Speaker 1: Hello everybody, and welcome back to the Surely You Can't
Be Serious Podcasts. My name is Jason Colvin. I got
my buddy right here. Dee Graves, Hello everybody, and we're
going back to the Fall of ninety one.
Speaker 2: Yes, we're giving you a rerun episode. Last week we
did Nirvana Nevermind. This week we're doing its competitor, Pearl
Jam ten. And next week we will be coming to
you with two new episodes on albums that all came
out at the same time as these two albums.
Speaker 1: That's right. Next week we start our discussion Metallica's Black album.
We'll go through that track by track, give you the
stories behind the band, what was going on at the time,
the stories behind the songs. It's really fascinating. And then
after that we'll compare it to Use Your Illusion one
by Guns n' Roses and then use Your Illusion two
by Guns and Roses.
Speaker 2: We are excited to do it and we look forward
to seeing you guys again next week, but for now,
stay tuned for Pearl Jams ten.
Speaker 1: Let me go grab my Mookie Blaylock Jersey real quick, Hello.
Speaker 3: Everybody, and welcome to the Surely Can't Be Serious Podcast.
Discussing and debating the iconic and the forgotten of eighties
and nineties pop culture with your co hosts James D.
Graves and Jason Colbin.
Speaker 2: Welcome everybody. We are here for part two of the
Nevermind and Ten Comparison. I am here with my buddy Jason.
Speaker 1: What's up, hey doo man.
Speaker 2: I'm doing awesome wearing my flannel shirt, my knee length shorts,
and my combat boots.
Speaker 1: I'm about to do a stage dive right now, right
into the middle of this podcast.
Speaker 2: You know you talked to me to def Leppard about
been waiting thirty five years to do this. This is
one of those ones that I'd love to talk to
anybody about anytime. It's been neat to do the deep
dive into this and learn all this stuff. This was
one of those albums growing up. I might have listened
to this album from beginning to end more than any
other album that I've ever listened to.
Speaker 1: That's cool. I'm excited to get into it. That was
hysteria for me. If I had a clicker every time
I listened to it, that would be the highest one
for me. That and Thriller probably, So.
Speaker 2: Before we get going, I just want to point something out.
We have been talking to each other now for a
couple of years face to face, and one of the
reasons that I can do that is because you don't
have nose hair. Have you been talking to people and
like you can't even concentrate on what they're saying because
of their nose hair.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, they like tuck to you, dangles, Yes, it wiggles.
Speaker 2: It's a total distraction. Absolutely, And so let me let
me say, if you are one of those guys, we
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Speaker 1: It is an amazing product. It trims your nose hair.
It's not embarrassing. You just stick it up there. It
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Speaker 2: You're not gonna look at people and bother them, right,
And those guys who's self conscious about my nose hair,
So somebody that you're gonna see me and I'm gonna
be like yanking them out and wincing in pain, don't
do that. There is a special thing that they make
and they've also just released in addition to the weed Whacker,
they have just released something called the lawnmower if you
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Speaker 1: So that's that's wonderful.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, it is so.
Speaker 1: Very It's very good around sensitive areas, if you know
what I'm saying.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: They have also an entire shavekit called the Ultra Smooth
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Speaker 1: So who doesn't want their package ultra smooth?
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Speaker 4: Whack it perfect.
Speaker 2: In our research, I read that was ranked like number
two hundred and seven out of best albums by Rolling
Stone or something, which I just thought to myself, I
could probably listen to two hundred and six albums and go, nope, nope.
Speaker 1: Nope, Wow, this is number one for you. Huh.
Speaker 2: It's really really good. I mean the you know, you've
got some Pink Floyd albums that are fantastic from beginning
to end out there, and just a very few others.
But this is one that I just I love every
single second of every single song on this album.
Speaker 1: Okay, well that's cool, because this is gonna be interesting
because for me, three weeks ago, I am a Pearl
Jam Greatest Hits kind of guy. I was not familiar
with most of these songs.
Speaker 2: For full disclosure, I was not one of those guys
who became a Pearl Jam devotee after listening to this album.
I love this album. I like a lot of the
songs on a lot of the other albums, which I
think a lot of people will say, now, this is
the true Pearl Jam, but it just wasn't as much
my taste as Ten was. Ten was their best by
far album, and it's obviously their biggest selling album and
the one that brought them into the public eye. But
it may not be their favorite album, it may not
be their fan base his favorite album, but it's definitely
my favorite album.
Speaker 1: I got a quick story about my experience with ten. Okay,
spreen Break of ninety three, I go on a road
trip with two of my roommates from college, Eric Mntoyer
Doug Huggin, both friends of the show. So we drove
to Boston from Oklahoma, City, Oklahoma, Holy Cow, which is
a freaking long way for my roommate's crappy car. Right, So,
all the way up and all the way back we're
listening to ten. Well. On the way back, we hit
the storm of the Century, crashed, the car, got snowed
in for three days, we missed school, we were trapped
in Knoxville, Tennessee. But the whole way we're listening to
ten And I finally, I remember one time, I'm like,
can we please listen to bon Jovi? Now that's where
it was my first real experience with ten So ug Eric,
thank you for that.
Speaker 2: Well, I would like to give you a hard time.
I would, But honestly, I was not an early adopter
on these guys either. I wasn't just as in love
with them as a lot of my friends were at
the time. It took me a little while, But honestly,
at that time, I had just become introduced to some
of the classic rock like I had just started really
listening to Led Zeppelin, Leonard Skinner and some of those
guys from the seventies, and I wasn't listening to anything new.
I was just like, I don't care about new music.
Nothing's good anymore, because I didn't realize, Hey, these guys
are putting out stuff that's not like you know, Motley
Crue and bon Jovi. Not that I disliked Bonjovi, but
it was a time that I was turning my nose
up at new music, especially new music that was like
a whole new genre of music. But then once I
gave Ten a chance, and once I started really listening
to it and learning it, I was like, this is
more similar to seventies rock than anything since the seventies.
I was just like, this isn't new these I mean,
Mike McCready is playing blue scale lead on this. This
isn't something weird and fanciful. This is like a throwback
to what was going on in the seventies and it's good.
Speaker 1: Well, great, Well let's get into it, man. I can't
wait to talk about it with you. Pearl Jam is
born out of the shattered pieces of other bands. It's
like they went to a garage sale of bands and
pieced them together, mostly from a band called Mother Lovebone,
which I had heard of but wasn't really familiar with
their music.
Speaker 2: There is such a storied history. There's so many things
going on You've got the bands Malfunction, Green River, Shadow,
and Bad Radio that are really the precursors to this band.
Malfunction was a band that was led by Andrew Wood.
Speaker 4: Oh if Jeff.
Speaker 2: And It broke up. Green River was a band that
Jeff Aimett and Stone Gossard were members of along with
Mark Arm and Steve Turner. Now, Jeff and Stone had
disagreements with Steve about the sound that they should be
going for. Steve thought that they were too much into
the hard rock scene and so he split, and then
Mark disagreed about whether they should be trying to get
on a big label or that they should stay independent.
Mark Arms said he would rather do an independent label.
Jeff and Stone they wanted to be big. They wanted
to be big stars and go with a major record label.
So that resulted in the end of Green River. Now,
Mark Arm and Steve Turner got together after that and
form a group mud Honey, which is one of Subpop
which we talked about last episode, one of their biggest bands.
And then Jeff Ament and Stone Gossard got together with
Andrew Wood and they formed Mother Love Bone and they
did really well. They had an EP come out called
Shine and then it did pretty well, and then they
signed with PolyGram and they put together an album called
Apple And if you've heard any of Mother Lovebone's songs,
it was probably off of that album Apple.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I was still new. I listened to that today.
I was not familiar with Mother Lovebone. Mother Lovebone is
a whole lot closer to the hair metal band stuff
that was going on at the time. I was actually
very surprised. It sounded a lot to me like a
combination of La Guns, Slaughter and Faster pussy Cat.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Andy Wood, he was very much into the wanting
to be a big rock star, big scene. Even when
they were playing small clubs, he would he would treat
it like it was an arena show.
Speaker 1: Yeah, hey, you in the back, this one's for you.
And it looks back there there's a guy like one
guy in the back holding a beer like for me.
They did say that. I mean, Andy Wood's personality was
kind of out front of Brother Love Bones.
Speaker 2: So yeah. Andy Wood was also the roommate of Chris Cornell,
who was the lead singer for Soundgarden.
Speaker 1: It's a very interesting story how they're all intermingled and intermixed,
but it's it's a very camaraderie type of thing going
on in Seattle. It's not combative, it's more friendly.
Speaker 2: That was something that the guy from the Ramones noted
when he was talking to Chris Cornell. He was like,
you guys support each other here, and that's something incredible
because where we come from, we would do anything to
have do any other competing band. So Mother Lovebone does
their full length LP, and then.
Speaker 1: Andy Wood passes away, like four weeks before the release
of Apple.
Speaker 2: Apple was supposed to come out, I believe in April
of nineteen ninety, and in March of nineteen ninety he
overdosed on heroin and it was obviously not only devastating
to the band because they were no longer a band,
but devastating because they lost a dear friend who was
someone who was exciting and full of life, just had
a demon.
Speaker 1: Can you imagine you're right on the precipice of all
your dreams coming true and then when of your best
friends he dies and your dream dies.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean they talk about coming into the hospital,
you know, just seeing him there on life support and
it just being a memory that they can never escape.
It just was overwhelming. I can't imagine. I mean, there's
a bunch of young guys, you know, in their twenties
to see if somebody that young lose somebody that young
just too much. So what happened is that Stone Gossard
he deals with the pain by going off and writing
more music, deeper and kind of heavier music that he's
writing Jeff Amott Quitch playing all together. He deals with
it in a different way than that. And then Chris
Cornell starts writing songs about the loss of his roommate
and dear friend. And so Gossard is this guitarist who's
writing these songs, and he remembers his buddy named Mike McCready.
They had known each other when they were young. Mike
McCready had played guitar long before Stone Gossard had even
played guitar, but they had kind of, you know, enjoyed
sending each other rock pictures. And then he remembers, hey,
Mike had a band. But what happened with Mike's band
is they became pretty big. They got pretty proud of themselves.
They thought, we're going to go down to LA and
become big. And they went down to LA and basically
got told you're not good enough to be down here.
And that kind of devastated them. So like eighteen months
after gets to la they go back to Seattle. In
about six months after that, they're done. They're no longer
a band, and he also quits playing guitar, cuts his hair,
goes back to college. I mean, he's given up the dream.
And then he has a buddy who's like, hey, man,
why don't you come to a concert with me. I
think you're giving up on something that you're really good at.
But let's go to a Stevie Rayvon concert. So he
goes to the Stevie Rayvon concert and Stevie Ravon starts
the song Couldn't Stand the Weather, And as he starts
the song, these clouds roll in and it starts to
storm on top of the audience. And then as soon
as the song is over, the storm stops in the
clouds part, and Michael Creedy said, it was like a
religious experience. I knew I needed to pick the guitar
back up. That's great, man, And so he goes. He
starts playing with another band called Love Chili. Gossard sees
him there, calls him up, says, hey, let's play some
songs together and it's actually McCready that's like, hey, man,
you've got some good stuff. We need to have a
bass player. You need to call Jeff. And I believe
response was f Jeff.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's right, it was because.
Speaker 2: You know, they just they didn't get along, I say
exceptionally well back then, even when they were another love
bone together. But he swallowed his pride and he called
them up and they got Matt Cameron, who was the
drummer for Sound Garden, and they put together a demo
tape and it was five songs and basically the point
of the demo tape was to find a drummer and
to find a lead singer.
Speaker 1: This is a really cool story. So they send this
tape to their buddy Jack Irons, who had formerly been
in Red Hot Chili Peppers, right, and they said, Hey,
we need a drummer, we need a vocalist. Are you
interested in maybe drumming for us? And if so, great,
If not, do you know any vocalists for us?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 1: And he had a basketball buddy down in San Diego
that he ran around with who had been in a
couple of bands or whatever. It's this guy named Eddie
Better maybe.
Speaker 2: You've heard of him, No, you hadn't back then.
Speaker 1: What are the odds that guys in Seattle make a
demo tape send to a guy who not only listens
to it but hands it over to one of the
great rock vocalists of all time.
Speaker 2: It's amazing. I mean, he's he's working like security and
a petroleum factory.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's just it's crazy.
Speaker 2: It is crazy. Eddie Vedder goes out surfing one night.
He's got these tunes in his head and he kind
of comes up with the lyrics as he's surfing. He
basically comes back in sits down on the beach, and
with sand still on his feet, writes the lyrics to
what will become Once, what will become Alive, and what
will become Footsteps, which he calls the Mama Son Trilogy
because it's kind of got this mini opera type of
feel where you have the mom and a son who
have this weird incestuous relationship which then leads the son
to become crazy and become a serial killer, and then
like Footsteps, is the final act of the trilogy that
you know, he's in prison and awaiting execution.
Speaker 1: So he records his lyrics on top of the demo,
sends it back to these guys they listen to it.
Speaker 2: So I'm going to throw this in there because I
don't think you're going to all of our listeners listen up.
I don't think anybody else is going to give you
this piece of information that I'm about to lay down
to you. So if you look at the tape that
he sent back, I used to do this when I
was recording things, and you know, living by myself, I
had no money either, and buying tapes to record on
can be expensive. So what you can do is you
can take a tape that's a commercially made tape, and
if you just stick little pieces of paper in the
top holes, you can record on it again. And so
that's what you would do. And so I looked at
this tape and I was like, holy crap, this is
an actual tape of somebodies that he has taken and
recorded on. Eddie Vedder recorded on this tape and then
he used white out to wipe out everything except for
one song title. One song title was a friend in California.
You have no idea who that recognize. I'm wondering if
anybody who's listening right now, has any idea what who
sang a friend from California handwritten above that it says
to Jeff and Stone. Then down at the bottom he
also uses white out to wipe out all of the
letters of the bottom part and it's just the letters
that spell out Eddie. So I looked at this and
I was like, I've got to figure out what this
tape is. It was Merle Haggard Greatest Hits of the eighties.
That was the tape that he decided to record.
Speaker 1: Over my gosh, yeah, that is incredible. That's got to
go on your Tribune card this week, so to cards
going on for sure. That's amazing. That's amazing. Yeah, that's awesome.
And he wrote his telephone number on there as well.
I saw that when they showed it to him. I
actually watched a video where the guy the interviewer, handed
that tape to Eddie Vedder and he's like, oh, check
it out, it's my telephone number. So when he sends
it back to Stone, they listened to it and they're like,
not only can he sing at all, but he can
write lyrics. Yeah, I mean he's like a poet, right, Yeah,
So he impressed him enough for them to fly him
up to Seattle to audition yep.
Speaker 2: And as he's going up, he writes the lyrics to
two more songs. It was a five song deal. Writes
the lyrics to two more songs, so he's got all
of them written, and he arrives up there and they're
in the middle of starting to do this Temple of
the Dog thing with Chris Cornell. Mike McCready comes in
and I'm just gonna say this right now, Mike McCready
is maybe one of the most underappreciated guitarists that I
can think of. He is a rock god who deserves
more credit than he gets. He deserves to be up
there with Hendrix and Stevie ray Vaughn and Eddie Van Halen.
I mean, he is phenomenal. And so Chris Cornell. You know,
the grunge scene, the alternative scene was all against, you know,
doing these big, long guitar solos. You know, we talked
about Nirvana. You don't the guitar solo is just a
melody of the words, you know. But Chris Cornell was
just of like, f all of you guys. I'm going
to put a five minute guitar solo on the first
song on this album. What do you think about that?
And so he said he almost had to yell at
Mike McCready because he was like, you play guitar so
freaking good. You're the one guy who I want to
play a five minute guitar solo on my first eleven
minute long song. It's solid. I mean, it's not you
can see his progression as time goes on. You know,
it's not his best work, but man, it's still really good.
You know.
Speaker 1: Chris Cornell was in a position to really help out
the band too, when he was doing this Temple of
the Dog thing and they're doing Hunger Strike. They're like,
you know, hey, we've got a new singer, and he's like, well,
we'll bring him on board. Man, let's get him going
and he can sing with me and we can go.
And so that was actually the first time that Eddie
Vedder ever heard himself on an actual wreck.
Speaker 2: Chris Cornell was basically like, I kind of have this
idea for how I want the other vocal part to
go in this, and he said and then suddenly Eddie
just started singing it, and it was as if he
already knew what I had had planned, like he had
just knew it. And Hunger Strike is you know the one,
the major duet that they do on that one now,
but I love that song so good. So you know,
Eddie Vedder arrives, they're introducing people. But when they first
when he first arrives, he's like, I don't want to
do anything. I want to go straight to the rehearsal.
I don't want to see the town, I want to
do any touristy stuff. I want to go and I
want to start playing right away. And for the next
five days they rehearse, and on day number six they
do their first show.
Speaker 1: I think it's awesome. I believe his term was I'm
not here to frn.
Speaker 2: If you listen to the songs, especially Alive from that
demo tape that he had sent back, I mean, there's
not a whole lot different honestly, from the way that
he originally did the lyrics and the way they originally
played it to what the song is on the final
ten album.
Speaker 1: Talk about their name, I'm ready tribute to the name.
Speaker 2: Well, okay, so we know that they started playing sessions,
they started playing shows right off the bat. They started
opening for Alison Chains. But the name under Allison Chains
was not Pearl Jam.
Speaker 1: That's right, it wasn't. It was Mookie Blaylock. So if
you're a basketball fan, especially a nineties basketball fan, then
you know who this guy is. Yeah, if you were
born and raised in Oklahoma, like I was right, you
recognize this guy from college because he played at Miama Mater,
the University of Oklahoma. He truly is one of the
great defensive players of all time, led Leagan Steeles, that
type of thing, and in college, man, he'd press it
all the way up the court. And these guys were
big basketball fans, and they were big fans of Mookie Blaylock,
who at the time, I know he played with the
Atlanta Hawks.
Speaker 2: New Jersey Nets was who he was playing for at
the time if they adopted his name.
Speaker 1: So anyway, the original name for the band Mookie Blaylock.
Speaker 2: They got together, they started rehearsing in the fall of
nineteen ninety Eddie moves up in like November, they start
doing all of the shows and by March they start
doing their demo recordings at the London Bridge Studio there
in Seattle. They signed with a major record label and
guess what you can't be Mookie Blaylock in here.
Speaker 1: First of all, Mookie Blaylock doesn't know who five scrabs
from Seattle are at the right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, as a security guard. The other guy's working at
a coffee shop. And another guy used to work at
a pizza place. Oh, here's an interesting bit of trivia
as well. The guy that worked at the pizza place
was Mike McCready. He worked at the pizza place with
the guy named Pete Druge, who has a song that
you may or may not recognize called if you Don't
Love Me, I'll Kill Myself And it's from the movie.
Speaker 1: That's from Dumb and Dumber.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, yeah, Mike McCready and the guy who sang
that song used to work in the same piecha shop
to get.
Speaker 1: Oh man, that is incredible, What a great nugget that is.
I am a huge Dubb and Dumber fan, which we're
going to cover one of these days. But anyway, the
record company says, Okay, you guys can't be Mookie blay Like.
You got to pick something else, right, So they do
eventually form the name Pearl Jam right, right, And so
the way they came up with this. I thought this
was at least interesting, although a little anti climactic. They
kind of liked the name Pearl. It was Eddie Vedder's
great grandmother's name. Yeah, and Jeff just kind of thought, Okay,
that's kind of a cool word. Yeah, And then they
went to a Neil Young concert where he would just
play these extra long, extended versions of these songs pearl Jam.
Speaker 2: Right pro jam. Yeah, it's it's not as exciting as
what you would hope it would be. And so what
Eddie Vedder did right after they became famous was to
lie about where it came from.
Speaker 1: I heard this story too.
Speaker 2: Yeah, as he's like, no, I had a great grandmother
named Pearl and she was married to a Native and
America and she used to make this Paoti lace jam
and they will get you high and stuff. But yeah,
later on he's like, no, that was bs.
Speaker 1: That was a lie. Yeah, all right, So then they
become Pearl Jam. Their first album is going to be
called ten.
Speaker 2: Which is eleven songs.
Speaker 1: Why it's called ten because that's Mookie Blaylec's number.
Speaker 2: Oh that was a setup. By the way, I totally
such show.
Speaker 1: Thank you, thank you for me right there, appreciate.
Speaker 2: That We've talked before with Van Halen and with def
Leppard about MTV being in, you know, the right place
at the right time for these bands. What interestingly happens
for this one is that independent record label that I
talked about last episode called sub Pop. There's a neat
little thing that Subpop does. The first interesting thing they
figure out is if if they don't make as many records,
they created a demand because people were like, oh, you
can't get these because they only made you know whatever,
five hundred of them or whatever. So they do that
little trick to increase the value of their records. And
then the other trick that they learned is they realized
that all music movements started with a regional base. You know,
you look at Motown and its base was Detroit. So
they thought, Okay, we're going to make Seattle. We're going
to make that region our regional base for this big
music movement. And they're a large part of why grunge
and why alternative music from Seattle became as big as
it did because they had this crazy idea that they
engaged in in March of nineteen eighty nine. And these
are like a small time don't know what they're doing,
just trying to get their feed under them, guys. But
they said, let's get the most important reporter from Melody
Maker over in Europe to come over here. Will fly
him over, will act like we're big time. We'll show
them the Seattle scene and the Seattle sound and hopefully
he'll write a good article about it. Well, that's exactly
what happens, and that is exactly what he does. And
all of a sudden everyone becomes obsessed with the Seattle
sound and that was the impetus behind people latching on it.
You know, as with all things, it takes a little
offer these things to happen. But the fascination with Seattle
and kind of the grunge sound and the grunge look
became a thing largely because of subpop and then, I mean,
quite frankly, Pearl Jam enjoyed the success on ten that
it did part because of the Seattle sound trick, and
then also because of Nirvana.
Speaker 1: For people who enjoy pop culture like you and I do. Yeah,
it's fascinating to see when the lit match and the
gasoline meet.
Speaker 2: And what's interesting with this one is how quickly the
word grunge became a dirty word to all of these guys.
Like every rebellion against the establishment begins with someone saying, hey,
you know, we don't want to we don't want to
do what the man is wanting us to do. We're
going to do our own thing. Then it starts to
gain traction. People join in, it becomes like a movement,
and then the establishment sees it and it's like, oh, hey,
we can market this and we can pay its badly
and we'll make it our own. And then the movement
becomes the new establishment. And that's what happened with rock
and roll in the early eighties, what happened with heavy
metal in the mid to late eighties, and that's what
happens now with the grunge music in the Seattle scene,
is it's the rebellion against heavy metal, and then it
turns into the new heavy metal where you know, then
Versace is selling grunge style in magazines and stuff, and
so it quickly became the establishment. Okay, right, So just
a few musical influences. Eddie likes The Who and Michael
Jackson and the Jackson Five. Mike McCready likes Funkadelic and
def Leppard and van halen Stone likes rap. All of
them were into ice Cube at the time that they
that he was becoming good. Kurt Cobain said some kind
of negative things about them when they first came out,
like He's like, they're just hard rock, They're just another
hard rock band wearing our clothes. That they're not really
a true alternative, a true grunge band, and it kind
of was upsetting to Eddie, and Eddie gave him a
call and Kirk Cobain kind of changed his tune a
little bit and said, I'm not going to say anything
bad about him. I don't like their music and I
never have, but I like Eddie Vetter. He's a nice guy,
and so I'm not going to say ugly stuff about
them anyway.
Speaker 1: I do think that's interesting. I don't think Kurt Cobain
is wrong. I mean, I think that pro Jam is
a hard rock band with grunge elements, and I think
that Nirvana is kind of a punk band with pomp
and grunge elements. And they're from the same area, so
there are similarities, but they're from there. They form different trees, you.
Speaker 2: Know, sure. And I mean, if you listen to any
of the bands out of Seattle. They all have kind
of a different sound. It is not as though they're
all playing the same type of music.
Speaker 1: Well, I did hear Cameron Crow say that one of
the reasons why they had formed this kind of Seattle
sound was that because of the weather, they had a
lot of time to play. They're indoors, they had a
lot of time to play, and they had a lot
of time to listen to music, and so because of
the just the weather situation, that's just kind of what
it lends itself to.
Speaker 2: Well, certainly the sound of the music is different. I mean,
the sound of the music of Nirvana and the sound
of the music of Pearl Jam is very distinct. You
would not confuse them. But just like Metallica brought brains
to heavy metal, Pearl Jam brought relevance and depth and
you know, meaning to hard rock which had been missing
for a while. You know, they were doing hard rock,
but the lyrics were about the loneliness and the confusion
of youth. And I think that's why they are appropriately
in with this group of new sound, the revolution that
was occurring. We didn't talk about the drummers. Honestly, it's
kind of confusing it.
Speaker 1: Is confusing.
Speaker 2: They went through like three different drummers, but basically Dave
Krusen was the one who was on the album ten
and he's the one that played for them. He eventually
went into rehab almost right after the album was finished,
and so he was replaced by Matt Chamberlain, who had
been the drummer for Eddie Burkel and the New Bohemians,
and then he got an opportunity to be on Saturday
Night Live with Saturday Night Live Band, so he was like, sorry, guys,
I'm not going to keep dumming for you, and that
he recommended David Brusies to be the drummer, and he
was this guy out of Texas and it's really interesting
and I'll jump ahead a little bit, but in one
of the videos, Mike Chamberlain is the one playing the
drums and David Bruises is one of the guys out
in the crowd because he's just arrived from Austin, X.
The album actually starts off with the sounds of a
hidden track. The hidden track is called mass Your Slave,
and so if you listen to the beginning out of
the album and the end of the album, it's the
same tune. But it's just a real brief, you know,
kind of taste of master and Slave, and then we
open with Once.
Speaker 1: The hidden track on ten Yeah is not near as
offensive as the hidden track on the Nirvana album.
Speaker 2: The hidden track on Tin is good, and.
Speaker 1: It's just kind of like it's like a cracker. It's
like there's not really much substance to it. It's just
kind of little drums and that's it. It's not a
nail being driven into your brain.
Speaker 2: It's a cool sound. It's kind of gets you in
a mood, and it's definitely not something that when the
guy comes in to mix the CD and nobody else
is there, he thinks, you know, this is a mistake.
This shouldn't be in here. This is completely crap.
Speaker 1: This is garbage. We need to throw it away right.
Speaker 2: Once. The first song on the album was originally called
a Jitian Crave, and that was just what Stone Gossard
had called it whenever he sent the demo tape. But
it is part of that Mama Son mini opera that
Eddie Vedder had written.
Speaker 1: This song was on the demo tape, the Stone Gossard
Demos ninety one right right, and that Eddie Vedder got
ahold of okay, yes.
Speaker 2: And so when they did the single release for Live,
this song was on the B side for that one.
You know, and Alive, as I said before, was also
part of that Mama Son mini opera. But this one
is the one that is the story of the descent
into madness where he ultimately becomes a serial killer, you know,
backseat lover on the side of the road, got a
bomb in my temple and it's going to explode. They
did this one, as with many of them, on their
performance in October twenty second, ninety that very I don't
remember it's their first or second performance, but right.
Speaker 1: Right off the bat they're performing this. This is kind
of a hard rocker song. This is I mean, it's
a pound your fist. The crowd is kind of dropping
their head and let's.
Speaker 2: Go right yeah, it's angry.
Speaker 1: It's angry. This song received some radio play. I was
familiar with this song when let me start this.
Speaker 2: The next one we have is even flow. Man, what
a freaking great song this is. I'm afraid that I'm
just gonna gush over every single one of these. Pull
it back just a little bit, all right.
Speaker 1: That's the way I felt when we did Hysteria, so.
Speaker 2: Yeah, right, so this one is the picture of a
homeless man, and I mean that's evident from the lyrics.
You know that even flow is this guy with problems,
mental problems probably, and thoughts that he has to drive
away and chase away, and an insane look whenever he smiles.
And it turns out he's based on an actual guy,
a Vietnam vet that Eddie Vedder met, whose name was
also Eddie, who ended up passing away.
Speaker 1: The cool thing to me. In two thousand and eight,
Eddie Vedder said this song was written underneath the space Needle.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean there's three things I know about Seattle. I
know the Seahawks, I know the Mariners, and I know
you know Fraser and the space needle. That's it, right,
I guess that's four things. But this song took forever
to get it right.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: They played it like fifty sixty seventy times and some
members of the band are still dissatisfied to this day.
Speaker 2: They did a couple different versions of it ultimately, and
one of them they recorded with the drummer David Bruisey.
When that's the one that appears on the singles soundtrack.
So a couple of nights ago I watched singles. It's
fascinating because Cameron Crowe had heard about the death of
Andy Wood. He had this kind of storyline idea and
decided to go up to Seattle and hang with these bands,
and he ends up casting. I mean, you've got Alison
Chains performing on stage. You've got Chris Cornell standing next
to Matt Dillon as he's cranking up the volume on
his girlfriend's speakers that he's just installed, and then all
the windows blow out, and Chris Cornell is just watching.
It's just kind of nod in his head like yeah.
And then Matt Dillon is the lead singer for this
band called Citizen Dick whose major song has touched me
on Dick. But his band is Eddie vedder Stone Gossard
and Jeff Amott. I mean, it's the Yes, there's a
couple of different scenes that they're in, but it's fascinating
because they are making this movie at the same time
that these guys are putting this album together. Like none
of them are famous. Chris Cornell is Seattle famous and
Alison Chains is Seattle famous. But the guys that they
got to play the members of Matt Dylan's band. They
were no ones at the time other than that he
was able backed by Stone and Jeff and drum Ready better.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's good, that's a good revie.
Speaker 5: A compliment for us is a compliment for you?
Speaker 1: Even Flow is the second single released. It was released
April sixth, nineteen ninety two. Yeah, so this is released
in ninety two and it's the fifth most played song
on the radio during the twenty tens. Yeah, in twenty tens.
Speaker 2: Because every single one of these songs have staying power.
This one. Just to talk musically, Stone Gossard use an
open D tuning and then Mike McCready says, yeah, I
just kind of ripped off Stevie Rayvaughan.
Speaker 1: This song's very different than anything rock that I had
been hearing at the time. But the vocalizations kind of
staccato is it's different. It's very different. Yeah, but I
mean super great. I mean, this is a song that
I was a late adopter to but ultimately came to love.
Speaker 2: Did you have a little bit of trouble learning to
speak any better?
Speaker 1: Oh? I still don't know what he's saying.
Speaker 2: I mean, the worst, the worst and most famous of
the unintelligible any Better lyrics. It comes from Yellow Leadbetter
for This Day. I don't know that I know what
one single line of that song is as good as
it is. But Kim Thale, the guy who's the guitar
player for Sound Garden, I mean, you get to think
about what this song is about, right, It's about It's
about homelessness. And you know this guy with a concrete
pillow and he when he went and heard them live,
he thought it was called evening Flow. It was like,
you know, like how everyone's like in the evening, it's
just kind of a flow and we're on like a
good time.
Speaker 1: That's awesome.
Speaker 2: So the video on this one, they had recorded this
video where the thick guy came in and he recorded
all these zoo scenes of animals and the band was
kind of air playing their instruments on the edge of
this cliff. But once they got the footage, they're like, well,
this was a colossal waste of time and money. And
so what happened was they still had the video, but
it was done by this guy named Josh Taft who
was just filming as a friend. He's a friend of
Stone Gossards. He had directed Alive and later on directed Oceans,
but he was there just filming this footage. But on
the full length video of this, which you didn't typically
see on MTV, Eddie Vedder starts the video by going,
this is not a TV studio, Josh hurt these lights out.
It's an effing rock concert.
Speaker 1: I watched this video today and I'm like, this can't
be the official video. He's yelling at people.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Eddie video had aversion to videos at all. Really,
And it's interesting on the album you don't hear the
end piece on this. They released this in the UK first,
but it says I died. I died and you just
stood there. I died and you watch I died and
you walked by and said no, I'm dead. I was like, wow,
how did I never hear that before? Because it's not
on the album, but it is in the video.
Speaker 1: So third track on the album is called Alive.
Speaker 2: I'm glad you're head banging right now. It is really appropriate.
Speaker 1: Oh man, This song is so good man. This was
their first single, released July seventh, ninety one.
Speaker 5: Is so good.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I knew that you would love this song
because this song has the most mass appeal. This is
the most radio friendly one of the bunch, for sure.
Speaker 5: I got number.
Speaker 2: All right. So this song starts off with son, She says,
have I have a little story for you. What you
thought was your daddy was nothing, But while you were
sitting home alone at age thirteen, your real daddy was dying.
So this is an actual event that occurred in Eddie
Vedder's life. He okay, he had a conversation with his
mom where he finds out that the man that he
thought was his dad his entire life is not his dad.
And you know this. Of course they didn't get along
particularly well, so this is a big realization for him.
And then he finds out that his real dad. Not
only did he not know that it was his real dad,
but he knew the guy like he was just like
somebody he thought was a family friend. And then he
finds out not only hey, this guy was my dad,
but he died a few years ago. So he has
never had that opportunity to bond with him, and his
mom kind of treats it's like it's no big deal,
which is, you know, the underlying emotion behind this whole
song is pretty intense.
Speaker 1: Man, that's a sad story.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So this song was originally recorded January in nineteen ninety
one as a part of a demo session. Yeah, which
during the recording of ten, they couldn't recreate the intensity
of that original demo, so they went back and took
that demo and kind of corrected it and improved it,
and that's what you got.
Speaker 2: This one was one that Stone Gossard had actually written
while he was still with Mother Lovebone and apparently Andy
Wood saying some sort of lyrics to it. It was
when they sent out the demo tape. This was the
one that he called Dollar Short and Mike McCready when
they play this one live, we'll go into the Black
Sabbath Warpigs solo at the end of this one.
Speaker 1: Speaking of that guitar solo, yeah, Mike McCready said that
he based this on Ace Freeley's solo in the Kiss
song She.
Speaker 2: Yes, which he said was based on the Doors song
five to one. I stole it from Kiss, but they
stole it from the Doors. This is the video, by
the way, that you have the live footage on where
you see Chamberlain drumming and David Bruce's in the audience.
Speaker 1: It's a neat little nugget right there. Okay, So song
number four on the album, the song is called why Go.
Speaker 2: Again? I love it. It kicks butt. Now, this is
one that it didn't get as much radio play as
some of the other songs on it. So what did
you think about it when you heard it first?
Speaker 1: Well, I'd like it. It's kind of a head bobber.
It's a definitely probably one of those songs that you
hear in concert and everybody's like, yeah, freaking awesome. But
when I listened to the album, I would say this
is definitely the lower third of the album.
Speaker 2: Honestly, I put all of these songs almost at a
tie for perfect, but this one is. I just like
the imagery that he does with this one. I mean,
the song begins with she scratches a letter into a
wall made of stone, Maybe someday another child won't feel
as alone, And it's about this girl who's, you know,
struggling in this mental facility of some kind you can
tell from the lyrics of the song. And then, as
it turns out, this was actually some real girl that
Eddie Vedder had read about like thirteen years old. Her
parents catch her smoking pot and send her to a
hospital over smoking pot, and she refuses to say that
she's got anything wrong with her, so ends up staying
two years in the hospital because the doctors, you know,
want to argue that she's crazy. And in the liner notes,
he dedicates the song to a girl named Heather, So
if anybody's got more information on who Heather is out there,
sorry about your situation. Thank you for inspiring a awesome song.
Speaker 1: Now, then, this is a song that I'm very familiar
with that I want to get into. This song is
called black.
Speaker 2: Let's just soak an instrument.
Speaker 1: Let's just pause and appreciate the beauty of this song.
Speaker 5: Geez word, bird o passbody.
Speaker 1: Even Black was voted the ninth best ballad of all
time by the readers of Rolling Stone. You know this
song even though I'm familiar with it from the radio,
it wasn't released as a single.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the record label urged the band to release this
song as a single, but they refused it. They said, no,
we will not release this as a single, And Eddie
Vetter went so far as to call radio stations to go, hey,
did the record label send you a single of this?
Because I told them not to. They better not be
doing that, but the record label didn't. The radio stations
just chose to play it anyway because they appreciated how
awesome it was. But Eddie Vedder said, some songs just
aren't meant to be between hit number two and hit
number three. It was too emotional, it was too meaningful
to him to put it in that category.
Speaker 1: You know, we can talk all day about what Pearl
Jam has done in regards to their fame and their popularity,
but refusing to send their best songs to be played
on the radio, it's so interesting to me that they
shun that type of I mean, bon Jovi whores out
their albums like crazy.
Speaker 2: I mean, you know, they had the same type of
experience that Nirvana had, which was they have almost a
literal overnighte success, and theirs was a little bit longer
than Nirvana's was. But Nirvana had been together for quite
a while, had released another album before never Mind became
the big overnight success that it was. These guys had
literally gotten to I mean, they had gotten together in
the fall of nineteen ninety and by nineteen ninety two,
this thing is exploding and they're playing Lollapalooza with these
giant arenas and Eddie Vedder like Kurt Cobain was just like,
I don't want to be here instantaneously. I wanted to
go through years of roughing it and playing small clubs
and doing these things. I didn't want the overnight success.
This is one that This is about as close to
a love song as they get on this album, and
it really hits home for me and I think it
does for so many people. It's about the heartbreak of
losing a love. The lyrics, like many of his lyrics,
are kind of vague and paint a picture but don't
give you vivid details. But he said, you can't really
have a true love unless it was a love unrequited,
And I was like, wow, too beautiful.
Speaker 1: You know when we talked about radio stations not receiving
this as a single, but they were playing it anyway. Yeah,
it reached all the way to number three on the
Hot Rocks chart.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's amazing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's really good. I like at the very end
that little to me, that's where the song really comes together.
After Black, we now go into what I think is
the best song on the entire album, Jeremy.
Speaker 2: So you sent me a video today? By this guy
named Rick Beato, which I hadn't seen before, that is
called what Makes This Song Great? At the Five Pearl Jam,
and they look at he looks at Jeremy, and my
response to you was, this is so musically over my
head that I can't possibly begin to even relays. But
I can just tell you, as someone who does have
some musical experience, holy crap. I didn't realize all of
the intricacies that they had going on on this, and
to be such a world famous hit and to do
all of the strange things that they're doing on this one,
I'm just like, holy smokes, it's awesome.
Speaker 1: Again, I'm not a musician. I understood even less of
this than you did. But he does talk about the
unusual octave jumps that they make throughout this song. Yeah,
so I wrote down a couple of examples. So when
he's talking about the pools of maroon below and then
he jumps up to daddy, you know that huge jump,
and then he does it several times throughout the song,
and so it's just an incredibly complex he said, it's
similar to something like a jazz musician would do.
Speaker 2: Fantastic musically, and then of course the subject matter of
the song is so strong. I mean, this is about
the actual suicide of a boy in Texas named Jeremy Dell, who,
at sixteen years old, was sent to go get an
admission slip and came back with a gun and said,
I didn't get the admission slip, but I got what
I meant to and then killed himself in front of
his English class.
Speaker 1: Shot himself on January eighth, nineteen ninety one, which would
make him probably very close to years or my age.
Speaker 2: So yeah, who that hurts my heart. Eddie Vetter had
read about this Jeremy Dell in the Dallas Morning News
and it actually reminded him of someone that he knew
in school who one year brought a gun to school
and didn't himself but shot a fish tank. Yeah, and
so Eddie, Eddie said, And I had been in a
fight with his kid the year before. You know, can
you just imagine like seeing the guy that you were like, yeah,
could it? But and then in the next year you're like, oh,
holy crap, he brought a gun to school. He shot
the fish.
Speaker 1: Tank on a lighter note, My good friend and friend
of the show, Tristan Martin, told me when I told
him we were doing Pearl Jam he said, one of
the things I know about Pearl Jam ten is that
they're a twenty nine oohz. Jeremy, he said, Nie, my
brother would sit and listen to this song and count
the ooze. So justin thank you for that little bit
of nugget right there.
Speaker 2: I mean nine oohs. So this is the one one
of the professional, professionally done videos. It was done by
Mark Pellington, who also did the rooster video for Alison
Chains and who directed the movie Arlington Road. He said
he did three takes of Eddie singing and then almost
the rest of the video was just him, his own creation.
The band said, we don't really want to be in
the video, so you get like little brief flashes of
the band, You get Eddie sitting on a stool singing,
and then most it is the creation of Mark Pellington.
Speaker 1: This song is the best song on the album in
my opinion, and one of the best songs of the nineties.
Speaker 2: So on Jeremy. The B side of Jeremy was a
song called Footsteps, which most people don't know but it is.
It's a it's a very different sounding it doesn't sound
like the other songs on this.
Speaker 5: Album, think about.
Speaker 2: But it was the third part of that Mama Son trilogy,
and you've got the incestuous relationship, which then leads to
the serial killer. Well footsteps is he's in prison awaiting execution.
Speaker 5: Bo stop.
Speaker 4: All right.
Speaker 1: Next song after Jeremy is a song called Oceans They
this the fourth single, released December seventh, nineteen ninety two.
Speaker 2: No, yes, this is about a surfboard. No, I'm just
kidding that. He joked in MTV Unplugged about it being
about a surfboard, but it was, and then he said, no,
I'm just kidding. It's about a girl named Beth who
I hopefully will see you tomorrow. And you know got
to think that that's probably the lady he ended up
marrying later on, named Beth Leibling This.
Speaker 1: You think of these guys as being so serious about
their music. They're always very serious seeming. But the story
behind this song actually made me laugh out loud. So
they're recording and you go play pay the parking meter
for me. Yeah, so somebody says they were recording, doing
some work in the recording studio. Hey, Eddie, here's some change.
We run out to the meter and plug this in
my car. I'm about to I'm about to flip over
get a ticket. So Eddie goes outside to plug some
coin into the meter and locks himself out of the
studio while it's raining and cold.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and he's for it and he's not.
Speaker 1: He doesn't have anything to so he's freezing his butt
off in the wet rain, and so he just sits
down and writes the lyrics to the song.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it just happened to have a pen and a
piece of paper, and they're still playing like they're still
playing on the inside. You know, they can't hear him,
but he can hear it now. So he's like, okay,
I can hear the bass here. I guess Fitt might
as well write a song to this. And so you've
got this really kind of sweet, short song. This is
the shortest lyrics that you're going to see on any
of the song. But he sits there and listens to
the bass and writing lyrics, and then when the bass
stops playing, he's like oh and starts pounding on the
door and then then here's the bass playing again.
Speaker 1: That's funny. So this song, it's it is interesting to
me because this song is I would. I would describe
it as epic, emotional and grand. Yeah, but it's very short.
This is a song that could go on for eight
or nine or ten minutes, and I would listen to it.
It's like, was it not even three minutes? I mean
it's real short. Yeah, kind of interesting. The video was
shot in Hawaii and inspired by his love of surfing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is one. If you look at the liner notes,
you'll see that the guy who ended up mixing the
album for him. By the way they spent they didn't
spend as much money on this one as they did
when they did Apple for Mother Lovebone, but they spent
way more money on the mixing side of things than
on the recording side of things. So they mixed the
album at a place called Ridge Farm Studios in Dorking,
and they're recording and they're about as far away from
any kind of musical equipment supply place as you're going
to be. And so Tim Palmer, the guy who's doing
the mixing for them, they couldn't get to like percussion
that the mixer thought they needed, and so he ended
up using a pepper grinder, kind of like a Morocca
or something. And then he used he takes some drum
sticks and beats on a fire extinguisher, and so that's
what you get on the little the little pings and
the clicks that happen in this particular song is some
random percussion and whatever it is and more credit and
liner notes for pepper mill and fire extinguishing. This one
also is one in the open D tuning. And this
one is Stone Gossard's favorite track off of ten and
also Jeff Ament's favorite track off of ten.
Speaker 1: It's an amazing song. I love it. Okay, moving on
song after Oceans, This song is called Porch. This is
a song that for me and my family, you gotta
be quick on the skip because that F word is
like one and a half seconds into it. And for
my family this would get my cape confiscated, So you
go to be super fast on the skipper on this one.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is one. I just love it. It's just
so angry, and you know one that you're going to
go into the mosh pit on it is Yeah, this
is the other one. This is number five that he
wrote on the way to Seattle to meet them for
the first time. And the lyrics on this one, you
know the other ones are they they have a beautiful
poetry to them and that you can tell what they're about,
but it's not like it's in your face. You get
an impressionist painting kind of thing on these other songs.
With Porch, it's way open to interpretation as to what
he's talking about. But it's got this fantastic instrumental break,
like it's completely different hits the e minor here goes.
So while this solo is going on, it's a nice
long solo, and of course for their live shows that
extend it even further. And if any if you've ever
seen any Pearl Jam live, you know that Eddie Vedder
is going to get bored and go start climbing stuff.
And so this is the song that he's like, all right,
nice long guitar solo in this song, let's go climb
up on the rafters swing, And you know, the guys
talk about how they're watching him do this and they're like,
I was frightened to death every single time. We're just
watching and just waiting for him. Top. Yeah, okay, there,
our lead singer just died. He just fell to his
death in front of us. It was crazy scary to
see him do this stuff. But man, he was living.
Speaker 4: Line all right.
Speaker 1: After Porch, we get a song called Garden.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this one again, I love it. I didn't know
until recently what it was about. I just enjoyed the song,
had my own interpretation on it. But apparently they came
up with this one when they heard about the invasion
of Kuwait. There's no no mystery about how they feel
about Bush, both Senior and Junior, and so they when
they heard about this, they were so frustrated. And the
Garden of Stone is a cemetery and I will walk
with my hands bound. It's kind of this idea of
being forced into war. But it's still just again, a
beautiful song. What did you think? This is not again,
not one of the ones that's mainstream awareness, So what
did you think when you heard this one?
Speaker 1: I would call this song dark and beautiful. I mean
the whole album to me has a has a hint
of sadness to it. I would say, you know, Nirvana's
Nevermind is more about being angry and rebellious. This record
is more emotional and sad.
Speaker 2: Yeah, brooding. Brooding is the word that I used. There
are obviously lyrics about deeper things from both bands, But
whereas Kurt Cobain is more a scream at authority, this
is a more of a brooding anger that you get
from Eddie Vedder.
Speaker 1: I do like how there's two guitars. When you listen
to it on headphones, you get one guitar on the left,
one guitar on the right, and they make that beautiful
fullness that's really satisfying. Definitely love it, beautiful song, Love it.
Speaker 3: All right.
Speaker 1: So after Garden we have a song called Deep Again.
Speaker 2: I can't do anything but gush about all of these songs,
but this one is another one that's very much open
to interpretation. There's not a you know, I've seen a
whole bunch of different ideas about what this song is about,
and I don't agree with any of them, and I
don't know that the band has said anything about it.
But I mean you get hints of you know, you
get a man on a window ledge about to jump
out maybe or maybe it's drug use, or maybe it's murder,
or maybe it's rape, and it's all this kind of
multi meaning all no.
Speaker 5: Bond.
Speaker 1: This was probably my least favorite.
Speaker 2: Song on the entire album What Bothers You About It?
Speaker 1: It doesn't bother me. It just doesn't grab me like
the others do. To me, it didn't have the beauty
of Oceans Garden and I didn't have that same hook
that even Flow and Alive have And Jeremy's on its
own level for me, but it's in the lower third.
It's still good, but it just didn't grab me.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this one, I think I've said something about the
end of Jaws before, like, if you've made it this
far in the movie, you're totally going to buy in
on an exploding oxygen tank. Right for Deep. I've bought
in so hard on all nine songs leading up to
this one that I was just like, it just fell
right into the groove and I just love it each
and every time I hear it.
Speaker 1: So all right, So the last song on the album
is a fantastic song. Amazing that to me, it's similar
to something in the Way at the end of Nevermind.
I don't know why they kind of hold this gem
to the very last track, but Release is awesome. It's beautiful.
It's seen along you're at the concert, the lighter's going up.
Speaker 2: This is a song that they kind of came up
with in the studio. It was. You know, they would
be jamming on the song and it had this deep
and beautiful feel, and then Eddie just goes up to
the microphone and just starts singing like it hasn't he
hasn't written anything down. He just starts singing what's on
his heart and and it's about his dad, and it's
about oh, dear Dad, do you see me now? And
his idea that he's got to release the pain that
he's dealing with. And you know, he talks about how
he's he's singing this and it's it's deeply meaningful to him.
And then he really he's looking around and he realizes,
my gosh, the other band members are totally feeling this
because of what they went through with Andy Wood that
they've got they've still got this deep emotional scar that
they have to overcome, that they have to let go
and and ultimately move on with life. So for anybody,
for anybody who's lost something, who's lost somebody really close
to them, this song can be a very emotional song
to listen to.
Speaker 1: Nice, thank you for that. D So that wraps it up.
I mean, that's ten.
Speaker 2: So they released ten and it wasn't like the overnight
success that Nevermind was. It took a little while to
gain its traction, but by August of ninety two they
had reached number two on the Billboard two hundred. But
you know who they could not unseat.
Speaker 1: Billy ray Cyrs.
Speaker 2: World. What were you thinking, Oh my gosh.
Speaker 1: Billy ray Cyrus's album Some Gave All was number one
for seventeen weeks in the nineties.
Speaker 2: Everyone who's listening right now should just punch themselves right
in the face one dime for allowing that to happen.
Speaker 1: All right, were ready to put these on the scales? Yeah,
why don't you lead off? I know you have kind
of a stronger relationship with this album in particular.
Speaker 2: Okay, so putting these two on the scales it is
difficult for me to do. I thought when we started
this process it was going to be super easy for
me to do, because, as I've said before, ten is
one of my favorite albums of all time, maybe my
favorite album of all time. There is nothing wrong with
it from beginning to end, including that fantastic hidden track
that begins and ends the album. But then when I
listened to never Mind, I was impressed. I was just like, Wow,
this is a lot better than I. I just never
gave it that chance. You know, I had kind of
I told you I had written off these guys, and
to me, Nirvana was still kind of written off. I
had this fantastic, you know, romantic experience with smells like
teen Spirit oddly enough, but it was it wasn't a
band that I was fully invested in, and they were
just kind of were weird and loud and not particularly
strong musicians from my way of thinking back then. But
now listen to him now, twenty five years later. Dang
it good. That was really really good, and there's a
rawness to their sound that's enticing to me. I mean,
you know from our past musical talks that I prefer
the less produced sound, and if you look at these
two albums, there's no question Nirvana sounds less produced. I mean,
we talked about the fact that Butch Vig did a
whole lot of producing, but he did it in such
a way like that it was still very natural sounding.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: It's like the best makeup is the one that looks natural, right, Well,
that's what he did with that album. But I can't
I mean, as good as never Mind is and as
much as I was impressed with it, I cannot escape
the fact that ten is flawless from beginning to end.
It still has staying power. It is more produced, and
the band has said as much. You know, they're like,
I really wish we didn't have as much reverb on
that album, and we would have done things differently as
bands in that age tend to do. But the fact
is it is freaking amazing music by amazing musicians. Nirvana,
their music was rough and almost deliberately so, which was
kind of the punk style, and with them you got
to jump. They jumped away from what was mainstream music
at the time. With Pearl Jam, it was more of
a stepping stone. It was like, we're fine with the
idea of hard rock, We're fine with screaming guitar solos,
but we're going to put in lyrics that are still
deep and about the loneliness and despondence of youth, and
we're going to write about things like suicide and incest
and mental health facilities and still make it a melodic,
engaging song. And so as much as I do like
Nevermind more now that I did then, it still doesn't
match up to ten. For me. Ten is still the
best in my opinion. What do you thought? Nice?
Speaker 1: Nice? Okay, So I'm coming in very similar to what
you're describing. I I had never listened to Nevermind from
beginning to end, and I liked it a whole lot
more than I thought I would. The peaks are super
high peaks. Okay, come as you Are. Unbelievable song, teen Spirit,
unbelievable song right in Bloom, maybe my favorite song on
that entire album, and those are so good. But then
you have, in my opinion, you have junk songs like
Stay Away and Territorial Pissings. To me, there's some junk songs,
but there are some absolute grand slams on that on
that album, and as I whole you know, Drain You
and Polly on a Plane. I mean, those songs I
appreciate and love more. I do think my personality fits
better with the guys from Pearl Jam. If I wanted
to hang out with somebody, I'm definitely with them. If
I want to go to a concert, I'm with them.
Who has more stain power? I mean, these guys are
in their fifties now and they can sing these songs
and they don't age at all, you know, I mean,
it's it's it's fantastic. So when I put them on
the scales, it's similar to our bad thriller argument. You know,
we have these great, great songs and you have some
throwaway tracks. This is solid all the way through. So
for me, I'm gonna go my vote is for ten.
Speaker 2: Also, all right, it sounds like Ten is the winner here.
But to all of those Nirvana fans out there who
thought that that Pearl Gym might have been sellouts, especially
at the ten album, we still like Nirvana.
Speaker 1: We really do way more than I thought I would.
Speaker 2: Yeah, again, this has been a wonderful experience to go
back and revisit this, much like with def Leppard and
much like with Van Halen, was like dang, I did
not realize how good some of this stuff was. And
so please know that we truly love Nirvana, we just
love ten a little bit more.
Speaker 1: Yeah, thanks for doing this with me, man. I'm having
a such great time. Let's hear from you, guys. If
you think we're crazy, hit us up on Twitter and
Facebook at Shirley Podcast on Facebook, at Shirley Podcast on Twitter,
or send us an email.
Speaker 2: Yeah, send us an email to Shirleypodcast at gmail dot com.
Speaker 1: All right, what do we have coming up? Do we
know what we're doing next?
Speaker 2: I believe next up is Bull Durham versus Major League.
For that one, it will be. I can assure you
another close call where we're gonna both be gushing over
both of these movies. They're both fantastically awesome and at
this still, at this moment in time, I cannot tell
you which one I can pick us the.
Speaker 1: Best sounds great. D Thank you. We will see you
next time on the Shirley You Can't Be Serious podcast.
This isn't a TV show, Josh, It's a rock show.
Speaker 2: Turn the lights off.