Mike McCready at Safeco Field

In case you missed it.

Sirius News: 6/1/2011

Tim and The Rob gave a couple of tidbits on the All Encompassing Trip this week:

• Ten Club staff are working with a new team of designers on a total revamp of PearlJam.com.
• The 2010 Fan Club Single is in production.
• The Ten Club had nothing to do with the Best Buy coupon for Ukulele Songs and Water on the Road but simply posted it at Monkeywrench Records per Best Buy's request.
• Ukulele Songs is the number one album on iTunes!
• Don't forget that the public sale for Pearl Jam Destination Weekend starts this Saturday, June 4th.

Big Time Book Contributors

Neil Young.  Dave Grohl.  The Boss.  Yeah, Jonathan Cohen interviewed all three, and you can look for those interviews starting September 13th.

EDIT: We originally reported, incorrectly, that these interviews were conducted by Cameron Crowe.  Sorry for the error.

Soundgarden to Play Voodoo Experience

Soundgarden has announced that they are set to headline the 2011 Voodoo Experience in New Orleans, LA. The three day festival begins the weekend of October 28th. Soundgarden set time TBD. Tickets and additional details are available here.

A Guided Tour of Vs.: Rats

RATS

(A Guided Tour: Vs.)

Rats is perhaps the only mistracked song on Vs. It is cast in the same broad mold of vague social commentary as the middle of the record, aiming for a target so big that the result ends up being less impressive than something more narrow, more tightly focused, less defensive and reactive. The end of Vs. is meant to be revelatory. Rearviewmirror, Small Town, Leash, and Indifference are the epiphanies that sharpen and clarify the confused and fluctuating world the previous songs attempt to define and critique. If Rats was more precise you could make the case that the newfound sense of certainty and purpose, of vision, achieved in Rearview Mirror makes the observations in Rats possible, but they’re not any more insightful than anything that’s come before. Nor is Rats necessary as a cooldown after the intensity of Rearview Mirror, since the two songs that follow are a gentle acoustic number and a joyful rave.

This isn’t to say that Rats is a bad song. It’s pretty good. It’s just that it works more effectively as a stand alone song than it does as a part of a record, given its placement. It ends up being a speed bump in the middle of an extended 4 song climax, instead of helping to pave the road that leads there.

There is a playfulness to Rats that is actually fairly charming. It’s written in the same sarcastic mold as Glorified G, but you’re left with the sense that it doesn’t take itself quite as seriously. The music helps here, but the key is Eddie. The music in Glorified G sets a light and sunny backyard bbq mood, but Eddie is so clearly out to draw blood that it undermines the fun. Rats actually starts out trying to sound more dark and foreboding, but you can almost see everyone smiling in the darkness, Eddie included, as they construct the song. Everyone’s tongues are kept much more firmly in cheek. The bassline is ever so slightly whimsical, implying deep and heavy thoughts refracted through something playful, and the accents at 9, 12, and 15 seconds give the opening a Cheshire cat grin. Eddie plays his part, growling out his verses with a survivors grit and wisdom, climaxing with an over the top melodramatic chorus and urgent, striving guitars. It would be easy to take all this as authentic if not for the playful funkiness of the music, especially the solo in the bridge. It’s playing at being bad ass while knowing that it’s not, like a child trying on its parents clothes and grinning at itself in the mirror. The song culminates with its grinding two minute outro (with what has got to be the longest fadeout on any PJ record) that once again feels like its winking at itself, almost mocking the sound and fury of the earlier songs. That’s part of Rats’ problem. Vs. is such an overserious record that it’s hard to fit in something this mischievous.

Lyrically the song seems like a bit of misfire. The gimmick is clever, but Eddie doesn’t quite pull it off. Tom Waits has a similar song called Army Ants where he spends three minutes cataloging unusual characteristics of various bugs and insects. The song is strangely hypnotic, and so the songs final reveal, when Waits admits that he’s been talking about humans all along, is clever and amusingly shocking (Perhaps you've encountered some of these insects in your communities, displaying both their predatory and defense characteristics, while imbedded within the walls of flesh and passing for, what is most commonly recognized... as human.) Eddie is going for something similar here (although this song predates Army Ants). The lyrics catalog all the terrible things some awful species does to its own members (a sense of cannibalism, that it’s not just that these people do bad things, but that they do it to their own kind, pervades the song and makes everything seem even more sordid). Most of the lyrics are pretty good (‘they don’t push, don’t crowd, congregate until they’re much too loud’ flows really nicely, ‘fuck to procreate til’ they are dead, drink the blood of their so called best friend’ sounds shocking without sounding cheap. ‘Bare their gums when they moan and squeak, lick the dirt off a larger one’s feet’ sounds sufficiently pathetic, and ‘starve the poor so they can be well fed, line their holes with the dead ones bread’ comes across as a real crime. On the other hand, the nicely delivered lyric about the pack mentality in the chorus ‘they don’t’ scurry when something bigger comes their way, don’t’ pack themselves together and run as one’ is undermined by the ‘don’t shit where they’re not supposed to’ lyric which sounds more like it’s trying to shock than genuinely shocking. And the opening lyrics just don’t quite make sense. ‘They don’t eat, don’t sleep, they don’t’ feed, they don’t seethe’ seems off. Why are eating and sleeping bad, and what does seething have to do with that? These lines shouldn’t be deal breakers, and I suppose they’re not. But the rest of the song isn’t quite as clever as it has to be to support the weight of weaker lyrics.

The ‘Ben, the two of us need look no more’ reference is just odd. Ben was an early 70s horror movie (a sequel to Willard, which was about killer rats). The main character befriends Ben, the leader of a pack of telepathic rats. Ben keeps the boy company and acts as his friend while he confronts the problems of childhood bullying and illness. Eventually most of the pack is destroyed and the movie ends with the main character nursing Ben back to health. It sounds like a really weird movie (I’ve never seen it), but it’s remembered mostly for the fact that Michael Jackson wrote an incongruously sweet song about it that outlasted the film. I suppose, echoing the ‘I’d rather be with an animal’ theme from earlier in the record, that the singer needs to look for comfort in odd places since humanity is so disgusting, but this is a little too obscure to be effective.

The biggest problem is that the song doesn’t feel like it leads to any great revelation. If the song wasn’t called rats the ‘bombshell’ moment when you realize that Eddie is condemning humanity as somehow inferior to rats would have more power. The revelation at the end of Army Ants is genuinely shocking, and enjoyable for the unexpected surprise. You know precisely from the very beginning where Eddie is going with this, and since the song can’t rely on its twist ending the rest of the song needs to justify the lyrical conceit, and it can’t quite pull it off. It’s not that what comes before is bad. It’s pretty good and the song is pretty fun. But it also has no real meaningful impact. It aims at a target that’s too big, the playfulness seems slightly out of place. Rats doesn’t know quite what kind of song it wants to be, and maybe that’s how you can justify its place on the record. The band doesn’t know quite who it is yet, 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

Can't Keep Video

Just popped up on Pearl Jam's Facebook page:

Happy Eddie Vedder Day!

New Soundgarden Show: Calgary, July 27th

Via Soundgarden's Twitter:

new date added: July 27th Soundgarden will perform at Scotiabank Saddledome in Calgary, AB. http://on.fb.me/kDgu20

Eddie Vedder: Rolling Stone Interview

Brian Hiatt of Rolling Stone sat down with Eddie Vedder to discuss his upcoming album, Ukulele Songs (May 31) in the June 9th issue (Lady Gaga cover).

What made you want to focus on that one instrument?
I just wanted it to be the one sound.  At first it was kind of a joke, and then it became a little bit of a challenge, a puzzle, to see if I could create 11 or 12 songs with just a ukulele.  It's like painting with one color.  You can really appreciate the subtleties and changes in tone.

You can download the full interview here.

Check Your Mailboxes!

It looks like Ukulele Songs has started to arrive in Europe.  PJCollectors has the first images.

Press Release: Pearl Jam Twenty Movie

There isn't a ton of new information here, so I wasn't in a hurry to post it and ruin the fun everyone was having with getting tour tickets.  Now, we have a few hours to relax.  Here is what we did learn.  Pearl Jam Twenty is being released by Abramorama, the distributor who handled the recent Foo Fighters documentary.  The movie will release in September, followed by the PBS airing and a DVD release in October.

Told in big themes and bold colors with blistering sound, Pearl Jam Twenty chronicles the years leading up to the band’s formation, the chaos that ensued soon-after being catapulted into superstardom, their step back from the spotlight with the instinct of self-preservation, and the creation of a trusted circle that would surround them—giving way to a work culture that would sustain them. The film celebrates the freedom that allows the band to make music without losing themselves, their fans, or the music lovers they’d always been.


“When I set out to make this film, my mission was to assemble the best-of-the best from Pearl Jam’s past and present and give audiences a visceral feeling of what it is to love music and to feel it deeply—to be inside the journey of a band that has carved their own path,” said Cameron Crowe. “There is only one band of their generation for which a film like this could even be made, and I’m honored to be the one given the opportunity to make it.”

Canadian Pre-Sale Starts Again Today

Ten Club will be working with Ticketmaster to get the tickets out without a meltdown.  Keep an eye out for your e-mail.

In an effort to fix today’s Canadian Tour Pre Sale Meltdown, Ten Club is partnering up with general public vendors Ticketmaster Canada and others in order to get the Fan Club designated tickets into the hands of our faithful members. All eligible Ten Club members will receive an email tomorrow morning (Thursday, May 26) from Ten Club which will include a unique code that will give you access and information for the new Canadian pre-sale.


The pre-sale will begin tomorrow, Thursday, May 26 at 5pm local venue time and end at 8pm local venue time.


Although members will be purchasing through Ticketmaster Canada and other ticketing outlets (which will be notated in your email along with the appropriate links), Ten Club will still be fulfilling all of the ticket orders.


All Ten Club policies including seat allocation, Will Call procedures, etc. still apply. Please read our ticking policy HERE.


We have arranged for the service charge on the tickets to be as close as possible to the service charge you would have paid if you were purchasing the tickets through Ten Club.


For those of you who were able to get tickets through today’s (Wednesday, May 25) Ten Club pre-sale, your ticket purchases will be honored. A confirmation email has been sent to you from Ten Club notifying you whether your purchase was processed.


Sincerely,
Ten Club

Canada Pre-Sale Suspended

Sorry, gang.  You've got at least one more day of trouble.  Try to keep the glass half full (at least there are still tickets out there).

Sorry our store is temporarily closed please read below.


We're shutting down the Canada pre-sale due to ticketing system failure. We'll be moving to another temporary system tomorrow to handle the Canada pre-sale for Ten Club. We'll be posting more information on the site tonight regarding how the Canada pre-sale will work and when it will recommence. We will provide everyone at least 2 hours notice on the website and via the social networks before the pre-sale starts again. Stay tuned.

Meanwhile, subscribe to Gremmie's AET podcast.  You can hear Tim Bierman speak on the issue.

Canada Sale Update

The last of the Canada Pre-sales started about 2 hours ago.  The site is still looking pretty hairy, but the Ten Club says to keep trying.

Even thought the store is VERY busy, and refreshing is kind of insane, we are processing tickets, much like yesterday, but not at all like Monday. Right now, it appears as if all of the tickets are in carts and people that have them are refreshing their way through the checkout process. Thanks for your patience.

Eddie to his Ukulele Fans: "Walk Away from the Computer"

There was a great piece today in The Record with Ann Powers, the NPR music blog with some marching orders for those us writing blogs.  Excerpts below:

Vedder said he hopes that Ukulele Songs would encourage listeners to step away from their computers and televisions and make some music of their own, preferably with friends. Some of the material collected on the record was written back in the mid-'90s after Vedder first picked up the instrument. For him, the modest chordophone itself has been a companion in times of loneliness.

"If it weren't for the ukulele I would have been by myself," he says of the period. "The songs were just written for my own benefit."

[...]

"The song selection was easy because those were the ones I had," said Vedder. "A lot's different since I first picked up this instrument; my life is quite different than I could have imagined."

[...]

"I know for the vinyl version of the record there's going to be a real book included, with the music and the notation and whatever bizarre chords I've come up with — a legible version of the notebook I was creating all those years," he said. "I'm just encouraging people to turn off the TV and play these songs if you want. Some of them are really depressing. But have fun with it!"