2005-2008:
In a 2007 interview with TFT, Danny Clinch (director of 2007 concert movie ‘Immagine in cornice’) said the following about the 2006 S/T (Avocado) sessions:
JR: Pearl Jam is the first record that hasn't
had a B-side so we've wondered where are some of these extra cuts.
DC: And there's more to that story that I'm not going to tell you.
One unreleased named 'Off the Earth' track from the S/T sessions have been played live since around 2010. Jeff Ament opened up about those sessions in an early 2005 interview:
So far, the band's written a total of 25 songs, but the final track listing will have around a dozen songs — and the decision about which tracks make the final cut largely rests with "Ed, because he's writing 95 percent of the lyrics," Ament said. But the bassist did reveal some potential song names: "Marker," "Crapshoot Rapture," "Worldwide Suicide," "Cold Confession," "2X4" and "Severed Hand." Ament singled out two other tracks as his current favorites. "One is called 'Of the Earth,' that's a song Ed wrote that is kind of a cross between early Peter Gabriel/ Genesis and Sleater-Kinney with, like, the Who's Live at Leeds or something.
Like Binaural and Riot Act before it S/T seemed to have many outtakes. A pre-production disc leaked to the internet that includes demos by members, sketches and some full fledged songs: Cold Confession, Let it ride, 10 billion years (Stone on vocals) and 2x4. That last one missed vocals.
We know that Off the Earth was tried again for Backspacer. And that there are several outtakes being confirmed by both Jeff and Mike in interviews:
In one interview Jeff said that they recorded some incredible rock songs that did not fit on Backspacer very well and he was hopeful that they will enter the studio again early next year to do some final recording/mixing on those tracks aiming at an new release within a year.
The famous EP that never materialized. Similar words were already spoken by Mike in other interviews:
BM: I noticed you kept the songs very short,
very direct, kind of garage-y. Were you sort of reining in the tendencies to
make them a little bit more like that?
MM: I think we didn’t initially know that we were reining them in. We had about
seventeen ideas going into this project, seventeen to twenty. And when we were
at about eleven pretty much finished, Brendan (O’Brien, producer) and Ed sat
down and said, “Hey, this looks like a really good record.” Stone (Gossard,
guitarist) had been talking about wanting to have a record that was shorter,
more concise and I think we achieved that. That being said, we still have
other songs that are out there that are from this session that we may do
something with in about six months.
Where they shelved a Who cover 'Baba O'Riley' in 1992. They finally released a cover from Eddie's favorite band on their 2006 fanclubsingle: Love Reign O'er Me. Two more original Pearl Jam songs appeared on fanclubsingles these years: Santa God & Santa Cruz.
