The Origin of Pearl Jam and Ten Track by Track

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