firmly in the1980s. Prince, Madonna, Michael Jackson, Bon Jovi, Poison. But my heart belonged to Weird Al Yankovich, and in April of 1992 I saw the “Smells Like Nirvana” for the first time. I laughed so hard I could barely breathe. Loved that video. And I knew that there was a band called Nirvana, but I knew none of their music. But Smells Like Nirvana was a great song, so I thought I’d take a risk and try Nirvana solely based on Weird Al’s recommendation. I went to the mall and used my allowance to buy a cassette tape of Nevermind. 

And that was it. I totally understand the ‘grunge killed hair metal’ narrative because that was my story. Within seconds of putting that tape on that was it. It wasn’t that I now had a new band. There was some part of my that understood there was no going back. This was it. This was music. There was a before, and an after waiting to be discovered. I played that cassette of Nevermind basically for an entire summer. I don’t know that I listened to anything else. Maybe the rest of Weird Al’s Off the Deep End. 

That fall I got my first job, and with that money my first CD player. Now I needed CDs. I decided to join Columbia House to start my collection. I got Nevermind, obviously. Madonna and Prince’s greatest hits records. Probably some Weird Al albums. And I got Ten, because I heard Pearl Jam was like Nirvana. 

I will never forget the first time I heard Ten. It would have been September 1992. I was in my room, doing math homework. I put the record in for background music. Once sounded pretty cool – I liked the aggression. And then “Even Flow” and that was it. Two times in one year. A before, and an after. While Nevermind felt primal, Ten felt infinite. This was the band. I would never need another. And while my musical tastes have evolved over time, Pearl Jam has never been dislodged from its position. My all-caps FAVORITE band. The one that would soundtrack my life and help me make sense of the world.

I was almost immediately drawn to the lyrics. Possibly because the early albums were so withholding – Eddie’s handwritten scrawl, the partially typed lyrics. It added to the mystery, and my sense of ownership. No one knew what Eddie was really saying. No one could confidently decipher him. But I knew, just knew, that whatever he was saying was important. That the wisdom of the ages, or at least the cheat codes a white suburban teenager needed to find his place in the world, was hiding in plain sight. I just had to look closer. I spent hours with headphones carefully transcribing everything I thought he said. I typed up my own lyric books that I made my poor dad print out at work. I was laughably wrong in some cases. Truth be told, I’m still not 100% sure about some of the lyrics in “Corduroy” to this day. There are a few cases where I got so attached to what I thought he was saying that it was a bit of a letdown to learn what he was actually saying. 

I finally saw Pearl Jam for the first time in 1996. Randall’s Island night one. Getting tickets was a hideous pain in the ass (I was dutifully mad at Ticketmaster, but the Yield tour was a relief). I was offered $600 in the parking lot for my ticket, but there was no amount of money I would have traded it for. It was one of the most intense, transcendent moments of my life. From the opening notes of “Last Exit” through the end of “Indifference” I was so locked into every moment I had no idea it had even started to rain. I’ve always preferred the studio albums to the bootlegs, but there is nothing, absolutely nothing, better than seeing them live. I’ve seen them just under thirty times, and Uniondale in 2003 remains my favorite show. And for those who have built their lives around seeing them live, I get it. It’s not the choice I made. But it is absolutely one I understand. 

My fandom has gone through phases. There was my obnoxious, imperial phase that lasted pretty much through college where I would argue, with all seriousness, that “Bugs” had better lyrics than any Beatles song. There was the phase where I wanted my Pearl Jam serious and deep, and struggled to make space in my heart for songs like “Who You Are.” There were times when I resented the songs that Jeff or Matt or Stone wrote lyrics for, since it meant I was deprived of something Eddie could have written. There were comparative highs and lows. 

Vitalogy, my favorite album ever, was followed by No Code, an album that only recently moved out of the basement and now enjoys the honor of being my second to least favorite Pearl Jam record (still good, though). The Ten era remains my favorite era for Eddie’s vocals. The No Code to Binaural run probably the least. Eventually I settled into a comfortable relationship with the band’s music and learned to appreciate just about every song as a piece of a larger puzzle. And while I have my favorite songs and favorite moments, I experience no Pearl Jam song in a vacuum. Each is informed by the nearly two hundred songs surrounding it in the catalog and the meanings of these songs, or at least what they mean to me, has grown and evolved as my life has grown and evolved in tandem with the band. At almost every critical juncture of my life Pearl Jam has been there. Not just to help me process that moment, or to soundtrack my life, but to create that continuity between the person I was then, and the person I am now. To bridge past, present, and future. It’s a privilege, really, to open your heart up to a band, and to be able to take them with you as a living, breathing, changing thing. It lets you hold onto that youthful sense of anything being possible without having sacrificed the wisdom that follows from having lived a life I’ve loved. Not everyone gets to have that experience. It means everything. It’s been everything. And after thirty plus years of fandom, more than anything what Pearl Jam means to me is gratitude.

Happy Birthday, Pearl Jam!

Good lord!  35 Years?  Is that how long we've been doing this?  Well, you'll see below, I guess it's been more like 33 years for me.  Still, we've been through the highs and lows of this band. I can't think of a way I'd rather spend my time then laying on the floor reviewing album art while these songs take me to all the places I want to be. 

Happy Birthday, Pearl Jam!  In honor of all you do, from our book, this is how I found you!

I’m sitting here, wanting to tell you how my Pearl Jam story began, and I’m struggling to start the story with a mental picture that wouldn’t draw complete incredulity from my children. Listen, guys, we used to listen to music on giant boxes that we called shelf systems. I just tried to Google a picture of one, and you can’t even do that. It was a big wooden box. There was a dual tape deck in the middle for making mix tapes. The last one I made was given to my wife while we were dating. There was a CD player somewhere in there. The amplifier and equalizer were all built in. My uncle had a record player on top, but either records were not cool or I was not cool when I got mine. Oh, and did I mention the giant wood-grain speakers on either side. This was a significant piece of furniture. This was no free Spotify account on a phone that fit in your pocket. This was a commitment, and I got my first one for Christmas in 1991. 

My parents gave me two CDs. Mariah Carey’s Emotions and Boyz II Men’s Cooleyhighharmony. Strap in folks, we’ve got a ways to go. Here I was [checks Chapter 1], four months after the release of the album that spawned this whole project, and I was absolutely and completely oblivious to it. Stay with me though. I was getting there. Because earlier that year, Bryan [no relation] found a dubbed cassette of Metallica’s Garage Days Re-Revisited in a field where we were playing tackle football without pads, helmets, or even long pants and we played that tape until it barely played at all. I know, I know, the timelines don’t really line up. I’m not good with dates. Around this same time, I was the only Honors student at my high school to skip out of AP US History to take Geography with the baseball coach in the corner basement room near the bathroom with all of the kids in suspension and the athletes desperately clinging to a C- average. Please don’t let it worry you that I was the one put in charge of every single date in this book. 

By now you’re yelling at your book, “Brandon, tell us about Pearl Jam!” To you, I say, “You just read a whole book about Pearl Jam, can’t you just chill out for a minute and let the story wash over you? I haven’t even flown to Germany yet!” Pearl Jam first played Germany in March of 1992. That has nothing to do with my story. I just wanted you to know that it is a date, and I’m aware of it. I also want you to be aware that you were just yelling at a book. 

OK. I went to Germany in the summer of 1992, and I developed a crush on Carli, a woman that was really far too old for me, and it’s embarrassing to commit that story to text which, presumably, will be available to the whole world for a reasonable price at your favorite book store, easily purchased by her or my friend Chris who will laugh at how I changed the name. While we were hanging out in Munich, she introduced me to her musical obsession, Pearl Jam. If you’re wondering why I had never heard of Pearl Jam a full year after the release of Ten, let me share one more story. I grew up in a fairly religious home and wasn’t allowed to watch MTV when I was in high school. That meant that I had to sneak that channel in after school and late at night after my parents had gone to bed. Well, back then you watched MTV by setting your television to channel 3 and powering up a cable box on top. Our remote had a “Favorite” button, which automatically took you to the most-watched channel. So, when my parents hit that button and got MTV, it was extremely hard to stay on top of popular music because the cable box started going to work with my dad. 

Back to Germany, I was there, giving puppy dog eyes at my crush when suddenly, the most amazing thing I ever heard was playing through the headphones of my Sony DiscMan (still four times heavier than an iPhone). I wish there was less archaic technology in my story, but I can’t help that now. I can, however, tell you that this moment was carved into my brain like the Challenger explosion or the 9/11 attacks. She skipped “Once,” making the little digital number readout jump from 1 to 2, and dropped “Even Flow” on me out of the gate. No Pearl Jam virgin should have “Even Flow” dropped on them like that. It’s irresponsible. It’s like uploading the Works of Shakespeare directly into the brain of a baby. It’s too amazing to process all at once. 

I had that CD on repeat for the whole rest of my trip, staying up late with it, missing subway trains because I couldn’t hear people calling my name, and being a general pain in the ass as I discovered a sound and a message that I needed so badly at that time of my life. I have lived a wonderful, privileged life, but as a teen, I was struggling to find myself, and it was disheartening. Then, and the decade that followed, was the time when Pearl Jam spoke to me the most. The way Ten pushed against the world and everything that came before lined up perfectly with my leaving the nest and hammering out who I was. I wore out multiple CD versions of Ten, Vs., and Vitalogy before leaving college. 

And then came the community. The Internet was new and my roommate, majoring in Computer Science, taught me how to code a rudimentary website. Nothing special, but enough to put pictures and animated gifs of Homer Simpson onto a Geocities site (pre-MySpace, which was pre-Facebook). It was enough to cast my Pearl Jam obsession into the stratosphere, and in the pre-Google days Pearl Jam fans were able to forge connections along those thin threads, on- line bulletin boards, trading forums, Song X and the Concert Chronology on FiveHorizons.com. It helped that this world was populated by the kindest people you could ever hope to know. 

Among the Pearl Jam community were angels who would take the best handheld recording device they could afford to concerts, buy beers for the people sitting next to them in exchange for a promise not to scream, and then record the show. They wouldn’t just take that show home and listen to it. They would share it. There was a giant community of traders with an on-line list of shows. If you went a show and wanted a souvenir, or if you were like me and couldn’t make it to a show because your parents wouldn’t let you go to a concert that wasn’t Christian rock, you could pick a show, send that person blank cassettes, and they would dub the show onto those cassettes (using those giant shelf systems from paragraph one) and mail them back to you. So, in a time when Brian was struggling to find the music venue on Randall’s Island, and I was calling some backwater, third-party phone bank to get tickets to the Toledo, Ohio show only to have the phone lines melt from the call volume, twice, I was still able to drop a cassette into my Walkman and pretend that I was right there on the floor. 

When I finally saw Pearl Jam live, it was at Blossom Music Center in 1998, a gorgeous outdoor venue in the middle of what is now Cuyahoga Valley National Park, and it was an experience I wouldn’t trade with anyone. “Hail, Hail” still lights me up for no other reason that it is the first song I heard while looking Eddie Vedder in the eyes. Twelve rows back on Mike’s side, the best side because you get a two-fer with Jeff, I sang every lyric and never sat down. I had been listening to this band in whatever way I could, albums, cassettes, CD imports from Quonset Hut in Akron, an obscure song downloaded over a phone line probably via Napster, which meant it just ended abruptly about forty-three seconds before the end of the song, and finally, I got to hear them in the way they are meant to be heard, with 23,000 fellow fans screaming, “Hello,” to an “Elderly Woman Behind the Counter in a Small Town” and thrusting our hands in the air to sing “Hallelujah” when we sing with our choir. 

When I look over my Pearl Jam fandom, the band, to me, is always the thing I’m finding at the end of a long search. They were the music I was looking for at the end of a lot of musical experimentation. They were at the apex of a loving, sharing community of wonderful people. They were the live experience I wanted for years. They’re even the rare collectible I was bidding up on eBay. Riot Act was that angry voice I wanted to hear all through the Bush Administration. Lost Dogs was all those songs that I struggled to find via on-line forums. Pearl Jam is a never- ending puzzle that brings new surprises and magic every step of the way. The influential band they mentioned in an interview could take you down a months-long path of new albums. That list of books they shared on World Book Day 2017 led to hours of reading. It’s how I landed at TheSkyIScrape.com, first a community that loved Pearl Jam like I loved Pearl Jam, then a place to collect and categorize all the amazing ways that I and others have found to love this band. It even continues for me today. As we work on this last chapter, Dark Matter is a slow burn for me. I had my first listen in a movie theater, and maybe the sound wasn’t the best, but I had a hard time connecting. Even now, as the phrase, “best album since Yield” rings in my ears, I haven’t put it that high in my personal rankings, but I keep searching. I keep finding bass lines I missed and lyrics that hit right. My current favorite moment is at the beginning of “Something Special” where the song almost falls apart and doesn’t happen just before Ed starts sing. I’ve opened myself up to connect to this album, and because this album is actually about connection, it’s starting to happen, which makes it the perfect capstone to my Pearl Jam experience. 

… at least until album #13 gets here.

Happy Birthday, Pearl Jam!

Credit: Geoff Whitman

 

Lightning Bolt Turns 12

 

Vs. Turns 32

 

Neil Young's Mirrorball Reissue

 Neil Young has announced the reissue of his album, Mirror Ball, featuring "the Band."  It will release on October 24th as part of a CD or vinyl, 4-album boxed set that includes Unplugged, Harvest Moon, and Sleeps with Angels.  Though the album is not available by itself, single-album releases from Neil Young's archives generally become available in the following months.  So, keep your eyes out, and we'll let you know.

You can pre-order the boxes at Greedy Hand Store at Neil Young Archives (NYA) or wherever you buy your favorite music.

Mirror Ball is an analog recording and the album has been remastered from the original analog masters by John Hanlon and Chris Bellman at Bernie Grundman Mastering. Additionally, four of the tracks have been remixed in analog by John Hanlon, as the originals were from digital mixes ("I'm the Ocean," "Big Green Country," "Truth Be Know," and "Throw Your Hatred Down").

Mirror Ball, originally released in 1995 and recorded with Pearl Jam. Considering the Seattle band was one of the prime movers of rock bands in the 1990s, it was an event immediately upon its release, and found a rabid, younger audience and inspired long-time fans alike with its inherent high energy. Songs like "I Am the Ocean" and "Throw Your Hatred Down" helped impact so much of the second half of the 1990s.

Happy Birthday, Josh Klinghoffer!

Credit: Geoff Whitman

 

The Love Bone Earth Affair

This week, Pearl Jam released an HD remaster of The Love Bone Earth Affair, a 1993 VHS documentary directed by Josh Taft about Mother Love Bone released after the release of their original compilation album (now Apple and Shine).  

Here is what the band has to say:

This video, originally released on VHS, features never-before-seen footage of Mother Love Bone in concert and includes interviews with frontman Andrew Wood, bassist Jeff Ament, and guitarist Stone Gossard.

In honor of the enduring impact of Mother Love Bone’s music, individual reissues of Shine EP and the seminal full-length debut Apple are available now! A limited-edition, newly remastered Japan-exclusive Mini-LP/SHM-CD that includes both records will be available on October 10. 

Elements EP by Barking Dog

 Last month when your humble TSIS author was drowning in his day job, Loosegroove Records announced the release of a new album by Barking Dog, a band featuring former Pearl Jam drummer, Jack Irons.  What does it sound like?  Imagine Jack Irons grooving with his friends on some instrumental tracks full of experimental rhythm.  There you go, you've got it.

If you still have doubts, it's available on all streaming services, and once you fall in love, you can get the 12" on copper vinyl from Loosegroove Records.

Here is what Loosegroove had to say about the album:

Barking Dog’s Elements EP blends years of musical collaboration, friendship, and shared passions. The band features Jack Irons (drummer for Pearl Jam and Red Hot Chili Peppers), Anthony LoGerfo (longtime drummer for Neil Young and Promise of The Real), and Micah Nelson(musician and founder of Particle Kid). Together, they share a love for rhythm, Neil Young, and dogs.

Their connection began in 2016 at Ohana Festival, where Jack and Anthony bonded over music and life. Anthony, best known for his work with Neil Young and Promise of the Real, is currently touring with Micah in Neil’s band Chrome Hearts. His "meditation grooves" formed the early rhythmic foundation for the project, which Jack built upon with experimental drums and percussion and Micah rounded out with his signature sonic layers.

After reconnecting in 2023, the band recorded the final tracks at Jack’s home studio, including the addition of a steel drum, a nod to Jack’s past work on Pearl Jam’s No Code and Yield. The tracks were mixed by Adam Hawkins, bringing together the elements of their collective sound.

The EP’s tracks, each named after natural elements, represent their sonic journey:
Heat Of The Sun Broken Water Sprouted Stream of Consciousness Light of White Moon Clouds Over Shadows

The band name, Barking Dog, reflects their shared love for their dogs, Charms, Plato, and Tsuki, and the record is dedicated to them. Elements is a testament to the band’s deep friendship, musical exploration, and the connections that shape their sound.

Trilogy Tuesday: Hail To The Chief

 OK, let's try this again.  We promised you a weekly trilogy and delivered one.  Just one, then we failed you for two weeks in a row.  Shall we try a reboot?  Sure, let's go for it.

In today's trilogy, Pearl Jam is going to get political.  They are known for singing about all types of political topics, mostly environmental, but they tap into the military industrial complex, women's rights, and anti-capitalism, but a few times, they've taken direct aim at our Presidents.

Today's trilogy features three songs specifically about U.S. Presidents.  Bu$hleaguer (George W. Bush), Barack Around the Clock (Barack Obama), and Can't Deny Me (Donald Trump). We'll learn the Pearl Jam doesn't always attack the man at the top, but if they don't, they snuff out the song and try to pretend that they never offered it as a free download.  

Maybe keep the microphone away from Stone for a while.

Sorry, it's the best we could do for an embargoed song.

Backspacer Turns 16

 

Trilogy Tuesday: The Hand Trilogy

 Pearl Jam announced they were going to play some songs about hands in Raleigh on May 11th [2025] and proceeded to play Upper Hand and Severed Hand, somehow forgetting that they did have a third song with "hand" in the title as part of their repertoire, Sleight of Hand.  Ed seemed to have caught the mistake and made good on the full trilogy at their show in Pittsburgh on May 16th.

Well, this got us thinking!  We all know about the infamous Mamasan (or Momma-Son) Trilogy (Once, Alive, and Footsteps), and a few lucky fans have heard the "Man" Trilogy (Leatherman, Nothingman, and Better Man), played together in Detroit in 2003, but can we think of some other trilogies?  Can we dig through Pearl Jam's catalog and mix up some better ideas?  Will Pearl Jam play them after reading about our ideas on TheSkyIScrape.com and then endorse our book, I Am No Guide: Pearl Jam Song by Song?

We don't know the answer, but we're going to see what comes of it.  Each Tuesday (when we remember, and until we get sick of it), we're going to present a Pearl Jam trilogy of songs that we think goes together.  Maybe the titles match, maybe the songs tell a story, maybe the covers of the 45s look pretty together.  Either way, we should have some fun with this.  You can even suggest ideas via BlueSky.

Let's start this off with the trilogy that started us down this dangerous, likely stupid, path: Sleight of Hand, Severed Hand, and Upper Hand.  Give a listen to the songs form Pittsburgh this year, and see if you're not inspired to enjoy Pearl Jam in a new way.

Ten Turns 34

 

No Code Turns 29

Mother Love Bone Reissues (2025)

 

The Ten Club has announced that they are reissuing Mother Love Bone's two albums Shine (1989) and Apple (1990) for the first time in a decade on vinyl and CD.  Fan Club members can pre-order Shine (on "Purple Haze" vinyl) and Apple (on "Red Alert" vinyl) or both albums as a "Japanese exclusive" CD set in a "mini-LP gatefold."  CDs of the individual albums are coming tomorrow (?), featuring bonus tracks: "Capricorn Sister" on Shine and "Gengle Groove" and "Mr. Danny Boy" on Apple.

In honor of the enduring impact of Mother Love Bone’s music, both Shine and Apple will be reissued and available in CD, Vinyl LP, and digital formats on Sept. 26! Preorder begins today and tomorrow.