Thursday, April 28, 2011

Watt? That's awesome!




There were some special guests during the encore of Mike Watt's Seattle show last night.  GrungeReport.net reports that Dave Grohl, Pat Smear, and Eddie Vedder took the stage to perform Big Train, from Mike Watt's 1996 release, Ball-Hog or Tugboat?.

Wednesday, April 27, 2011

PJ20 Teaser Video


Mookie>>>PJ
from Pearl Jam on Vimeo.


I wouldn't have thought it possible, but John over at TwoFeetThick uses that clip as a launching board for more great information.  Enjoy!

Tuesday, April 26, 2011

A Guided Tour of Vs.: Glorified G

GLORIFIED G


There is an attempt after Glorified G (arguably even after Daughter) to really turn the thrust of the record outward and to transform Vs. into a record of social commentary. Other than W.M.A. the songs are only marginally successful on that front, largely because the songs are more an attempt to vent the band’s own frustrations rather than any real effort to sympathize with the victims (other than themselves) or really understand what is happening in the world around them. The songs often lack the moment of reflection needed to say something interesting, and so the middle sequence of the record ends up being the least effective, in part because they don’t know quite what they want to be. This is perhaps truer of Glorified G than any other song on Vs.

Musically Glorified G is a fun firecracker of a song. It sounds like a party with its good time classic rock vibe. There’s no cowbell here, but it would fit right in. This song makes me want to have a BBQ. There’s a casual ‘who gives a fuck’ feel to the music that makes the song oddly contagious, and Mike’s solos sound almost festive. It’s an odd backdrop, to say the least, for Eddie’s sneering indictment of gun culture and red state (even though we weren’t using that term when this song was written) America. 

Maybe that was deliberate and the contrast is a statement, highlighting how irresponsibly we approach important social issues. Certainly from Eddie’s perspective, a gun is a tool for murder, and that’s it. They’re not toys, and their owners are not sportsmen. These things are dangerous, yet we live in a society that celebrates them, that can’t have enough of them (Got a gun, ‘fact I got two), and that refuses to confront the harm they do: (never shot at a living thing). Eddie is railing against the inability of Americans to see a world outside their immediate horizons and interests, our inability to imagine that an action might have implications outside of how it affects myself. If I personally can trust myself to use my gun responsibly then there’s no problem. The larger societal perspective drops out, and this loss of perspective is a theme that runs through much of the record, both as personal tragedy and social critique. One of the things that Vs. is attacking is this personal and public blindness, and regaining our sight is the key to the redemptive moments on the record.

But most of us are blind, and that suits us just fine. In fact, we applaud ourselves for refusing to confront our lack of vision, turning our stubborn blindness into a badge of honor and mark of freedom, which Eddie addresses with his 1984 allusion (double think/dumb is strength). From the dumb American’s perspective there’s no need to ever think anything through. ‘that’s oaky man, cuz I love god.’ That statement is pregnant with meaning and judgment (Glorified G is an incredibly judgmental song) and addresses itself to both the self-righteous self-importance of god fearing Americans and our faith that whatever we want to do will always work out okay for us since we’re Americans and God is on our side (we're glorified). The end of the song stalks its prey, confident in the justness of its cause and secure in its right to be the master of life and death, ignoring the ghosts of past victims singing underneath Eddie.

Unfortunately, the sentiment is perhaps more interesting than the execution, since Glorified G is basically just one long cheap shot, nowhere moreso than in the chorus (glorified version of a pellet gun/feel so manly when armed) reducing all the complicated questions the song is raising at the margins to a ‘guns=compensation for some kind of inadequacy’. He’s practically begging for all gun owners to shoot themselves as he howls ‘always keep it loaded’ during the bridge. Eddie doesn’t do sarcasm nearly as well as he does sympathy or empathy. Had Glorified G been a song about a victim of gun violence I bet it could have been wonderful. Instead Glorified G is Soon Forget with more beers in its system. Rather than really trying to say something interesting he’s lashing out without subtlety. Appropriately enough for a song about guns, Glorified G is an exercise in self defense. He’s looking to wound since he feels wounded. On a song like Go or Animal, where he refuses to provide the listener with any real target, it works. He’s exorcising a demon, and the result is frightening at times, but compelling. But Glorified G wants to be concrete, which means its success is measured by a different standard. If you want a catchy riff and fun solos to be the backdrop for a middle finger it works. But you’re also left with a song that can’t aim very high either. 





OTHER SONGS IN THIS SERIES:
Go
Animal
Daughter
Glorified G
Dissident
W.M.A.
Blood
Rearviewmirror
Rats
Elderly Woman Behind the Counter in a Small Town
Leash
Indifference


OTHER GUIDED TOUR SERIES:
Vitalogy
Binaural 
Backspacer

Monday, April 25, 2011

Pearl Jam Radio Comes to Facebook


In celebration of their anniversary (May 3, 2010), Pearl Jam Radio has launched a Facebook page calling it "the new Official Home of Pearl Jam Radio."  This is a hub for the Internet stream (the XM Sirius station will still utilize it's own Facebook page).  Fans can look for updates about programming and general Pearl Jam news.  There's also some great, in-studio pictures and shots of The Rob hanging out with fans all over the globe.



Almost a year since our launch, this will be the new Official Home of Pearl Jam Radio. Tell all your PJ friends to come over and 'Like' this page and post your comments here from now on.

Friday, April 22, 2011

Movie Talk

Two quick updates on movies featuring Pearl Jam.


You can see Stone in the documentary, Dig It!, streaming now at http://www.dosomethingreel.com/.


... And, Rolling Stone got a little bit of info out of Cameron Crowe about the upcoming PJ20 movie [and his Elton John documentary, The Union].



Capturing the sessions for The Union was simpler because it was just "one creative burst," Crowe said. Pearl Jam Twenty, as the title indicates, encapsulates 20 years. Crowe was handed around 18 to 20 hours of footage to whittle down, and then he added new material shot over the last year and a half.

"It's the best souvenirs of the past," Crowe said. "Some fabled footage you've heard exists but have never seen, and some interviews. So while The Union was, 'How do we buff up thecinéma vérité?', Pearl Jam Twenty is, 'How do we do The Kids Are Alright of Pearl Jam, and sonic blast the best stuff?' It's a wider scope."
The subjects for each doc also have different relationships with the camera. "For Elton, the camera is a buddy," the director said. "Pearl Jam is not prone to opening the curtain the same way, and that is the challenge and delight of it."

It's OK Daughter Tag is the Mystery of the Day


Lots of mystery and rumor is swirling around this recording which appears to be a studio take of the It's OK [Dead Moon] tag at the end of a performance of Daughter.   No one knows of Pearl Jam ever adding a tag to Daughter in the studio.  Is this a soundcheck from the 2000 tour?  A rehearsal recording?  A fan club single teaser?  Is there more where this came from?

Thursday, April 21, 2011

KEXP Kicks Off "Grunge" Documentary Series with Green River



KEXP in Seattle has begun a new documentary series entitled Grunge.  One of our favorite Pearl Jam precursors is featured in episode 1.



Our new KEXP Documentary series “Grunge” is produced in collaboration with Experience Music Project and their “Nirvana” exhibit which opens this week.

In the early 80s, one of the first bands to combine guitar sounds from heavy metal with the energy and onstage fury of punk rock was Green River.   Growing out of the punk scene at one of Seattle’s few all-ages venues, the Metropolis, they were the group that kicked off “Deep Six” the first compilation of (what would later be called) grunge.   It was not only the raw, sludgy, slower guitar sound that makes this band important in the formation of grunge. But the members of Green River would go on to lead some of the biggest names in the genre.
Frontman Mark Arm and guitarist Steve Turner would later form Mudhoney.  And guitarist Stone Gossard and bassist Jeff Ament played in Mother Love Bone. After Mother Love Bone’s singer Andy Wood died from an overdose of heroin in 1990, Ament and Gossard went on to fame as part of Pearl Jam.

Tuesday, April 19, 2011

A Guided Tour of Vs.: Daughter



The most striking thing about Daughter is perhaps how inviting it is after the hurricane openers. The music warmly envelopes you at the start, and the song is a blank slate that Eddie slowly fills in during its initial moments with simple, but evocative images that set the scene for the familial psychodrama of the lyrics. There’s an immediate contrast between the music and the desolation of the scene. “Alone, listless, breakfast table in an otherwise empty room”. The imagery throughout the song is of family and home, places of peace, serenity, security. But something is clearly wrong. The violins(ence) lyric is artfully done, as on first blush it adds to the domestic tranquility of the scene (either the classical music playing in the background, or the child practicing her instrument like a dutiful daughter), but it hints at a deeper, American Beauty style undercurrent of fractured dysfunction, to say nothing of the song’s intimations that the subject is perhaps living out their fantasy from the confines of an institution, abandoned by anyone and everyone but herself. More than any other song on Vs. except perhaps RVM, Daughter returns to the theme of intimate betrayal and the struggle for survival in its aftermath.

There is a physical, emotional, even spiritual emptiness here. Whatever connectivity she feels to the world around her and the people in it is all illusory (it’s in her head) made more devastating by the subject’s desire for love, the eagerness to please. There’s no shelter from the earlier songs, although she keeps looking throughout Daughter, hoping to uncover it somewhere even as she refuses to surrender to the loneliness. The message is of course one of defiance—that even if the illusions of family and belonging aren’t real, the desire to find it, to rise above the broken world that makes it an illusion, is there. The song climaxes with the ‘She holds the hand that hold’s her down…she will rise above’ declaration, punctuated by a brief but cathartic solo that promises to cast aside the chains held in the hand. The final chorus follows with its “I don’t need you, I don’t need anyone, I can do this by myself’ mantra repeated with conviction over and over again.

But Daughter doesn’t end there. Instead you have the transition into the oturo that dials back the resistance. It’s much more tentative, nervous, less sure of its self. While Eddie whispers’ the shades go down’ the music starts to fade out and the listener is put in mind of someone walking down a long hall, away from the light of the small room that contains her spark, away from the hopes articulated during the climax into a dark, cold, uncertain future. You don’t hear the door slamming at the very end, but it may be that we’re just too far away to hear it. That might be even worse.

The key lyric here is the ‘shades go down.’ A shade keeps out the light. It traps us in darkness. It prevents us from seeing, whether it is the world around us, the people around us, or even ourselves. It traps us within our own ignorance, and speaks to a loss of agency that the record is railing against—the fact that the subject didn’t lower them herself, and would love to let the light in, if only she could figure out how.





OTHER SONGS IN THIS SERIES:
Go
Animal
Daughter
Glorified G
Dissident
W.M.A.
Blood
Rearviewmirror
Rats
Elderly Woman Behind the Counter in a Small Town
Leash
Indifference


OTHER GUIDED TOUR SERIES:
Vitalogy
Binaural 
Backspacer

Friday, April 15, 2011

Download a Free Mike McCready mp3!


Click here to hear the mp3 ... and click here to learn more.

So, You Want to Know About the Ukulele?

The New York Times has an impressive piece about the current "ukulele craze."  A friend of ours plays prominently in the story.



Not long ago it was an endangered species, usually encountered as cheap exotica or a comic prop. Now it permeates the culture to an extent that it hasn’t in more than half a century, turning up in Top 10 pop songs and fashionable indie-rock bands, in television commercials by the hundred and YouTube videos by the thousand. There definitely is something going on here.


....


Mr. Vedder’s album is halfway between the standard uke style and something more idiosyncratic. Respecting one of the instrument’s unwritten rules, he plays antique songs like “Dream a Little Dream of Me” and “Tonight You Belong to Me” (you may rememberSteve Martin and Bernadette Peters singing that one in “The Jerk”). And he exploits the sentimentality of the instrument for all it’s worth, singing lines like “For every wish upon a star that goes unanswered in the dark/There is a dream I’ve dreamt about you.” But on songs like “Can’t Keep,” he seems to be trying to cram an angst-y Pearl Jam song through the tiny instrument, attacking the strings.

Gas Up Your Van, Jason!





I imagine that Mudhoney's webmaster is getting a very angry phone call from Kelly Curtis after this little tidbit.



Mudhoney will tour Canada with Pearl Jam in September. They will play at least Montreal, Toronto, and Vancouver.

Thursday, April 14, 2011

Soundgarden Announce Tour Dates

Add a couple more dates to the "Pearl Jam's Definitely Not Doing Anything" list.  Matt's little Soundgarden side project has announced four North American dates this summer with a promise of more to come.




July 2: Toronto, ON: Molson Canadian Amphitheatre
July 13: Philadelphia, PA: Festival Pier at Penn's Landing
July 18: Denver, CO: Red Rocks Amphitheatre
July 22: Los Angeles, CA: The Forum


SoundgardenWorld has the presale information.

Wednesday, April 13, 2011

A Guided Tour of Vs.: Animal

ANIMAL


Animal and Go are sister songs, two sides of the same coin. There is probably no 1-2 combo in the catalog that connect in quite the same way that these do. Go is slightly more ferocious, while Animal is, in a curious way, somehow more melodic and gentle despite its aggression and anger. As befitting the title, the music practically growls at the listener, with the songs empty spaces and hanging notes giving the listener a chance to catch their breath, only to be attacked again (fitting given the rape overtones in the lyrics). It makes the song as relentless as Go even with its shifting moods.

Though the song is riddled with pauses there is no real reflection in Animal—Animal (like go) is an open wound too raw to heal. The questions it asks are practically howled ‘why would you want to hurt me? So frightened of your pain?’ but the song immediately retreats back into the doubled over, clenched hurt of the song. In a scary way, there is almost a sense of relief in that retreat. There is a wry, sardonic, almost dismissive tone that flits in and out of the main vocal where the subject almost seems to welcome the pain. It’s a drug, and they’re seeking it out even as they resent the need for it.

Where Go is a song about an abuser, Animal is a song about being abused, and it is easy to read rape into the song’s vague lyrical themes of assault and violation. Like Rats, the song claims that the worst excesses in human nature, the things we do to each other to escape from ourselves make us less than human, worse than animals—something more akin to a monster. Like Go Eddie’s vocal performance is surprisingly nuanced for such a (superficially) thematically simple song. We have the same compelling mixture of anger and desperation, but it’s mixed with undertones of judgment (not surprising, given the subject matter—and Mike’s soloing in this song sounds accusatory), even pity for attackers—for the loss of humanity that drives them to do what they do.

That may be the most interesting thing about the Go/Animal combination. We have a song about abusing and being abused, each largely devoid of context and substance (Go more than Animal). What matters in each song is the intensity of the experience. But the experiential difference between the two songs breaks down. It’s almost like there is no difference between being the aggressor and the victim. In either case you have a person whose life becomes defined by a sense of violation and betrayal, no matter which side of the exchange they are on. In neither case can the people involved see past the way the experience. It cuts them off, leaves them lost and diminished and unable to imagine life any other way. Thomas Jefferson once argued that slavery was just as devastating to whites as it was to blacks. The cost to blacks was obvious, but the damage being a master did to the characters of whites was just as harmful. Bracketing whether or not that’s actually the case there are still elements of that observation in these first two songs. These two songs might be about the same event, or even the same person. The difference between the two collapses into itself and we’re left with the realization that we’re trapped in a world frightened of its own pain, one that lashes out in violence rather than confront and contest the cause. It is just easier, and we risk less by killing off the part of us that wants more. Vs. is an inarticulate howl of protest against that all too human tendency to retreat, or revel in, everything that’s wrong. Despite the surface social critiques on the record, this record does not chronicle an individual’s war with society. Instead it is about our war with ourselves.

So Go and Animal set up the damaged emotional space that fills the first 2/3rds of the record. Going forward Vs. tries to diagnose our ills, or failing that at least find a more concrete target—someone or something we can blame— but every one of the songs running from Daughter through Blood (the missequenced Rats as well) starts from this same place. There is no real reflection in any of these songs—just the same heady combination of anger, frustration, judgment, and reactionary pain. 




OTHER SONGS IN THIS SERIES:
Go
Animal
Daughter
Glorified G
Dissident
W.M.A.
Blood
Rearviewmirror
Rats
Elderly Woman Behind the Counter in a Small Town
Leash
Indifference


OTHER GUIDED TOUR SERIES:
Vitalogy
Binaural 
Backspacer

Lucky!





Gil Kaufman, from Behind the Scenes Music, recently paid a visit to Pearl Jam Headquarters.  Check out the story of his tour.  Here are some excerpts:



One of the conference rooms in the smartly appointed offices featured images of the band with various dignitaries, from President Obama to Bruce Springsteen. The most intriguing was a shot of Beyonce and Jay-Z walking through the bowels of Madison Square Garden and gawking at a photo of PJ singer Eddie Vedder. Right next to that was a set-up sequel of Vedder looking equally astonished at a photo of the hip-hop supercouple.


...


The next room was a PJ fan's, well, nirvana, jammed with giant stage props from various tours, a set of surfboards with airbrushed images of the band that was a gift from their Australian label and giant metal racks lined with guitar cases, snare drums and mic stands. At the back of the room was a large carpeted rehearsal space tricked out with a vintage Elton John Captain Fantastic pinball machine, the entertainment system the group takes on the road, a massive Ramones stage-curtain backdrop and a haunting painting of the band's longtime producer and friend, Brendan O'Brien, nailed to a cross.


We walked through to the sports lounge, with its skating half-pipe and the honorary Johnny Ramone baseball lending library, with the many volumes of baseball biographies collected by Vedder's old pal and punk icon, as well as some of Johnny's baseball autograph books, trading cards and a baseball glove-shaped easy chair.

He even treated us to a mini-review of Ed's upcoming, Ukulele Songs.
There, Bierman gave us a preview of Vedder's upcoming solo album, Ukulele Songs, including the swaying, Hawaiian reverie "Satellite" (sample lyric, "Don't think I'm out playin'/ Because I'm inside waiting for you") and the spare, throwback Everly Brothers cover "Sleepless Nights," featuring the perfectly meshed voices of Vedder and the Frames' Glen Hansard.

Get Thee to a Record Store! ... this Saturday

Sorry for jumping the gun on Record Store Day.  I'm just so danged excited!

Sunday, April 10, 2011

Karaoke with Mike

I can only imagine how this show would play out, but every scenario that I come up with is awesome!



Saturday 4/30, 12pm 
Live Band Karaoke w/ Chris Friel Orchestra featuring Mike McCready with other guests to benefit CCFA Team Challenge


General Admission: $10.00 ($12.00 with fees)


General Admission w/ raffle ticket to enter to sing with the band: $25.00 ($27.00 with fees)

Friday, April 8, 2011

Videos, Anyone?

OK, so Mike McCready has tweeted more in 4 days than most people have tweeted in their lives.  Here's a nice video of him on the Seattle show New Day Northwest.







And, after an 11-month hiatus, Mr. Abbruzzese has given us an old performance of Hard to Imagine.







Thanks, Dave, you are absolutely en fuego on the reissues!

April 8: Flight to Mars in Seattle

Thursday, April 7, 2011

Sirius News: 4/6/2011




Last night's guests on All Encompassing Trip were Laura Trafton, Executive Director of the Wishlist Foundation, Chris Adams, former Board Member of the CCFA, and Pearl Jam guitarist, Mike McCready.



  • The show was dedicated to the Flight to Mars benefit show scheduled for this Friday featuring Mike's UFO cover band, Flight to Mars, Buckets of Rain, and Lazy Susan.
  • Mike gave a great explanation of his struggles with Crohn's Disease and how he got involved with CCFA.
  • Tim Bierman confirmed that @MikeMcCreadyPJ is actually Mike.
  • Through a little bumbling of a question, Mike accidentally confirmed that Alpine Valley, WI is the favorite site for the PJ20 Festival.
  • Mike confirmed that there was an unreleased Mad Season album called Disinformation. There are rough demos, but it is unlikely that the album will be recorded and released.  A possible Live at the Moore Theater DVD or album may be more likely.






As always, if you missed it, Gremmie.Net archives episodes of All Encompassing Trip for your on-demand enjoyment.

A Guided Tour of Vs.: Go


In honor of the Vs./Vitalogy box set it seems like as good a time as any to put together a walkthrough of Vs. Let me start by making the disclaimer that this is entirely an interpretative work. These are my own thoughts on what I think these songs are about and how they fit together, both as a record and as a chapter in the larger story that is told throughout the catalog. I make no claims to this being definitive.

In a lot of ways Vs. is the most simplistic of all of Pearl Jam’s records. For all the straight ahead bombast in its sound Ten grapples with feelings of betrayal in a pretty nuanced way. Albums like Riot Act and Binaural deal with a loss of agency. Yield and No Code look for transcendence. Backspacer is a nuanced exploration of one particular moment. Vs., on the other hand, is anger and self-righteous aggression, but devoid of the context found on S/T or the synthesis on Vitalogy. It is a record that spends its time lashing out, desperate for a target, before finally exhausting itself. It’s a wounded, cornered animal, which is pretty much the shape the band was in at the time. 

Vs., more than any other Pearl Jam album, feels like a collection of songs. They all fit, but few of them are essential to the record, since its story is the cataloging of essentially interchangeable moments of judgment. At least in the record’s first half. Towards the end of the album they try to process the anger to turn it into something productive. Whether or not it is effective remains to be seen.

So as always, thank you to everyone who reads, participates (my posts are hopefully where discussion begins, rather than ends), and watches me try to come up with 20 pages of synonyms for being pissed off.


GO


(A Guided Tour: Vs.)
Go has, bar none, the most bad ass intro of any song in Pearl Jam’s catalog, with its ominous rumbling and skittering guitars setting the scene before exploding into the gut punch of the song proper. The music bores into you, barreling along with an inexorable power that will not be denied, punctuated by Mike’s blistering solos and the siren of the guitars. The music slams you down right into the middle of a riot in full swing, the mob surging forward and the authorities pushing back, committing acts of violence against a force that refuses to yield, until they both destroy themselves. The banshee backing vocals add to the overall affect, the sense that Eddie is singing for many, who all come together for that one desperate Please. There may not be a song in their entire catalog that hits as hard as this one.

Eddie strikes the perfect mix of pleading intensity and primal fury, the sound of someone who knows their desire is just but somehow tainted, and in the heat of the moment, can no longer quite articulate the reasons why. The song begins with him sounding regretful, standing over the bed (or slab) of someone he has grievously wrong, perhaps unintentionally, but the innocence through which we create the structures that poison us makes it even worse (this is what they cover so effectively in Comatose). 

We don’t know what precisely happened (I used to imagine, perhaps arbitrarily, this was a song about aids or some kind of STD ‘I swear I never took it for granted, just thought of it now/Suppose I abused you, just passing it on’), nor do we know who his nemesis is (it could be someone else, it could be his reflection in the mirror) but this is all deliberately vague, either because Eddie doesn’t know or he’s reluctant to fill in the blanks. He’s losing something—it could be a person, it could be something inside himself, it could be something external, but in either case it is something he is desperate to keep. This is why half of what Eddies screams in the second half of the song is so hard to understand. The substance is irrelevant. This song is force of nature, and commits the listener on the basis of its power and immediacy and the absolute conviction with which Eddie sings about something even he doesn’t understand.



OTHER SONGS IN THIS SERIES:
Go
Animal
Daughter
Glorified G
Dissident
W.M.A.
Blood
Rearviewmirror
Rats
Elderly Woman Behind the Counter in a Small Town
Leash
Indifference


OTHER GUIDED TOUR SERIES:
Vitalogy
Binaural 
Backspacer

Wednesday, April 6, 2011

Meet Your Blogger: Mike McCready

OK, well, we'll work on that, and to be honest, we're not 100% positive this is Mike, tweeting away like his life depended on it, but we think it is. If it turns out to be a hoax, we'll issue a mea culpa. If not, well, we're super glad to see a steady stream of posting coming out of one of the top two guitarists in the world.




You can also check out his blog on tumblr.

All That's Sacred, Episode #79

All That's Sacred, Episode #79 is now available.


So far this year, it has been all about the side projects. For the moment, the guys seem focused on expressing themselves through different avenues before reuniting later this year to celebrate PJ20 properly. That being the case and being such a fan of all the guy's musical contributions outside Pearl Jam, I thought ATS #79 was the perfect opportunity to take a listen to what was, what is, and what will be in this sonic arena. Some excellent music to be explored - especially for the uninitiated.

In the immediate future, we have Flight To Mars blowing the roof off the Showbox this Friday benefiting CCFA and Advocacy For Patients. This night has become one of the highlights of my year and you owe it to yourself to be there if you are anywhere near the Seattle area.

Trust everyone is well and psyched for the EV solo tour to hold us over through the summer. Here's hoping Ten Club dishes the dirt soon on the PJ20 festivities so we can all plan the rest of our year.


















Monday, April 4, 2011

Ukulele Songs Album Art Revealed

... but it teeny tiny.  See it way down there in this ad for his Seattle appearance?






Vs./Vitalogy iTunes LP

iTunes is offering the Vs. and Vitalogy Reissues as an iTunes LP, a format with added content and nicely rendered liner notes.  The set includes the remastered albums with bonus tracks, the CD edit of the Orpheum show, audio of the Self Pollution mix tape, and artwork from the boxed set composition notebook


It's available at the iTunes store for $24.99 US, a price that will make obtaining the composition book and mix tape an affordable option for a lot of fans.


Blue Red and Yellow

Upon the retirement of his Piston's #10 jersey has a request. [at the 3:20 mark]







"If I had music to play me to walk out out.  I would recommend that they play Pearl Jam's 'I'm Still Alive.'"

Friday, April 1, 2011

A Guided Tour of Vitalogy: Immortality and Stupid Mop

IMMORTALITY

Although Stupid Mop is the end of the album, Immortality is the climax, where all the questions that have been running through the record are revisited and where the subject sees what he has learned and tries to resolve his issues as best he can.

It’s clear from the message from a family member in the liner notes that death was on Eddie’s mind, and the picture of the Indian Chief Big Bear, looking 80 and so young and at peace is included as a reminder that a long, happy life is possible, but Immortality is not a song about aging—it’s a song about learning to cope with life so that even thinking about aging becomes possible. On page 28 in the booklet there is an index/glossary and immortality is one of the words. Its definition is ‘ability to live by dying’ and this is as good a place to start as any. There’s a seeming contradiction in this definition as it argues that only by dying can we live, and certainly there is an extent to which the song takes this idea seriously—that we can end up being so overwhelmed and overrun with life that only by letting go of it can we find the space we need to truly exist. But we can also interpret this more in line with a more life-affirming theme that runs throughout Pearl Jam’s entire catalogue—the need to let go and emancipate yourself from the thoughts, expectations, and demands of others so that we can find the space necessary to take stock of our lives, find peace, and if need be, start over. 

As a song, Immortality (and really the record as a whole) is a battle between these two definitions. It’s why the record starts with Last Exit. The album is a last desperate attempt to create the space necessary to take control of a life that has spiraled out of control. It has to end, either by making peace with it and finding a way to cope, or by finding a new type of life, an immortality in suicide where you’ll live forever without pain, hurt, or obligation.

The music at the start (and running throughout) is heavy, loaded with a sense of both foreboding and expectation while still managing to be open enough to allow for the movement and soul searching in the lyrics. They really could not have set the mood more perfectly than they did.

Immortality opens with one of the more compelling opening lyrics in the catalogue (‘vacate is the word’) and vacate was an expertly chosen word with which to begin the song. While it can imply a sense of leaving what it actually means is empty, and the entire first verse describes the emotionally void and hollow existence that the subject is living, a life without comfort, without meaningful connections (artificial tears), that seems to chew up and spit out everyone it can get its hands on. It is nearly impossible to find your bearings in a life like this—wisdom can’t adhere. It’s a lonely verse for a lonely existence.

Moving into the chorus, the truant is clearly the subject of the song. Given the context of the album I take the ‘home’ to be the meaning found in art and music, the power that it has to heal and the community that it can create, and to live in that space is the wish that he wants to hold on, but it is abstract enough that the listener can insert their own source of meaning. The sun takes us back to the opening of the record and the chorus of Last Exit. The sun illuminates and punishes us with its light, warms us and burns us—we need it, but if we get too close to it we’re lost—a metaphor for the way in which the culture industry uses up and destroys art and artists. There’s a way out—a trapdoor in the sun and through that door immortality? We don’t know, and that’s what the song wants to find out, if the only life possible is the one granted by death, or if we can find a different type of escape.

The second verse situates the song much more squarely in the context of the record—acknowledging that the life, the fame, leave you feeling used, like you’ve lost control of the most intimate aspects of yourself. The industry is merciless, using people up and spitting them out as quickly as it can, without any concern for art or artist—all sacrificed in the name of money and trends and swept out through the crack beneath the door (it isn’t even opened to allow for a graceful, dignified exit). Earlier on the record (Bugs especially) the subject had contemplated surrender—abandoning the rock and just choosing to play the game, but it’s clear in the end that this is no real option (a myth, according to the liner notes. The part of you that surrenders, that achieves a type of immortality, isn’t really you. If you surrender you’re executed anyway, you lose the part of yourself that matters, that is authentically yours, watching your words and art lose their meaning and fade away (the scrawl dissolved….and the cigar box is allegedly the place where eddie stores his lyrics)

We have a quiet, meditative solo gradually building in urgency, the whispered thought of immortality leading into the final, frantic verse. The subject is getting desperate—he cannot stop the thought of suicide, of the need for escape. He’s utterly lost, running in the dark (ironic given the close proximity of the sun) and he realizes that he has to make a choice. He can’t stay where he is, as the longer he remains the more of himself he loses, stripped, sold, auctioned, no longer his. He can choose life or he can choose immortality. As is fitting for Eddie’s writing the choice isn’t made for us—we don’t know what he chooses or what we ourselves should do, and the music essentially freezes in place, continuing for a minute and a half without really going anywhere, leaving us stuck at these crossroads.

I think we can draw some conclusions though, especially given the evidence we have after the fact, and it is worth drawing them here as I think this is the real climax of the album. The entire record is utterly empathetic to the choice of suicide. Not endorsing it, but understanding the feeling of being trapped, claustrophobic, like you’ve lost complete and utter control over who you are. And it understands that many of the things in life that give us meaning, music, art, passion, love, are tenuous and easily corruptible, and that in their perversions they become a source of weakness, not strength. But throughout the record there are these moments of, if not hope, at least fight and determination. While it understands the motivations behind suicide it rejects it and chooses life, choosing it because the struggle for authenticity and for love has meaning, and because the purest forms of happiness require the kind of love and solidarity you cannot find alone. Immortality cannot be the answer as it is a move we have to make by ourselves, and the lesson in Vitalogy, and throughout their catalogue, is that even while no one can create our standards for us, or move the rock for us, even though we have to do these things ourselves, we cannot do them alone. The possibility of love makes the struggle, no matter how difficult, worth it in the end.



HEY FOXYMOPHANDLEMAMA, THAT'S ME

Originally I looked at Stupid Mop as just a weird art piece, a sort of fuck you to the music industry—“Look what the biggest band in the world is sticking onto its latest album” It is hard to imagine a piece less commercial, less prone to commodification, than that one. The singer who made the band famous isn’t even on it. And I still think there is some truth to that. It’s not the only story, but it is one. I also think that’s one of the reasons why Supid Mop is the last track on the record. In a time before CDs were the exclusive vehicle for listening to music I don’t think they wanted to interrupt the flow of the record. Stupid Mop was there because there was nowhere else to really put it.




But I also think Stupid Mop serves a purpose, although I don’t think it is about Eddie. It’s the road not taken, in a sense. There is nothing said in Stupid Mop that hasn’t really been said elsewhere on the record, in Eddie’s own voice. I described the end of Immortality as a crossroads, where he has to choose suicide/immortality or life. We never learn the choice but the clues are there throughout the record that he’ll choose life in the end, even if it is the difficult choice. And he does that because despite it all he has art and meaning in his life, inspiration and love. And as long as those are there, as long as he has outlets like this record, he’ll make it in the end. The subject of Stupid Mop lacks these things. In fact, what makes the song so creepy is the desperate, sad, almost pathetic desire of the main character for the love and clarity that she lacks. The closest she can approximate to love is violence (shades of Betterman) as any contact and any connection has become meaningful and intimate. The closest she can come to expressing her trauma is her inane ramblings about her mop and her ability to clean the floor. It’s also a cold, clinical song, and I think that’s also deliberate—Ed’s disdain for the way we treat emotional and psychological distress—the lack of empathy and compassion. The pictures in the booklet there are telling. Two Victorian looking men preparing to lecture young people about the straight and narrow life (tellingly, the last thing listed under the lecture subjects is ‘On industry and economy the highway to wealth and fame’ exactly the bloodless worldview that the record rails against).

And so Stupid Mop is not about Eddie’s state of mind. We saw his state of mind in the rest of the record, and I think if this was meant to reflect Eddie it would have been in his voice, and likely in song. Vitalogy is already such a nakedly personal record that it’s not like the thoughts conveyed in Stupid Mop would have been too much. It’s a character study---where anyone could end up without the kind of support that we need to make life meaningful and worth living. The ‘would you kill yourself, yes I believe I would’ is too hamfisted to be a cry for help, and his description in an interview of Stupid Mop as the ‘most moving song we’ve written to date’ makes more sense if it is Eddie writing about someone else, as he historically places his own experiences as secondary to those of others. I think it would have worked even better as a hidden track a la master/slave, but unfortunately for myself I wasn’t the one arranging the record. It adds some interesting flavor at the end—where Eddie could have ended up without love and music, without Beth, Pete Townsend, the band, and Vitalogy—his last exit.

If you made it to the end thanks for reading and thank you to everyone who participated!

* For a take on Stupid Mop as one of the truly essential tracks on Vitalogy I can’t do better than to refer you to Angus’ piece in his SOTM thread, which is as close to a definitive pro-stupid mop take that you’re gonna get. But since I don’t entirely agree with his take I can’t fully endorse it either, for all its excellence.


OTHER SONGS IN THIS SERIES


OTHER GUIDED TOUR SERIES:
Binaural 
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