Pearl Jam Coming to Rocksmith

Owners of the game Rocksmith are getting a chance to score some great downloadable content next week.  Ubisoft has announced that Pearl Jam songs will be available starting February 7th.

Given To Cast - Episode 1-30-2012

Given To Cast - Episode 1-30-2012 is now available

The latest podcast is up! Check it out for your chance to win a copy of the TEN CD. Just answer the Trivia Contest question correctly and your name will be placed in the hat and one lucky winner will be notified ... Send all your answers to mario@givnetocast.net with subject TRIVIA CONTEST. Please be sure to add your name and your email address. Correct answers must be received by Feb.11th at 11:59 pm cst. Good luck and enjoy!!!

Glenn Case "Thank God for Pearl Jam"

If you live in Seattle, you probably know Glenn Case's work on the walls of Easy Street (or so I hear).  MyNorthwest.com published a nice article about his work today complete with homage to an analog world.

"The idea is to let people realize that things are still done by hand and we're not just slaves to buttons, even though it seems like that sometimes," Case says. "The owner of Easy Street is very interested in getting that message across; that it's sort of old school and nostalgic, when things still come from people."

The PJ Show, The JAXT4

The views, opinions, pronunciations of Jeff Ament's name or claims expressed by the staff of The PJ Show and those providing comments are theirs alone, and do not necessarily reflect the views, opinions, pronunciations or claims of The Sky I Scrape, Red Mosquito, or any employee thereof. 

24 Hours to Deadline

If you plan on attending an Eddie solo show, you now have 24 hours left to enter the 10C ticket drawings.

January 29: Soundgarden in Melbourne

The PJ Show, Bonus! Chad's Top 11

Is this "Chad" a real person?  It remains to be seen.

January 26: Soundgarden in Sydney

January 25: Soundgarden in Sydney

Chimes of Freedom: The Songs of Bob Dylan

Pete Townshend has confirmed that Eddie Vedder joined him on his cover of Corrina, Corrina for Chimes Of Freedom: The Songs Of Bob Dylan Honoring 50 Years Of Amnesty International.  You can buy the song or the album, which also contains tracks from Pearl Jam friends such as Queens of the Stone Age, My Morning Jacket, and Tom Morello, right now at Amazon.com.

South America 2011, Now In Goods Section

Well, at least some of them ... 

Sao Paulo I & II and Rio de Janeiro are now available as a bootleg CD or digital download.  More to come!

And So, It's Ed. April 11 - May 16

Apr-11  Las Vegas, NV: The Pearl
Apr-13  Phoenix, AZ: Comerica Theater
Apr-16  Albuquerque, NM:  Kiva Auditorium
Apr-19  Tulsa, OK:  Brady Theater
Apr-22  Houston, TX: Jones Hall for the Performing Arts
Apr-25  San Antonio, TX: Lila Cockrell Theatre
Apr-27  Austin, TX: Bass Concert Hall
Apr-30  Dallas, TX: The Music Hall at Fair Park
May-03  New Orleans, LA: New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival
May-08  Jacksonville, FL: Moran Theater
May-10  Clearwater, FL: Ruth Eckerd Hall
May-13  Ft. Lauderdale, FL: Broward Center for the Performing Arts
May-16  Orlando, FL: Bob Carr Performing Arts Center


No F5ing this time, folks.  This is a drawing situation.  Below are some rules, that I think you need to know, but you should definitely review the full list on the Pearl Jam website.

• All eliible members will receive step-by-step instructions on how to enter the drawing via email.
• Ten Club will begin accepting drawing submissions Monday January 23rd at 9AM PST. The deadline to enter the drawing ends on Monday January 30th at 9AM PST.
• Ten Club tickets for the EV solo tour will NOT be seniority based. Tickets are being held in unspecified locations throughout the venues. Seat allocation will be chosen at random and will also be chosen in advance of the performance date. Lining up outside the venue early will not affect your seat location.
• You may enter your name into the drawing for more than one show, but you will only be eligible to be selected for ONE SHOW ON THIS TOUR.
• The May 3rd New Orleans Jazz Festival will not have a Ten Club pre-sale.

• To better serve our fans we have created a pre-sale page on the site to communicate with you faster. This page will be updated in real time as the pre-sale progresses. You can find the answers to frequently asked questions, as well as immediate updates from Ten Club on where we are at the ticket drawing process each step of the way. Visit http://www.pearljam.com/presale for FAQ and Pre-sale timeline.

P.S. - Thanks to TwoFeetThick for typing out the shows in an easily copied/pasted format.

January 22: Soundgarden in Gold Coast

The PJ Show, Episode 2, Part 2

The PJ Show, Episode 2: My Top 11 Fav (part II) is now available.

continued... Paul goes on to finish his top 11 fav Pearl Jam songs of all time + Bonus....

....but wait, where is Chad's list?

Announcement .... Coming!

Sayeth the Ten Club:

A little birdy told us to be sure your memberships are up to date by this Sunday afternoon.

Have a nice weekend, all.

xo

The PJ Show, Episode #2

The PJ Show, Episode 2: My Top 11 Fav (part I) is now available.

Join Paul for this TOP 11 list of his favourite Pearl Jam tracks of all time (part I). Agree or Disagree? Let us know below, or private message us. Enjoy.

January 20: Soundgarden in Aukland

Act Now: PROTECT IP / SOPA Breaks the Internet [Video]

I'm not going to take the step to shut down TSIS for the day, but nonetheless, it seems important that everyone know about Protect IP and SOPA. Pearl Jam, though their known as a band who made use of the Internet to grow their fan base at a very early stage, has not taken a stance. That doesn't mean you can't.

PROTECT IP / SOPA Breaks The Internet from Fight for the Future on Vimeo.

ACT NOW: PROTECT IP / SOPA Breaks the Internet [Video]:

IMPORTANT: Tell Congress not to censor the internet NOW! (Click!)

PROTECT-IP is a bill that has been introduced in the Senate and the House and is moving quickly through Congress. It gives the government and corporations the ability to censor the net, in the name of protecting “creativity”. The law would let the government or corporations censor entire sites– they just have to convince a judge that the site is “dedicated to copyright infringement.”

The government has already wrongly shut down sites without any recourse to the site owner. Under this bill, sharing a video with anything copyrighted in it, or what sites like Youtube and Twitter do, would be considered illegal behavior according to this bill.

Related posts:

1. The Night the Lights Went Out for SOPA
2. Tumblr “Censorship” Draws Users’ Attention to SOPA
3. SOPA Cabana: Dan Bull’s Anti-SOPA Rap [Video]

A Guided Tour of Riot Act: B-sides and Outtakes

(A Guided Tour of Riot Act)
DOWN, UNDONE, & OTHER SIDE
Riot Act is potentially a thematically ambiguous album. I hear it as a document of defeat, a response to a world that has broken the faith, optimism, and dogged determination that characterizes the rest of the catalogue. There are some potentially hopeful moments in the record but with only one clear exception (I Am Mine) I think they are songs where the singer is trying to convince himself that the old faith still holds, and he ultimately fails. The lyrics are potentially ambiguous, and reading a happy ending into Riot Act makes some sense given the band’s general take on these questions, but that’s not my interpretation, for a few reasons. Beyond just my particular take on the lyrics the cover art, the music, and eddie’s vocal delivery all speak in defense of Riot Act as an album written in retreat, rather than defiance. But the biggest support for my view is, I think, the exclusion of Down and Undone from the record.

These are the only two unconditionally positive songs on the record—the moments of light missing from an otherwise dark album, and there is no reason not to include them if that was the message the band wanted us to take from Riot Act. In fact, the message doesn’t work without it. Without them the only clear moment of triumph is I am Mine, and that is buried in the middle of the album, a temporary moment where the swimmer’s head breaks the water before they start the slow drowning of the rest of the record.

If I was tracking Riot Act to be a positive record I’d probably start, rather than finish the record, with All or None, which is so depressing as to be almost unlistenable, and get the down numbers (All or None, ½ Full, Ghost, Help Help, Cropduster, Thumbing My Way) out of the way and use Down as your pivotal transformation track, as the lyrics essentially tell the triumphant story that the band excluded from the record. It starts from the funk the singer disappears into at the end of Ghost, and while both are heavier, guitar driven songs, Ghost sounds like an engine dying whereas Down is the sound of it gunning back to life. The riff is infectious, the sound is rich, and the moment in the beginning where the band comes in after a few iterations of the riff (with the drum roll) is like shocking a heartbeat back into existence. Eddie has more enthusiasm here than on almost any other song on the album and he walks us through the dark journey he’s been on before he was able to reclaim his faith.

Down. Fall by the wayside no getting out.
Down. Cry me a river dried up and dammed.
The names can be changed but the place is still the same.
I am loaded. Told that all's for naught. Holds me down.

He acknowledges the depths to which he’s fallen, the sense of feeling trapped, the utter lack of agency. He universalizes the experience (the names can be changed but the place is still the same), but he’s describing a place he’s been, rather than the place he is.

The song continues with a command (one of the few, if only on the record). He demands that we rise, that we accept responsibility for, if not making the world, then changing it, and the act of engagement itself is the best cure for depression (think I’ll throw these pills away), and leaves us with his reminder that if he can ascend from his darkness than anyone can escape from theirs. The song ends with a moment of defiance, a refusal to surrender his light to the encroaching darkness, before the song finishes with Mike’s celebratory solo (more playful than cathartic, but clearly the sound of a person unbowed by the world around them.

Undone backs away from the churning optimism of Down. It’s a less assertive song musically and vocally, the sound of someone maintaining themselves after a hard fought battle. The groove (this is musically one of my favorite moments in their catalogue) is more reflective and patient than Down, the lessons less immediate, more considered.

The song begins with a homecoming, with the singer returning to a place of safety, comfort, love, and stability after a long time away, and Undone conveys that beautifully, that feeling of finally being able to exhale after a long, tense, moment

The second verse tells us where the singer has been, his homeland occupied (exactly the right word to use although its power is diminished by the ‘corporations rule the day’ lyric which lacks any subtlety and is too much a cliché) and affirms his hope that none of this is permanent, that we can fight back, that having lost a battle does not mean you need to surrender the field, which the pendulum lyrics do a great job conveying (well you know the pendulum throws/farther out to the one side swinging/has to sweep back the other way). He has found his lost faith in his community and himself, enough that he is prepared to join the fight once again, sloughing off the hopeless depression that had left him paralyzed (summarizing Down in the bridge couplet ‘all this hope and nowhere to go/this is how I used to feel but no more). The chorus makes all of this clear. His use of the word Undone is well chosen. It is less that his world has been trampled and destroyed as much as it has been picked apart piece by piece, and we don’t need to put the entire thing back together at once. We can rebuild one battle at a time. It is precisely by moving the fight from an impossible need to create a utopia to a series of discrete engagements that we can move forward---the wave needs to build before it breaks, and we cannot construct it alone.

If these songs were included in Riot Act I’d have a very different impression of the record, but I take their inclusion to be a sign that the band was not ready to reembrace their fighting faith. At least, not yet. They ran from the optimism of these songs, and if they were not willing to stand by it here I have a hard time teasing it out of the record as a whole. These songs can’t be on Riot Act because their inclusion means Riot Act is no longer Riot Act. This was not the story they wanted to tell

Interestingly enough, Other Side could have done quite well on Riot Act. I don’t think it is a particularly good song and am glad they left it off, but it fits the record far better than either Down or Undone. It is one of the most miserably hopeless songs in their entire catalogue, with every lyric just digging the singer deeper into his whole. It is a song chronicling a near total collapse of joy, faith, meaning, and even agency, with the concluding image of the singer trapped in himself, begging for a way out that he knows he can’t provide himself. 

That's Riot Act in a nutshell. There is no space for Down and Undone on a record like that. I am Mine works, but only insofar as it gives us a brief moment of hope that makes the subsequent decline all the more tragic


OTHER SONGS IN THIS SERIES: 
Can't Keep 
Save You 
Love Boat Captain 
Cropduster 
Ghost 
 I Am Mine 
Thumbing My Way 
You Are 
Get Right 
Green Disease 
Help Help 
Bu$hleaguer 
1/2 Full 
Arc 
All Or None   
B-Sides & Outtakes

OTHER GUIDED TOUR SERIES: 
Vs. 
Vitalogy
Binaural 
Riot Act
Backspacer

the PJ show Debuts

While we've been waiting for the return of All Encompassing Trip, All That's Sacred, and Given to Cast, we've been running a bit of a podcast vacuum.  the PJ show aims to fill the void with a YouTube show discussing all the minutia that Pearl Jam fans love.  Check it out.  Like it.  Support it.  We're looking forward to seeing it grow into a regular fan discussion.

A Guided Tour of Riot Act: All or None

(A Guided Tour of Riot Act)
ALL OR NONE
All or None is a stark, desolate song, and more than any other number on Riot Act puts me in mind of the cover art. It surveys a broken, defeated planet, country, and self, and wonders what, if anything, we can do next. And ultimately there is no answer, which is what makes Riot Act both so tragic and ultimately unsatisfying.

In terms of musical craft All or None is a fairly strong number—there is a richness and fullness underneath the primary guitar line, but it serves primarily to highlight just how desolate the soundscape is. Each strum rings out clearly against the silence, and the fills that punctuate the song sound alternately like sighs and tears, and Mike’s outro solo is weighted down with sadness and despair. There is emotion, but no real catharsis, because there is no way out. This quite possibly the loneliest song Pearl Jam has ever written (Thumbing My Way might top it, but TMW lacks the beauty and majesty found in All or None).

As is standard for the album here Eddie sounds tired, weary, exhausted, but here he finally embraces what he had been attempting to deny for the rest of the record. The first lyrics could not be more appropriate

“It’s a hopeless situation and I’m starting to believe that this hopeless situation is what I’m trying to achieve.”

The first part of the lyric is simple enough, lacking even the strength that comes from confrontation and discovery. Admitting this is not empowering the same way the dark revelations of Betterman or Rearview Mirror prove to be. You cannot emancipate yourself until you learn to see your prison, but sometimes the bars are solid and the locks are strong and there really is no way out. You’re left not with a prelude to redemption but a confirmation of failure. The baggage of an entire record, 14 prior songs, is nicely summarized in that one simple lyric.

The second part of the line (the hopeless situation is what I’m trying to achieve) is a bit more challenging. There is self-recrimination here. He’s clearly on the verge of giving up, and chastising himself for it, for the acceptance of his new dark and dismal world. 

The second verse is meant to steel his nerves. ‘The selfless confession leading me back to war’—the desire not to quit, to keep walking (a throwback to TMW, Ghost, LBC, Green Disease, and every other song on the record that used movement as a central image), even though he is convinced that there is nothing new waiting for him. If he is going to surrender, he vows (weakly, a tired vow coming from a lonely place) that it will be to himself, to his own grim defiance and stubborn determination. Better to be miserable and faithful than coexist in a happy, or at least benign, acceptance of the world he’s now forced to inhabit

The chorus, therefore, is meant to be an affirmation—a call to arms, to still run on, despite the odds. It’s not quite as habitual as it is in Thumbing my Way, where he walks on thanks to muscle memory more than any conscious choice, but the lack of belief, or even faith, is apparent, and we’re left wondering why he’s even bothering. The fact that he uses the word try “I still try to run on” rather than the more determinate will “I will run on” shows the paralyzing doubt (compare this to the confidence and stubborn defiance in a song like Indifference) Even the emotional climax going into the final chorus is something of an anti-climax, his voice trying to take flight but finding itself grounded, unable to pull it off, and the wordless vocalizations that are his final contribution to the album are deflated, far too burdened by what he’s seen and experienced to be inspirational.

And the record closes with Mike’s solo, one of his saddest pieces on record, gradually fading off into silence, no end in sight. There is no resolution, no hope, no fight, just a primal sadness directed at how far we’ve fallen, and the impossible heights we would need to climb to ever see light again.

It’s a melodramatic conclusion perhaps, but Riot Act is a crisis of faith, the first time in the band’s history where they no longer had faith in the future, no longer believed that the fight itself could invest life with meaning. In retrospect this was all temporary, and looking back we can see the sparks of resistance are still there, buried deep perhaps but still alive, and ready to come roaring back to life with the explosive beginning to the self-titled record, the record the band HAD To make to follow up Riot Act, a reaffirmation in the face of the totalizing doubt of this record. 

We saw this shift begin almost as soon as the band hit the road—the feeling of solidarity that comes from being in a room with tens of thousands of people who share, if not your politics, than your heart—the communal good will that is at the core of the live experience—all of this gives you a foundation from which you can remind yourself that you’re not alone, that the darkness isn’t quite as permanent, quite as all encompassing, as it can sometimes appear. It was not an easy journey back, but it had begun.

As a final ‘official’ thought, I clearly have a dark interpretation of Riot Act—the first moment in Pearl Jam’s catalogue where there is no light, or, more accurately, that the light that’s there is extinguished during the course of the record. I think it is important to pay attention to the way Riot Act was crafted in order to make sense of what the band wanted to do. They could have made it an album of redemption, but they didn’t. Songs like undone and down were left off the record because they did not fit, and by that the band really means thematically. They don’t fit because that is not the story the band wanted to tell. Had they chosen to end the record with Love Boat Captain or I Am Mine, or even You Are, it might make sense to go back and interpret songs like TMW and All or None slightly more optimistically, and of course we’re all entitled to listen to the record we want to hear. But I don’t think it is the story the band wanted to tell. They have an entire catalogue full of redemption. We don’t need to force it into the spaces that it was never intended to fit, and now that we know the ultimate story has a happy ending, there shouldn’t be a need.

    
OTHER SONGS IN THIS SERIES: 
Can't Keep 
Save You 
Love Boat Captain 
Cropduster 
Ghost 
 I Am Mine 
Thumbing My Way 
You Are 
Get Right 
Green Disease 
Help Help 
Bu$hleaguer 
1/2 Full 
Arc 
All Or None   

OTHER GUIDED TOUR SERIES: 
Vs. 
Vitalogy
Binaural 
Backspacer

Pearl Jam Adds Berlin and Prague

Pearl Jam has added two shows to their European Tour: Prague (July 2) and Berlin (July 5).  Ten Club members hoping to attend will have to enter a drawing for tickets.  You can find the eligibility details and drawing instructions on their website.

Pearl Jam Lyric Tournament: The Finals!!!

Voting open 1/9-1/16

127. I wish I was the verb 'to trust' and never let you down
vs.

All that's sacred comes from youth/Dedications naive and true

PJ Song Lyric Tournamnet: Semi-Finals

Voting open 1/4-1/8

125. I wish I was the verb 'to trust' and never let you down
vs.
They said that timing was everything/made him want to be everywhere/there’s a lot to be said for nowhere

126. I sometimes realize I can only be as good as you'll let me
vs.
All that's sacred comes from youth/Dedications naive and true

Full Portlandia Episode Guest Starring Eddie Vedder

On-line, free, now! The sketch you're looking for begins at 15:38.

A Guided Tour of Riot Act: Patriot and Arc

Returning after a brief hiatus ...


(A Guided Tour of Riot Act)
I AM A PATRIOT & ARC

Before we close the record I want to take a moment to look at I Am A Patriot, probably the most important PJ cover of that period. In particular I want to compare two performances, the one from the MSG Nader rally in 2000 and the performance at Uniondale (an hour or so before the Bu$hleaguer incident) in 2003.

There is a seemingly irrepressible sense of optimism and of moment in Eddie’s 2000 performance of the song. I was fortunate enough to be there for that and you could feel it in the building. No one there seriously thought Nader had a chance to win an election in 2000 but there was a powerful and profound sense that we were there to witness the start of something big, the birth of a new America, a new way of looking at the world. Probably the most telling moment of the entire song was during Eddie’s introduction, talking about the way the media, opinion makers, politicians, and the rest of what C. Wright Mills called the power elite have to stand up and take notice. “They can’t ignore this.” And with that Eddie launches into what is arguably the most powerful cover he’s ever performed, and the song is lifted by the optimism of the moment until it practically soars during the final lyrics “and the river will open for the righteous someday…”. That day isn’t here yet, but if you were there for that moment you KNEW that it was coming.

The depth of the collapse that Riot Act chronicles, the nearly complete loss of faith, needs to be understood in this context. It falls so low in part because expectations were so high. The more powerful the hope the more total the disillusionment. And the song Eddie sings at Uniondale is almost unrecognizable. The music is somber, almost dirge like, as if Eddie is burying a dream instead of living one. It climaxes earlier than MSG, during the moment where he asserts his identity “I only know one party, and that is freedom…” The moment is cathartic and inspiring, like a shaft of life shining through a seemingly impenetrable darkness. But the moment doesn’t last, and Eddie chokes it off, strangling the promise of redemption in it. The light goes out and the final lines “and the river will open for the righteous” are somber and bitter. Self-assertion may not be enough in a world that just isn’t prepared to recognize it. The lesson Eddie learns on Riot Act is that freedom isn’t something that can be experienced in isolation. It is something that must be shared—we find it in communal expressions of solidarity (which is why a good concert is so liberating, and this is what the band understands so well), and solidarity is just not possible in Bush’s America. At least not then.

And this brings us to Arc. We all know that Arc is dedicated to the lives lost at Rosklide. It is a farewell to them, their 21 gun salute. But Eddie is burying more than their memories here. Arc tries to encapsulate what words cannot---the bewilderment, the absence of hope, the alienation, the nearly totalizing loss of faith that lifted us so high that moment in MSG just 3 short years ago. Arc is music for dying dreams.
    
OTHER SONGS IN THIS SERIES: 
Can't Keep 
Save You 
Love Boat Captain 
Cropduster 
Ghost 
 I Am Mine 
Thumbing My Way 
You Are 
Get Right 
Green Disease 
Help Help 
Bu$hleaguer 
1/2 Full 
Arc 
All Or None   

OTHER GUIDED TOUR SERIES: 
Vs. 
Vitalogy
Binaural 
Backspacer

The Fretboard Journal to Feature Eddie Vedder

This January, the 24th issue of The Fretboard Journal will be featuring Eddie Vedder.  Here's more from publisher, Jason Verlinde: 

One of the most often asked questions I get from our readers is "what's coming up in your next issue?" Though we like to keep each and every issue of the FJ a surprise -- it's fun to have a magazine that follows no template, covers the entire spectrum of guitars and styles and keeps you on your toes -- I'm happy to spill the beans on a few highlights.


In Fretboard Journal #24 (pre-order here, coming back from our printer in about a week), we have a lengthy interview and photo shoot with Pearl Jam's Eddie Vedder. We talked to Vedder about the 20th anniversary of his band, his songwriting process, his guitar collection and, of course, ukuleles (he has a stellar ukulele album out now, in case you didn't know). This 18-page feature contains exclusive new photos of Eddie and his gear, too.

Use the pre-order link to get yourself a copy of this collectible issue.

Portlandia/Vedder Details

The Seattle Times has a brief synopsis of the January 13th episode of Portlandia in which Eddie Vedder will be guest starring.  Highlight to read.

As Laurelhurst's regular denizens amble by, "Portlandia" star Carrie Brownstein sits on a blanket, having a picnic with guest star Scott Green. In the sketch, the two are dating, but Green has a tattoo that Brownstein just can't abide: a cartoonish image of Vedder, Pearl Jam's frontman.


"Portlandia" co-creator Fred Armisen, standing near a playback monitor as the scene unfolds, recalls, "We had a brainstorming session and Carrie came up with this idea. Sometimes tattoos are poorly done or the subject matter calls into question a lot of stuff. You like the person, but all of a sudden, their tattoo makes you say, 'Wait, what's that about?' "


After the picnic scene but before moving on to a bike-riding sequence, Brownstein explains her inspiration for the sketch.


"It's a conversation people have all the time about arbitrary deal-breakers that are actually quite significant in determining if you could actually like someone or imagine a life with someone," she says. "There's something so permanent about a tattoo, and I think specifically with music, Fred and I are such music snobs, we are constantly shocked by the lack of depth of people's knowledge. We're both Pearl Jam fans, but the idea somebody would have a bad tattoo of a cool band is just kind of amazing and shocking."