Speaker 1: Hello 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 3: 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 3: I'm about to do a stage dive right now, right
into the middle of this podcast.
Speaker 2: You know you talked when we did 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 3: That's cool, I'm excited to get into. 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: In our research, I read that this 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 3: Nope, Wow, this is number one for you. Huh.
Speaker 2: It's really really good. I mean, there, you know you've
got 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 Alum.
Speaker 3: 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 the 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's favorite album, but it's definitely my
favorite album.
Speaker 3: 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 mctoyer
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 roommates. 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 listened to bon Jovi? Now that's where
I It was my first real experience with ten. So Doug, 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 bon Jovi,
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,
my 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 3: 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
Oh Jeff, and it broke up. Green River was a
band that Jeff Amett and Stone Gossard were members of
along with Mark Arm 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 whether 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.
Speaker 4: Now.
Speaker 2: 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 Aiment 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 3: Yeah, I was telling you I listened to that today.
I was not familiar with Mother Lovebone. A 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 yea. Even
when they were playing small clubs. He would he would
treat it like it was an arena show.
Speaker 3: 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.
Speaker 4: They did say that.
Speaker 3: I mean, Andy Wood's personality was kind of out front
of Mother Love Bone.
Speaker 2: So yeah. Andy Wood was also the roommate of Chris Cornell,
who was the lead singer for Soundgard.
Speaker 3: 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
sabotage any other competing band. So Mother Lovebone does their
full length LP and.
Speaker 3: Then 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 are 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 3: Can you imagine you're right on the precipice of all
your dreams coming true and then one 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 live support, and
it just be 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 somebody that young lose somebody that young just
too much. So what happens 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 getting
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 Ravan 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 michaemccreedy said, it was like a religious experience.
I knew I needed to pick the guitar back up,
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 his response.
Speaker 3: Was f Jeff, Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 2: It was because you know, they just they didn't get along,
to 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 3: 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 3: And he had a basketball buddy down in San Diego
that he went around with who had been in a
couple of bands or whatever, this guy named Eddie Bedder.
Maybe've heard of.
Speaker 2: Him, No, you hadn't back then.
Speaker 3: What are the odds that guys in Seattle make a
demo tape send it to a guy who not only
listens to it, but hands it over to one of
the great rock vocalists.
Speaker 2: Of all time. It's amazing. I mean, he's he's working
like security in a petroleum factory. I mean, it's just
it's crazy. 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.
Speaker 3: Execution, 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 the recognized. 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
his tape is. It was Merle Haggard Greatest Hits of
the eighties. That was the tape that he decided to record.
Speaker 3: Over my gosh, Yeah, that is incredible. That's kind of
go on your Triviune card this week.
Speaker 2: Cards for sure.
Speaker 3: 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, he 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 listen to it and they're like, not
only can he sing, 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 going to 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 in 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 kind 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.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 3: 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 were 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 Vetterer arrives, they're 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 3: I think it's awesome. I believe his term was I'm
not here to frunt.
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 3: We talked 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.
Speaker 3: Pearl Jam 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
Steel's 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 for the Atlanta Hawks.
Speaker 2: New Jersey Nets was who he was playing for at
the time if they adopted his name.
Speaker 3: 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.
Speaker 3: Any First of all, Mookie Blaylock doesn't know who five
scrubs from Seattle are at right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, is 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 with the pizza place
was Mike McCready. He worked at pizza place with the
guy named Pete Druge, who has a song that you
may or may not recognize. If you don't love me,
I'll kill myself And it's from the movie.
Speaker 3: That's from Dubbin Dumber.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, yeah, Mike McCready and the guy who sang
that song used to work in the same pizza shop together.
Speaker 3: Oh man, that is incredible. What a great nugget that is.
I am a huge Dubbin Dumber fan, which we're going
to cover one of these days. So 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, 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.
Speaker 2: Pearl Jam right, j 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 3: I heard this story too, Yeah, is.
Speaker 2: He's like, no, I had a great grandmother named Pearl
and she was married to a Native American and she
used to make this payote Lace jam and they would
get you high and stuff. But yeah, later on he's like, no,
that was BS.
Speaker 4: That was a lie.
Speaker 3: 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 3: Why it's called ten because that's Mookie Blaylec's number.
Speaker 2: Oh, how was a set up?
Speaker 3: By the way, I totally said you, thank you, thank
you for me right there. Appreciate that.
Speaker 2: 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, well 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
them 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
wall for 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 3: 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 band
leaders and we'll 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 and 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 funk
Adelic and def Leppard, and Van Halen right Stone likes Rap.
All of them were into Ice Cube at the time
that they that he was becoming the Kirk 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 anymore.
Speaker 3: I do think that's interesting. I don't think Kurt Cobain
is wrong. I mean, I think that Pearl Jam is
a hard rock band with grunge elements, and I think
that Nirvana is kind of a punk band with pop
and grunge elements. And they're from the same area, so
they're are similarities, but they're from there. They formed different trees, you.
Speaker 2: Know, sure. And I mean if you 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 3: 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. Because 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 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.
Speaker 3: It 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 Edie Burkel and the New Bohemians,
and then he got an opportunity to be on Saturday
Night Live with Saturday Night Live Band, so like, sorry, guys,
I'm not going to keep drumming 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 Davi of Bruzies is one of the guys out
in the crowd because he's just arrive from Austin, tex
The album actually starts off with the sounds of a
hidden track. The hidden track is called Master Slave, and
so if you listen to the beginning 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 3: The hidden track on ten Yeah is not nearly as
offensive as the hidden track on the Nirvana album.
Speaker 2: The hidden track on Tin is good, and.
Speaker 3: It's just kind of like it's like a cracker. It's
like there's not really much substances. It's just kind of
little drums and that's it. It's not a nail being
d 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 this is a mistake, This shouldn't
be in here.
Speaker 3: This is cur crap, 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
that Eddie Vedder had written.
Speaker 3: 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 lever 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 of ninety that very I
don't remember. It's their first or second performance, but.
Speaker 3: Right 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 go right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's angry, It's angry.
Speaker 3: This song received some radio play that I was familiar
with this song when let me start this.
Speaker 2: The next one we have is even Flow.
Speaker 3: The Man.
Speaker 2: What a freaking great song. This is.
Speaker 3: The core.
Speaker 2: I'm afraid that I'm just gonna gush over every single
one of these. Pull it back just a.
Speaker 3: Little bit, a right, That's the way I felt when
he did Hysteria.
Speaker 2: So 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 3: 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 3: 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 3: They played it like fifty sixty seventy times and some
members of the band are still dissatisfied to this day.
Speaker 2: He did a couple of different versions of it ultimately,
and one of them they recorded with the drummer David Bruisy,
and 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 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,
you have am. 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.
Speaker 1: Other than that he was able backed by Stone and
Jeff Drummerady Better.
Speaker 3: I mean, that's good.
Speaker 2: That's a good meat.
Speaker 4: A compliment for us, is a compliment for you.
Speaker 3: 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. You're in 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 us an
open D tuning, and then Mike McCready says, yeah, I
just kind of ripped off Stevie ray Vaughan.
Speaker 3: This sounds 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 3: Oh? I still don't know what the heck he's saying.
Speaker 2: I mean, the worst, the worst and most famous of
the unintelligible l Better lyrics. It comes from Yellow Leadbetter.
To this day, I don't 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 the 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.
Speaker 3: And like a good time. That's awesome.
Speaker 2: So the video on this one, they had recorded this
video where the 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 Gossarts.
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 Vetterer starts the video by going, this
is not a TV studio, Josh urn these lights out.
It's an effing rock concert.
Speaker 3: I watched this video today and I'm like, this can't
be the official video. He's yelling at people.
Speaker 2: Yeah, your head aversion to videos at all. Really, 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 watched I died and you walked
by and said, no, I'm dead. I was like, wow,
how did I never hear that before?
Speaker 5: Once?
Speaker 2: Because it's not on the album, but it is in
the video.
Speaker 3: So third track on the album is called Alive.
Speaker 2: I'm glad you're head banging right now? Is it really appropriate?
Speaker 3: Oh?
Speaker 1: Man?
Speaker 3: This song is so good man. This was their first single,
released July seventh, ninety one.
Speaker 4: It 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.
All Right, So this song starts off with son. She says,
have I got 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 like it's no big deal,
which is, you know, the underlying emotion behind this whole
song is pretty intense.
Speaker 5: Man.
Speaker 3: That's a sad story. 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 3: Speaking of that solo, yeah, Mike McCready said that he
based this on Ace Freely's solo in the Kiss.
Speaker 2: Song She 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 Bruzi's in the audience.
Speaker 3: 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 3: 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 note,
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 an awesome song.
Speaker 3: 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 this for a minute.
Speaker 3: Let's just pause and appreciate the beauty.
Speaker 4: Of this song. Jeez an please word bird.
Speaker 2: Boo, Pass her.
Speaker 3: Body even Black was voted the ninth best ballad of
all time by the readers of burling 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
Vedder 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 3: 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 I mean, you know.
Speaker 2: They had the same type of experience that Nirvana had,
which was they have almost a literal overnight 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. 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 3: You know when we talked about radio stations not receiving
this as a single, but they were playing it anyway.
It reached all the way to number three on the
Hot Rocks chart.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's amazing.
Speaker 3: 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.
Speaker 2: Jeremy, So you sent me a video today by this
guy named Rick Beto, which I hadn't seen before, that
is called what makes this Song Great? Episode 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 relay
what's going 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 3: 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 example. So he's
talking about the pools of maroon below, and then he
jumps up to daddy, you know that huge jump, and
he does it several times throughout the song. So it's
just an incredibly complex he said, it's similar to something
like a jazz musician would do.
Speaker 2: It's 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 3: Shot himself on January eighth, nineteen ninety one, which would
make him probably very close to yours or my age.
Speaker 2: So yeah, who that hurts my heart. Eddie Vedder had
read about this Jeremy Dell in the Dallas Morning News.
And it actually reminded Hymn of someone that he knew
in school who one year brought a gun to school
and didn't you himself, but shot a fish tank. Yeah,
and so Edie 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, kick his butt, and then in the
next year you're like, oh, holy crap, he brought a
gun to school. He shot the fish tank.
Speaker 3: 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 oohs. Jeremy, he said, nim 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 one, 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 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 mostly it is the creation of
Mark Pellington.
Speaker 3: 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 very different sounding it doesn't sound like the
other songs on this album think about 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? Oh no,
all right.
Speaker 3: Next song after Jeremy is a song called Oceans the.
Speaker 4: Kers.
Speaker 3: We'll say this is the fourth single, released December seventh,
nineteen ninety two.
Speaker 5: And we're yes, this is about a surfboard. No, I'm
just kidding that.
Speaker 2: 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 3: 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
and 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 3: 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 happen 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 they here's the bass playing again.
Speaker 3: That's funny. So this song, 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 the 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 places
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 whatever it is. And more credit
and liner notes for pepper mill and fire extinguisher. 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 3: 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 got
to be quick on the skip because that F word
is like one and a half seconds into it. And
for my family, this will get my cape confiscated, So
you'll 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 it goes.
So while this solo going, it's a nice long solo,
and of course for their live shows that extend it
even further. And 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.
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 to 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 3: 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 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 3: I would call this song dark and beautiful. I mean
the whole album to me 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 you
There obviously lyrics about deeper things from both bands, But
whereas Kurt Cobain is more a scream at authority, this
is more of a brooding anger that you get from
Eddie Vedder.
Speaker 3: 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 4: All right.
Speaker 3: 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.
Speaker 3: Well, No, this was probably my least favorite song on
the entire album.
Speaker 2: What bothers you about it?
Speaker 3: 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 or Garden, and it 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 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 3: 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 never Mind.
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 sing along you're at the concert that the light'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. I mean,
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'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 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 3: 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 never mind 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 3: Billy Rayciris World.
Speaker 2: What were you thinking, Oh my god.
Speaker 3: 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 time for allowing that to happen.
Speaker 3: 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, romance 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 the kind of were weird and loud and not
particularly strong musicians from my way of thinking back then,
but now listening 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 than I did, then, it still doesn't
match up to ten for me. Ten is still the
best in my opinion.
Speaker 3: What you thought, nice, Nice, Okay, So I'm coming in
very similar to what you're describing. 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 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 it's 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 staining 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 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 going to go my voter 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 Pearl Jam might have been sellouts, especially at
the ten album, we still like Nirvana.
Speaker 3: 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 Don a little bit more.
Speaker 3: Yeah, thanks for doing this with me, man. I'm having
a such a great time. Let's hear from you, guys.
If you think we're crazy, hit us up on Twitter,
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 3: 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,
So for that one it will be. I can assure
you another close call. 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.
Speaker 3: Us the 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. All music images and movie clips
are used for the purposes of commentary and education in
conjunction with the fair Use agreement under the U S
Copyright Law.