All Those Yesterdays

I'm learning something about my long love of Pearl Jam. While I haven't been completely in love with the last few albums, I still considered their music my linchpin, the music I most reference within myself. But they are in another world now. They've grown up. They've made peace. They've enjoyed coming out alive from the American celebrity maneater and are ready to stretch out and enjoy things as being comfortable enough to be the aging rockers.

Fine. They are fully entitled to do so (while still maintaining a pretty badass program I should say before I'm branded a turncoat). Look, they always worked for Sony, but that corporate subservience always bothered them to some degree. For better or worse, look at the Ticketmaster thing. I view that as a badge of honor. Was it a bit ill-conceived and ripe for backlash? Yes, and the band itself in a new SPIN article calls it sabotage, but I prefer to call it a survival method. They shouldn't apologize for being young and idealistic, if a bit headstrong. They have other priorities in their music now. The new album Backspacer is the latest. It has a few nice moments, but it sounds highly formulaic of an arena rock band (when they went hard) and a bit cheesy in the lighter moments. But the worst? The song "The End" (actually is the end song) sounds like a Disney show tune number. Holy Fuck. It's an awful song. I think there's a string section, maybe a trumpet somewhere in there. It's the one of the only handful of songs of Pearl Jam's where I can unequivocally say I hate the thing.

Then I flip on Yield or No Code. I immediately connect. The pace, the sentiment, the wariness, the emotion, the calm, the words, the sounds, they all differ and blend to me, to who I am now. Here comes "Do the Evolution," the song I know inspired and shaped me into who I am and how I view the world. That song represents so much intellectual growth in me. And then the Bush administration didn't help endear them to outsiders in these intervening years (admittedly, their "insider" group is a lot of people and we shouldn't pity PJ for not having fans). They struck a resonant tone to me after Ten, which I only rate as decent. They step up in Vs. (which seems a long way from Ten's bigger guitars and soaring Vedder yelps.) and continue through Vitalogy, No Code, Yield, most of Binaural and selections of Riot Act. They are all over in tone in experimentation. They don't stay in one place very long. Their visibility waned, their popularity grew. Those sub-surface operations, the deliberate abstaining of excess while keeping a big fan base got them comparisons to the Grateful Dead.

But now? I'm not someone at middle age with a nice house on a lake and a family, and a big dog. I don't have an endless casket of Coronas chilling for me to, seems quite quickly in accounts I've read of Vedder, get drunk with a writer to prove you still got the old streak in ya. They're throwing axes at a tree, a game for real men.

That's not what I've needed from Pearl Jam. They're lives have changed so much over the years: from young, stubborn upstarts that expressed so much emotion and angst to a cynic pushing the boundaries with ferocity, elegance and passion. That mid-career Pearl Jam (part Vs., all of Vitalogy, No Code, Yield and Binaural) was that period when writers mention Ticketmaster and the band's complete pullback from big time success. How amazing is that? I feel they went from a band that could be the next big MTV (at the time) rock band. Doing interviews up and down and basically selling out. Whoring out. That ethic was not in the playbook for the band, but mostly Eddie Vedder, maybe part Jeff Ament.

They consciously pulled back. There was friction in the ranks. Sounds like there was some hurt feelings, albeit egotistical (Read: Vedder).

At the same time, Vedder was going through the meat grinder of being an idol, a symbol and a commodity. He was not comfortable with it and he steered the band in his direction, and rightly so (that's not a shot at the other members ... I love them and they have saved the band time and again with there tenacity and dedication).

Vedder wrote most of the songs ... which doesn't let him off the hook, but for me, I like the lyrics Vedder wrote and conveyed b/c he was the one with the most affected life during their sudden rise. He had stalkers. He had the dark backstory. He was getting the microscope and the attention and the fans that invested so much in him. They said he inspired them. They needed a leader. But, of course, it also didn't hurt that he was photogenic, and he actually was scowling all the time. That big anti-star persona/posture worked for people.

This career period for Pearl Jam was their real growth period. That immediate success of Ten didn't allow for the band to go through the growing-pain slumps and configurations members take to find an ease with each other, to find what I imagine is a musical understanding. Maybe this period's adversarial tone comes from the tension of not really knowing someone as your getting famous with them, as Vedder in San Diego was to Ament and Gossard in Seattle in '91.

Basically, again, these guys got married, they had some money (though they gave a lot to good causes in the mid-years). This lastest album seems lazy, more musically then lyrically. Look, Vedder's doesn't always hit it out of the park in this lyrics, but I've largely agreed with them, to put it simply.

I simply don't identify with the band's material anymore. It's that simple. It hurts a little, the separation of sorts. I grew up uncomfortable and anxious just as Pearl Jam was when they lashed back. That's the band I love. I will still love them (I'll probably buy the next album), but after some years of denial, I realize we've reached different stages.

I'll continue this some day.....
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In an unrelated note:

Once a month, some dipshit redneck calls me looking for Gerald Goodman. They sound as if they've never been on the phone before. It's like they're reading from a script. They can barely say anything clearly before they collapse into brain shock.

And I have a new characer:

Guy who's high and keeps saying "Good, How are you?" into a mirror in preparedness for an encounter with a roommate suspecting him of being high.