Pearl Jam

The chronological cadence of the events inspiring this post could have technically placed it earlier relative to the last few ones I have included; however, even though the event at the center of this blog’s inspiration took place back in September, it has continued to resonate into my present each and every day in some way. Something this significant, despite it on a technical level having occurred before the others that I have shared since, must be brought to light. It also has impacted me so significantly that it was more just a matter of when it would appear rather than if.

Musical taste is a very subjective and personal thing. Part of it can be tied simply to the exposure that develops it in the first place. Some of that is a product of your environment: what do your parents share that you either decide to embrace or reject and to what has become a lesser extent now than when I grew up, what your geographic location determined the local radio stations format to be that you could tune in. Satellite radio and the internet have torn down that limitation to some extent but there still is a limit if you go AM/FM as the means to listen wherever you live.

My first exposure was to the classic 45 records that my parents had available for me to play on my own record player. My father was a DJ for the 970 AM radio station serving the town I grew up in before there was a me which may have contributed to the quantity I could choose among but there were quite a number at my disposal. I know there were Beatles records among them but my immature years at the time pushed me more towards listening to Snoopy vs. the Red Baron by The Royal Guardsmen. I played this 45 with enough frequency that my parents bought me Goofy Gold LPs which included such tracks as: The Battle of New Orleans by Johnny Horton; Running Bear by Johnny Preston; and Does Your Chewing Gum Lose Its Flavor by Lonnie Donegan. I’m pretty sure I could still sing along with them now even if I wouldn’t personally seek them out.

The first album I actually purchased with my own money was Love Gun by Kiss. I was introduced to Kiss by some classmates of mine around 1st grade so I’m sure there was a desire to feel a sense of belongingness with my peers driving this purchase as much as there was in liking the music itself. Whether or not this came to them from their own parents or not, I cannot say. It might have been more aligned with the other force driving musical taste which is simply what is popular at the time.

I would consider myself a child of the 80’s from a formative musical era perspective. MTV changed exposure opportunities if you happened to have access to it when it debuted in 1981 and I would from time to time experience music there. The videos there added a certain additional angle as songs became visual as well as auditory and even became release events much like a movie for some songs. I latched on to Michael Jackson’s Thriller album like most everyone seemed to do at the time in the earlier years of the decade. The video that accompanied the title song was one such event. I shifted into a mostly breakdancing inspired era after that with the literal soundtracks to break dancing inspired movies like Breakin’ and Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo. Believe it or not, I was still able to do a pretty nice worm up until a few years ago when my hips betrayed me. The hairbands of the 80s ended up having the most staying power for me as I still listen to the likes of Poison, Cinderella, Whitesnake, and Bon Jovi to this day.

The early 90s saw the arrival of grunge and this aligned with my college years. MTV was still playing videos at the time and my freshman/sophomore year roommate and I became intrigued by the video presentation by one of the grunge bands: Pearl Jam. There was a certain look that the lead singer Eddie Vedder delivered in the video for Jeremy as the camera panned around him that had us hooked. We would watch the whole video just to see Eddie deliver this certain look that had an almost diabolical quality to it. The song by itself was great too and even more so after understanding the message that was contained within its lyrics. This exposure lead to my decision to buy their debut album Ten so I could see what else they had to offer.

I have bought albums before in my past on the strength of one or two songs. Especially in the days before the cassingle or Itunes even made it possible like the 45s once had done when I started on my musical journey. I bought a few 45s myself with tunes such as Centerfold by the The J Geils Band or Eye of the Tiger by Survivor but vinyl lost favor since it was not portable so I moved to cassettes. I still had a cassette player in my car at the time Ten was released and was also resisting the transition to CDs so it was first purchased on a cassette tape. From the first notes of Once to the last of Release, I had experienced something I had never been able to do in my life: listen to an album that was perfect. There wasn’t a single song I wanted to skip through. While I did gravitate to some more than others and consider Black to probably be my all time favorite song, this album was special. I even made the transition to CDs and bought it again in a digital format not long after this.

I bought the next few Pearl Jam albums sight unseen based solely on my experience with Ten. I still found plenty of gems within them but it wasn’t quite the same as the lightning that was caught in the bottle the first time. I continued this blind reverence for them up until Yield but my general music purchases eventually became overpowered by the Itunes model and I found myself cherry-picking songs more so on an individual basis sampling them first and then only buying the one or two that really moved me instead of the old days where I would have had to buy the whole album to get them. I latched onto the Rearviewmirrow greatest hits release they had a few years after Yield in part because of remastered versions and it pulling together a lot of the ones I really liked together into one place. Most of my music preference seemed to be focused on the past rather than the present about that point as I really did not find much in the current scene that really consistently spoke to me. There were exceptions from time to time at a song level but the only band with consistent staying power for me was Pearl Jam. Even if it was dominated by their past, I crowned them as my favorite band.

I purchased a car in early 2020 that had a satellite radio trial come with it. It just so happened that there was a single channel devoted to Pearl Jam that I could leverage via this medium and that they were on the verge of releasing a new album called Gigaton right about the same time as the world went off the rails from COVID. I was exposed to some select songs from the upcoming album and the sound was quite different. I liked what I heard in Dance of the Clairvoyants and Superblood Wolfmoon and it was supposed to be promoted live via a concert tour but that got put on hold while the world tried to come to grips with a global pandemic.

There has not been a huge live performance aspect of my musical journey so far. My early years were more dependent on what those responsible for me would make happen. It was virtually non existent aside from a few country music bands that my parents liked. I really wanted to see one or two of those hairbands I discovered back then but it just never happened. Geography plays somewhat of a role in this as we often prefer convenient concert venues to have the band come to us rather than us going to them. There weren’t very many bands who found their way to Asheville, NC in my youth so that limited my opportunities from the very start.

Perhaps the lack of activity then did not plant the seed in me to be drawn strongly enough to this aspect of the musical experience so I have carried this same perspective up until recently despite now having the means to do so if I desired. Even with these means, live concerts should be experienced and shared with someone in my opinion. Pearl Jam came as close as they possibly could to me back in 2000 but even if I had been bitten by the live concert experience bug, my daughter was not very old at the time and I would have had to have gone alone to see them. There were other opportunities to see them as well over the years within reasonable driving distance but for one reason or another, I failed to translate any of those opportunities into seeing them because it hadn’t clicked with me yet.

My wife and I have been to a few Dave Matthews Band concerts over the years driven by her love for their music. It helped us see them multiple times partly because the geographical options are a little wider where I live now than those I had in my youth but she was always the initiator. My wife and daughter have developed a similar taste in music and have attended quite a number of sometimes even smaller venues but they seek live performances to compliment the same artists that they listen to via Spotify. My son found an affinity for Kiss and the significance of this was not lost on me given my first album purchase once I discovered this fact. This discovery happened to be during their Farewell Tour that was supposed to be the last time they could be seen live. It seemed like a once in a lifetime opportunity so I made the Raleigh show happen for us, for him. There is a picture of us already in the gallery on this blog from this day and the smile on his face says it all. I hope this is a memory he will treasure forever. I made sure to introduce him to some other hairbands I liked as well and he’s latched on to a number of those too.

The Kiss concert experience happened just before COVID when live gatherings like concerts were postponed and we had no idea when or if ever they might return. Things like eating out in a restaurant had been taken for granted and lacked proper context of their importance to us until we suddenly could no longer do them. I would do an annual adventure of some sort with my buddy Jack and those too became a casualty COVID left in its wake. As we emerged from these limitations in late 2022, we decided we needed to make sure something happened as soon as possible.

In the spirit of not taking anything for granted anymore, I had a slightly different lens to view live concerts than I’ve had before. I’ve always wanted to see Pearl Jam play live and more specifically, hearing them play Black could be considered a bucket list item for me. I suggested this to Jack in a phone call we had one evening to kick around ideas and even though he had seen them before in Chicago, he was willingly to see them again to share the experience with me this time. I pulled up the concert dates on-line right then and there only to find about a month’s worth of cities left so we would have to act fast if we wanted to pull it off this particular tour. This seemed to take a life of its own and by the end of the night, concert tickets were purchased and travel arrangements made for the final date of the tour: a concert less than a month away on September 22nd in Denver. This would have been a non-starter in the past without any locations geographically close but this was no longer the time to take for granted they would ever be close to me. The time to see them was now as tomorrow offered no guarantees.

We made our way to Ball Arena on the night of the concert in plenty of time to score some merchandise before the show. While hanging around outside waiting for the doors to open, we were treated to a double rainbow. It was as if the universe was speaking to us confirming our decision to make this trip happen. We knew right then and there we were in for a special night. Jack had booked us some phenomenal seats straight onto the stage at eye level. We also met a lovely couple from Omaha that kept us engaged while we waited for the concert to start. While the setlist did not ultimately include Black, the show was amazing. I got to hear Just Breathe which helped me get through some hard times in my life and was also able to reconcile with Betterman after it being tainted for me in college.  I rediscovered Rearviewmirror which I now play again with regularity. The energy of the encore for the last tour stop felt like it could not be topped anywhere else so we definitely picked the right city for this tour. 

I listen to Pearl Jam on my personalized Spotify playlists now almost daily and find I even listen to some songs on Youtube too so I can capture some of that live aspect as some of these come straight from a concert. It’s not quite the same as actually being there in attendance but it does enhance the listening experience. I have also found myself reading some comments left by other Pearl Jam fans listed with these versions. A lot of the comments I read were about how a parent introduced a child to their music and how much it meant to them especially after the parent was gone. Since my son has the hairband connections with me, I decided I would introduce Pearl Jam to my daughter. These are the connections that stay with us and music lives on even after the band itself is no longer there to make more. Thank you, Pearl Jam for what you have given to the world. I hope I get to experience it with you again in person.