A long time ago, in a galaxy far far away, I switched on the TV in a house I was renting and saw a performance on MTV Unplugged by a band I could not immediately identify, some of whose songs sounded quite familiar, and all of them sounded fantastic. One in particular stuck in my head, and a few days later, I badgered someone into identifying it as 'Alive' by Pearl Jam, and confusion reigned - they were some kind of grunge/heavy metal band, right? Now, I had bought 'Nevermind' and enjoyed it, but I had not gone much further, and had no real intention of doing so, but on the basis of that TV performance I bought 'Ten' and it really did nothing for me, and was what I thought Pearl Jjam was like, and have rarely listened to it since.
A few years later, for some inexplicable reason, I bought 'Vs', though (maybe it was the reviews, maybe it was just near the register in HMV, maybe some particularly persuasive salesperson talked me into it), and this made far more of an impression, and I really liked it. Then, harsh fate intervened, and it was stolen along with a bunch of other CDs in a burglary, and I forgot it.
Until this year. If this blog was a movie, there would be some cool transition to explain the passage of over a decade, but in reality Pearl Jam popped back onto my radar by the release of their new album and the re-release of 'Ten' in a special edition including that fateful MTV performance. Now, being the sort of sap for deluxe editions and the like that record company executives dream of, I went to buy said edition, but found it to cost a whoping €40, and took an uncharacteristically mature decision that nostalgia has its cost, and it is less than that. I then went home and bought 'Vs' from iTunes instead, as well as (on a whim) a live album from somewhere called Benaroya Hall, which was recommended as being mostly acoustic (and which I have yet to listen to much).
Anyway, how was 'Vs' 15 years or so later? Bloody wonderful! This is so far from the kind of music I have been listening to in the intervening period that I half expected my iPod to reject it, like a badger organ transplanted into a human body. Before finishing this post with the usual set of Youtube videos, I will show a clip from that MTV performance, of 'Alive':
The combination of Vedder's unmistakeable vocals and the expert musicianship reassure me as to why it made such an impact on me such time around. Moving to 'Vs', my favourite track is probably 'Daughter', as shown live below:
Of the other tracks, I guess 'Elderly woman behind the counter in a small town' (does exactly what it says on the tin?) should fit my tastes pretty neatly, but in fact I prefer the heavier songs, like 'Dissident' below:
For the final clip, over the chasm of years since first listen, the drum intro to 'W.M.A.' has somehow lodged in my brain, like a latent virus or a sleeper agent, reactivated when I played it again, and sounding, as it did then, like a new reimagining of Joy Division:
This month, I have discovered one artist from the 1990s who I unbelievably managed to miss at the time (the unbelievable Jayhawks) and one album that I caught first time around, and then forgot, and then rediscovered. Not a bad musical month.
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