Wednesday, October 31, 2012

Sleeping By Myself Video

On the first day of his solo tour, Eddie Vedder released a video for his song, Sleeping By Myself.

RNDM Throw You to the Pack Video

Joseph Arthur created animation on his iPad to go with the RNDM track, Throw You to the Pack, on his iPad creating a THIRD video for the album, Acts, out today.  He told Rolling Stone, "I wanted to capture the frenetic energy of the track with art, make something visual that moved with the spirit of the song."

Jeff to Guerilla Candy: Everything You've Heard Means Nothing

There is some stuff that’s pretty well finished and sounds good right now, but who knows if that stuff is going to end up on the next record. We may get together this spring and come up 15 things that are better than that, and that’s the new record.

[ ... ]


If we don’t get together for the next three of four months it’s going to be a whole new batch of songs. Nobody ever really stops writing.
So, whatever you've heard about Album #10 could all be wrong by the end of 2013.  That's the word from Jeff's recent interview with Guerrilla Candy.  He also talked about how the band avoids becoming a "nostalgia band."
I think the reason we’ve never become a nostalgia band is because we’ve never gone three years or so without making a record. It’s been a little more than three years since we released a record this time around, but we’ve been in the studio four times since and we have a huge bunch of new ideas and songs. I think that as long as every six to nine months we go in the studio and write some new music, that keeps us out of the nostalgia conversation.

There are plenty of bands out there that haven’t made a record in ten years or fifteen years and are still out there touring telling people that they’ve been a band for twenty years. But I don’t know if that constitutes being a band for twenty years if you’ve only released three records. And that’s fine. There are plenty of bands that don’t make records very often that I will go see at the drop of a hat.
Check out Part 1 and Part 2 of Travis Hay's interview with Jeff at Guerrilla Candy.

October 31: RNDM in Missoula


October 31: Eddie in Las Vegas

Monday, October 29, 2012

RNDM: Walking Through New York Video

Acts doesn't even hit stores until tomorrow, but RNDM has release their second video from the album.



You can also read Part 1 of a great Jeff Ament interview with Guerilla Candy
So how does the creative process with RNDM differ from the creative process with Pearl Jam?

With RNDM there was no history with the band. In fact, it wasn’t a band. It was just three guys getting together to do some recording. I think sometimes when you take that little bit of pressure away from a situation it really frees you up because there isn’t really anything there. There are no expectations. There’s nobody at the other end saying ‘Hey, when’s the record going to be done? Is it good enough to stand up to the rest of your catalog?’ I think sometimes that freedom can make it better because there’s no fear involved with any of it.

With Pearl Jam we have certain expectations with ourselves. We don’t want to do anything half-assed. You kind of want to your best foot forward. I have to say the last few times Pearl Jam has gone in the studio it’s been in a similar way. We knock out seven or eight ideas and everyone gets super-excited. Maybe we’re starting to get back to that way of making music. For a few records it was people bringing in complete demos and the band playing the demos.
Check out Walking Through New York on VEVO and pick up Acts where ever quality music is sold.

Soundgarden on Revolver Magazine


As excitement swells around next month's release of Soundgarden's King Animal (an album, which may not have happened if not for Matt Cameron's guiding hand), the band is featured on the cover of Revolver Magaine's November 6th issue.  That sentence also set a record for the most possessive apostrophes in a theskyiscrape.com post to date.

Friday, October 26, 2012

Ed Warms Up with a EB Benefit


Apologies for some late news that you probably already knew about, but last week Eddie made a surprise appearance at a benefit for kids with Epidermolysis Bullosa.  Ed joined the band Big Daddy Sunshine for three covers, and he and his wife, Jill, visited some of the kids afterwards.  

Ed also sat down briefly with MTV to discuss the experience:

The EB fundraiser in San Jose was a smaller, grassroots event, but the impact of meeting these incredible kids and their parents was huge. I’ve only been aware of this disease for a few years and not many people are currently aware of it, though it affects one in every 50,000 children. Because of major advances in stem cell research, the non-controversial kind, it appears that a cure could someday be a reality. But only if the good doctors and researchers can acquire further funding, whether privately or through our government.

Monday, October 22, 2012

Life is a Pre-Existing Condition


Mike McCready recently cut a spot in support of comprehensive health coverage with filmmaker, Jesse Dylan.  It was released today at MoveOn.org along with a personal letter signed by Mike and Jesse.
The American public talks about healthcare like it’s a controversial issue. We weigh the pros and cons, we take sides, we argue. 
The truth is, everyone is better off when everyone is healthy. Especially those of us who have been dealt a rough hand – people with conditions or diseases like cancer, diabetes, Crohn’s, Alzheimer’s, HIV, asthma or arthritis. 
The insurance networks that control our doctor’s offices, hospitals and emergency rooms have a more difficult time-sharing our pro-health perspective. Not because they’re bad people, but because their focus is on profitability, and they haven’t found a way to be as profitable off of the sick as they are off the healthy. Which is not to say they aren’t profitable. 
The insurance industry’s structure left 129 million Americans – including 17 million children – at risk of being denied health insurance because they have a pre-existing medical condition. Millions of Americans tried to buy health care, but were turned away or charged more because they were sick (or had been sick), and therefore didn’t look like a good risk. Millions more Americans were unable to afford insurance, or exceeded their lifetime treatment caps, or experienced other difficulties that left them uninsured and without access to affordable health care when they needed it most. 
Business isn’t a bad thing. But the business of health insurance hasn’t been a good thing in America. Not for anyone with a chronic illness, or with a spouse who got sick and lost their job, or for a gravely ill child and his or her parents. President Obama’s Affordable Care Act (ACA) recognized these shortcomings and rectified them. ObamaCare does for health care what business could not or would not; it prohibits discrimination against those of us with pre-existing conditions. It ensures everyone, regardless of their employment status or health care situation, access to quality insurance and medical care. Everyone. Period. 
We are a musician and a filmmaker, who are also fathers and businessmen, who are living with chronic illnesses. We know firsthand of what we speak. We were also friends with the late Jennifer Jaff who, through her organization Advocacy for Patients, fought tirelessly with insurance companies on behalf of chronically ill patients who had been denied payments or coverage. Our friend Jennifer imagined a day when her services would no longer be needed, when health care for all Americans would be seen as both good business and good values. If you share this vision and these values, watch and share this little video we created as a tribute to Jennifer, and help elect a President this November who shares these values as well. 
Sincerely, 
Jesse Dylan, Founder of Wondros, Filmmaker, inspired by his son’s illness to found Lybba, at lybba.org, creating compassionate communities of care to redesign healthcare for good 
Mike McCready, Pearl Jam, Guitarist, living with Crohn’s disease

Sunday, October 21, 2012

Eddie Vedder at The Bridge School Benefit

Last night was Neil Young's annual benefit for the Bridge School.  Though Eddie and Pearl Jam were not scheduled to appear, Eddie did hop on stage for a two song set prior to Guns 'N Roses.

 .... and he took a moment to pose with Steve Martin.


If you'd like to see Eddie's set of Last Kiss and Elderly Woman, you can check it out on YouTube.


And a special thanks to Gremmie.  I pretty much just stole your Facebook page for this post.

Friday, October 19, 2012

A Guided Tour of Ten: Release

[A Guided Tour of Ten]
The fact that Release is the only song on Ten to not have the lyrics included in the booklet is significant. It is the most directly personal song on the record, the only one not mediated through a character, or even any kind of narrative. Instead it conveys a sense of intimacy not bound by any particular time, place of events. The whole record, up to this point, has been a back and forth mixture of betrayal and violence against the self alongside attempts to rise above it. The stories are exhausting and Release is an exhausted song, a final weary plea that conveys not only the need for release, but the determination to hold on until it finally comes—the song climaxing with that final act of strength and gently fading out and back into the murk of master/slave, staring the whole process over again. Ten never offers the way out—only the faith that it exists and that one day the closed loop will open.

Like Garden the music has a meditative feel to it—a hypnotic guitar melody accented by the swirling soundscapes and anchored by Eddie's voice, striking that incredible balance between deep richness and the vulnerability of a higher register. This is arguably Eddie's finest vocal performance, the subtle accents on the important lines: the slight quavers at just the right movement, knowing exactly how far down in his register to drop and when to bring it back up, and especially the way he sings the chorus and the redemptive, cleansing notes he holds after it

Release is best listened to at night, when you have quiet and stillness—it is easiest to search for something missing when there are no external distractions. And Eddie is clearly searching: for peace, for love, for meaning. He is tired of a world that seems unable to soften its violence and isolation with understanding, trust, and intimacy, but he does not know what he can do about it. And he is asking for help. Release is a prayer—calling out in the silent dark for deliverance. But he isn’t calling out to a God. Instead he looks to the father he never knew—to the person who should have taught him how to make sense of the world, he should have offered him guidance and prepared him for what was to come. He isn’t looking to God, as God must shoulder some responsibility for the mess we've made of things. His unknown father's love is unconditional, its promise never tainted by reality. He is the purest form of hope and deliverance Eddie can call out to. Whatever is best in Eddie he feels he owes to him (or to the promise his father embodies).

And the song culminates with his powerful, weary, desperate, defiant, hopeful plea to his father (or whatever we wish to substitute) for rescue. He refuses to surrender. He will hold the pain the world inflicts on him, he’ll deal with the isolation waiting for his answer, and finally (and this is the most difficult step), he’ll make himself vulnerable---he’ll allow himself to continue to trust again and to love again, and to keep doing so no matter how often he is hurt and violated—as long as it takes until he finds his release. It is a simple chorus (release me) but it says so much, and encapsulates the hope and need that runs through the entire record. No matter how violent and hard the world becomes, no matter how alone we may find ourselves, we cannot surrender. We have to hold on to the possibility of a deeper love that will eventually release us from our bondage.



OTHER SONGS IN THIS SERIES: 
Once 
Even Flow 
Alive 
Why Go 
Black 
Jeremy 
Oceans 
Porch 
Garden 
Deep 
Release 

OTHER GUIDED TOUR SERIES: 

Ten 
Vs. 
Vitalogy 
No Code 
Yield 
Binaural 
Riot Act 
Pearl Jam 
Backspacer

Wednesday, October 17, 2012

Mad Season Coming to Record Store Day

To get you excited about next year's reissue of Mad Season's Above, Monkeywrench Records has created a special release for Record Store Day, November 23rd.



"River of Deceit"/"I Don't Know Anything (Live)"
Limited Edition 10", colored vinyl single from Mad Season, an American rock supergroup formed in Seattle, Washington in 1994 by members of three popular Seattle-based bands: Alice in Chains, Pearl Jam and Screaming Trees (Barrett Martin, Mike McCready, John Baker Saunders and Layne Staley. Mad Season released only one album, Above, and is best known for the single "River of Deceit".
Check out the full list of Record Store Day releases here.

Friday, October 12, 2012

A Guided Tour of Ten: Deep


[A Guided Tour of Ten]

Before I really dive into Deep I wanted to something about its placement on the record. For the most part I think Ten is a well tracked record, but I've never been quite comfortable with the location of Deep. Deep belongs earlier, amongst the stories like Once, Even Flow, Why Go, Black, and Jeremy, where there is no way out, and no resolution beyond anger and shared outrage and grief. Like Oceans and Porch, Garden begins to offer the promise of a way out, and the segue from Garden into Release is much stronger (thematically and musically) than Deep into Release. I'm not sure how I’d retrack the album, but I’d definitely switch Garden and Deep at a minimum.

Deep is one of the more violent songs on Ten, and the explosive opening music reflects that. It has always reminded me of someone in free fall painfully crashing through barriers that fail to stop them, or even slow them down. The rise and fall of Eddie's voice does a nice job moving the song along. Whereas the music gives each little vignette an appropriately sinister tone he starts each verse calmly, even casually, which makes the panic in each chorus hit more powerfully.

The verses themselves are quick mini-portraits (as is every song on Ten) of a life falling apart. The first has a person contemplating suicide. He feels small, insignificant, and decides to put the question off, settling for the slow suicide of drug abuse instead. In the second story the subject is similarly feeling trapped not only by the fact that the larger world offers him no sources of meaning and stability, but also by the lack of understanding from the rest of society. Like the first character, he's an outcast, although where the first person was lost in a cold, uncaring crowd the second person feels trapped in a smaller world of faked intimacy and artificial community. In both cases the isolation is especially bitter since they both find themselves surrounded by people (a city with all its possibilities, and a small town where people are supposed to know and care about one another).

The final story is easily the most moving and chilling of the three—the story of a young, fairly innocent girl in the process of being raped. Either way, what should be the most intimate and joyous act that two people can engage in becomes violent and distant. Rather than intimacy what connects her to the man above her is her objectification. She isn’t a human being, but a means to an end, to someone else's gratification. The violation is both physical and mental, a taking of her body and a taking of her humanity. Eddie gives extra weight to this verse the way he snarls the ‘she just ain’t nothing’ lyric, as most of the other verses don’t have any of the lyrics receiving extra emphasis until the chorus.
In all three cases the person is too far along to find a way out. The constant falling, the constant feeling of insignificance, the destruction of humanity has left them trapped and alone, and not sure where to turn to next. Like most of Ten, the catharsis in Ten comes from Eddie's voice, sharing his outrage that we allow people to feel this alone and this violated (existentially or physically). There is no resolution. It's a dark song, although angry enough to not be altogether hopeless. As long as there is anger the spark of resistance is still there, which means that there is always the possibility of a way out, even if we are in too deep to see it. 



OTHER SONGS IN THIS SERIES: 
Once 
Even Flow 
Alive 
Why Go 
Black 
Jeremy 
Oceans 
Porch 
Garden 
Deep 
Release 

OTHER GUIDED TOUR SERIES: 

Ten 
Vs. 
Vitalogy 
No Code 
Yield 
Binaural 
Riot Act 
Pearl Jam 
Backspacer

Monday, October 8, 2012

Soundgarden Makes Their Chart Debut


After a little bit of back and forth on the release date, Soundgarden actually managed to debut their first single from King Animal (due out next month), Been Away Too Long.  The aptly named song hit the Billboard Rock Chart at #17 and the Alternative Chart at #29.

Have a listen below:

Thursday, October 4, 2012

Mad Season Boxed Set: March 12, 2013


Barrett Martin (drummer for Skin Yard, Screaming Trees, Mad Season, & Walking Papers) let some details about the upcoming Mad Season boxed set slip in a recent interview with the Sun Break.  It looks like we can expect a box with a remastered Above, a DVD of the Moore show, and three songs that were written and recorded for Mad Season's unfinished second album.
I like that the Mad Season songs have become everybody’s songs; that’s the way Layne [Staley] and [John] Baker [Saunders] would have wanted it. Nothing is sacred, which means everything is sacred, and anyone, any band can play those songs now.

To honor our departed brothers, Mike and I oversaw a Mad Season box set, which comes out March 12th, 2013. It contains the re-mastered Above album, the Moore concert on DVD with surround sound, and a bunch of live recordings that we never released. The most exciting stuff: three songs that Mark Lanegan wrote lyrics and sang on, songs that we started to record for the second album but never finished because of Baker’s and Layne’s deaths. One of the songs Peter Buck wrote with us, and the other two are from me and Mike. They are three of the heaviest and most beautiful songs Mad Season did, and I know Layne and Baker will love them.

A Guided Tour of Ten: Garden


[A Guided Tour of Ten]
Garden is a quiet moment for meditation, taking stock of what has come before. There is a strong contrast between the clarity of the main guitar melody and the moody atmosphere that surrounds it, at attempt to make sense of a seemingly senseless world, an effort to pierce the veil that obscures what he hopes is reality, a truer world than the one he lives in (in a lot of ways Garden is a very Platonic song)

The dissatisfaction that is driving the singer is a mixture of the personal and something much larger—the ways in which the sensory overload of the lives that we live interfere with our ability to create meaningful personal relationships, our ability to create and sustain the attachments that create real value, rather than the illusions that we force ourselves to accept.

In that respect Garden is about resisting temptation, learning to look past the bright lights, the sales pitch, the shiny object. Truth and meaning (and love) is found when you try to peer into the shadowy depths that do not offer any easy way out, but do offer the possibility (only the possibility) of something more meaningful.

Eddie does a pretty nice job applying this theme to our relationship with society and our relationship to each other (which is filtered through the superficiality of our external world). We can’t separate the two—the type of personal connections we have will be forever bound up with the contexts we situate them in. An impermanent world of smoke and mirrors will never allow us to grasp something tangible. Privileging love will require letting go of the familiar comfort that we are accustomed to, and this is not an easy choice to make, since the temptations to go back are so strong. Opening ourselves up to something more meaningful requires a surrender of sorts, a threatening vulnerability. Love requires the death of old attachments and the walls that we've built around ourselves so that we can be reborn into something new


As such, underneath the questioning and uncertainty of the verses we find the tone of the chorus and the outro, a complicated mix of determination and fear. He is willing to reject what he has to reject, to make himself vulnerable. He has to if he wants to live (a life without love, without humanity, is not a life worth living) but the necessity of his surrender does not make it any less painful, and the song ends with that painful rejection of what he knows and the possibility (always a possibility, never a guarantee) of rebirth.




OTHER SONGS IN THIS SERIES: 
Once 
Even Flow 
Alive 
Why Go 
Black 
Jeremy 
Oceans 
Porch 
Garden 
Deep 
Release 

OTHER GUIDED TOUR SERIES: 

Ten 
Vs. 
Vitalogy 
No Code 
Yield 
Binaural 
Riot Act 
Pearl Jam 
Backspacer

Tuesday, October 2, 2012

Pearl Jam Talks Tester and Album #10


Billboard got a chance to talk with Eddie and Jeff about their show in Missoula in support of Senator Tester and what's needed to complete their next album.
As for Pearl Jam's timeline for finishing its own next record, which will be its first studio album since 2009's "Backspacer," Ament told Billboard in September that "we're kinda looking at a couple of possible spots [in our schedules]. But the one thing that Ed [Vedder] and I did talk about is that we really need probably a two-month window where you have the two weeks to finish the record and you need that six weeks after to sequence and finish things up."

Ament also confirmed plenty of material is in play. "There's so much stuff. It's Ed's gig to shape those things into songs and work on the lyrics. He's really thoughtful and meticulous about that. So it's going to depend on what his biorhythms are and what he gravitates toward. There's probably 15 songs that are fairly close to finished. There's another 15 that are in other forms. I don't think any of us really know what the record is yet. There's a huge part of us that wants to be completely different than 'Backspacer' yet we're sort of working within the same sort of way of recording that we made that record, with Brendan [O'Brien, longtime Pearl Jam producer]. We have to be ready for that 10 days where for 12 hours a day you're in this mode where everything has to be on point."
For those without calendars of all the Pearl Jam events, there's a nice opening from December 5th to February 7th.  Sure, there's Christmas in there, but if it's not that gap, don't expect an album before fall.

2012 Halloween Shirt

The 2012 Halloween T-Shirt is now available at the Ten Club.
A new tradition from Pearl Jam! Pre-order by 10/7 and you can receive the shirt in time for Halloween.  It's $24.99 (+$7.70 domestic S&H).  It's also available in a women's cut.

Monday, October 1, 2012

RNDM - Acts

If you want to get the jump on RNDM's upcoming album, Acts, Newbury Comics has autographed copies for $19 shipped.


It's not yet available from the Ten Club, but it is out there for pre-purchase from Amazon on CD, vinyl, and mp3 as well.