Friday, November 18, 2022

Eddie Vedder Live Streaming Event / EBRP: Venture Into Cures


Today Pearl Jam announced that Eddie Vedder and his family will be part of a virtual event in support of EB Research Partnerships this coming Sunday at 4pm ET.  This is their third annual Venture Into Cures event.  The event will also feature a huge list of artists.

You can watch the event for free via YouTube, but you have to RSVP here.

Join Eddie Vedder and his family for EB Research Partnerships' third annual Venture Into Cures virtual event to raise funds and awareness for Epidermolysis Bullosa. Joining the Vedder's includes celebrity friends, Broken Social Scene, Jonathan Brown, Dana Carvey, Billie Eilish, Will Ferrell, FINNEAS, Jennifer Garner, Jack Harlow, Tom Holland, John Legend, Joe Jonas, Kermit the Frog, Lamorne Morris, Joy Oladokun, Chris Pratt, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Olivia Rodrigo, Molly Shannon, Hannah Simone, David Spade, Lauren Spencer-Smith, and Venus Williams – with more to come!

Monday, November 7, 2022

Long Road: Pearl Jam and the Soundtrack of a Generation


A THESKYISCRAPE RECOMMENDATION

Good books about bands are hard to write.  If they are based on a tangible relationship with the band, they tend to be too self-referential.  The same is true of books that lean into the writer’s personal opinions and preferences. They easily bleed into vanity projects, more appropriate for, say, message board posting than publication. And in our post internet/post Wikipedia world, it is hard for a straight factual accounting to add much value when the same information is just a Google search away.

However, I am happy to report that Steven Hyden’s new book manages to avoid all the traps above, and Long Road: Pearl Jam and the Soundtrack of a Generation is genuinely excellent. Informed by his own lifetime fandom (which has had its peaks and valleys, obsessive and ambivalent periods), the book is remarkably insightful, reflective, and revisits the bands history through several conceptual lenses.  He unpacks just how steeped both Pearl Jam and its fan base is in a nineties cultural orientation that profoundly influenced how the band was understood in its time and remembered outside of it.  He highlights their endurance as an important part of their legacy, no small thing given how self-destructive the grunge era proved to be.  He understands the arc of their career as a journey and does admirable work guiding the reader through its different phases with a critical distance that remembers what it was like in the moment. He gets that Pearl Jam the studio band and Pearl Jam the live band are discrete but equally integral parts of their identity. He gets what it means to be a Pearl Jam fan, then and now.

While we wait for the next major event in Pearl Jam country, I highly recommend picking this up.   Long Road: Pearl Jam and the Soundtrack of a Generation is well worth the fandom’s time.

Wednesday, November 2, 2022

Stip on State of Love & Trust Podcast


 Our very own Stip is joining the hosts of the State of Love and Trust Podcast this week for Episode 131: What if Matt Cameron Left Pearl Jam?
Jason and Paul are joined by The Sky I Scrape's Stip to discuss the very scary hypothetical of Matt Cameron leaving Pearl Jam. That and the Lyric and Live Cut of the Week - Cropduster.
You can grab the latest episode here and have a listen.