Pearl Jam – Vs
In keeping with this blogs small tradition of noting dates and occasions, fifteen years ago today one of my favourite albums came out; Pearl Jam’s second album ‘Vs’.
Before Lollapalooza’s stop here in 1992 I was a tiny little bit more of a Temple Of The Dog fan than a Pearl Jam fan. I loved Soundgarden, loved Pearl Jam, to ‘Temple’ was the bee girl’s knees. But I was already regretting missing a pair of mythical gigs at the American Theater when Pearl Jam opened for the Smashing Pumpkins and the Red Hot Chili Peppers, who themselves were on the verge of mainstream success. With Soundgarden on the bill I was anticipating ‘Hunger Strike’ more than Evenflow or Alive (which got daily air guitar treatment).
But at the end of PJ’s set, they leapfrogged over not only Temple Of The Dog, but just about every other band I’d previously worshipped. They defined the energy and ferocity a band is supposed to play with. The performance had a conviction that not even Ozzy had when we saw him just a month before. A whole new style of showmanship was introduced when Eddie Vedder scaled the stage supports and walked the rafters from the stage to the roof supports at the back (the back edge of the roof, over the seats for gosh sakes) before leaping into the crowd. The fact that Shag and I realized the guy who just leapt 15 feet into a crowd of people as the same guy hanging out on the lawn helped too. A rock star hanging out in the cheap seats?
Fast-forward a year and I’ve got 3 copies of their first album (each from a different continent), import ep’s, singles, and bootlegs. It was a full on obsession. At one point Eric at Now Hear This was doing an even exchange for $30 and $60 bootlegs. I’ll tell you a story about him another time.
Way back in late 1993 Tuesday was still new release day for cd’s and tapes and when a band you liked put something out it was something to be anticipated. A phenomenon lost now. Stores stayed opened until 12:30am Tuesday so fans could by it the minute it was available. I worked that night and Stereo Steve (who I was still hanging out with pretty frequently) met me at home so we could dig on KSHE before heading out. Eddie Vedder and Jeff Ament were on Rockline. For your memory, Rockline was a syndicated show that started in the early 80’s and ran Mondays for 90 minutes (10:30-midnite) so metalheads like me could compulsively tape it. Rockline ended at the poetic stroke of midnite so you could go to the record store get the new cd by the band you’d just been listening to. Genius, eh?
Steve and I left at 11:10pm, right after I flipped my TDK SA100.
When we got to the Music Vision on the Rock Road what greeted us resembled the end scene in Pump Up The Volume. The parking lot was freaking packed with cars and people and the cool autumn air flowed through open car windows that were cranking KSHE, listening for the closing music that signified it was now 12:00am Tuesday and time to buy the new Pearl Jam cd!
Our people queued up and the line flowed smoothly. It wrapped from the register, around the store, and out the door. As it damn well should have! Well, by my standards at the time anyway. The crowd seemed pretty focused and no one even broke from the line to browse other cd’s. However, one of my more wise impulse purchases (in a wide history of unwise impulse purchases) was Counterparts by Rush. Their label made the poor decision to release a really great album the same day as highly anticipated release that broke first day sales records by a leap. Vedder and the guys could have done an 40 minute Foghat medley a capella in Mandarin Chinese and the album still would have sold.
Moving on…We cracked open the cd in the car (with the pocket knife I used for such things) and listened to it in reverent silence (piling on the drama) on the car stereo that earned my friend the name Stereo Steve. Early standouts for me were the mellow track ‘Elderly Woman’ and ‘Blood’, a more furious tune. Animal was good also, and they’d debuted that at the 1993 MTV Video Awards when they did that song and Rockin In The Free World with Neil Young.
Still today it ranks as one of the most satisfying albums I’ve got, and certainly more fun buying experiences. I probably couldn’t name 10 albums in the past 5 years that have made me giddy or had me worried that I wouldn’t get a copy day of release. It’s a superficial nervous stomach kind of twitch that only settles down when the disc is in hand.
The only damper to the shebang was the tape that I was using crapped into a single muddy channel in the last few minutes of the broadcast and missed (the only) song Ament & Vedder performed. The little ditty was about the bee girl from the Blind Melon video that was all over at the time. KSHE rebroadcast that interview a few years later after an earthquake at Rockline’s office or something cancelled the show at the last minute. Happy to finally get a complete copy, I listened and baby sat the tape only to hear that Bee Girl song cut off about 2 chords in. The announcer gal comes on and says (way too casually for me I would add), “Whoops! I guess the signal got dropped?” Dropped?! I’ll show you ‘dropped’ when I show up at your studio with a bazooka.
Bee Girl ended up on the Lost Dogs comp and luckily the band released Vs. the same way throughout the world. I only had to buy it once. Well, I did pick up the vinyl, oh, and a bunch of singles…and the cassette but that’s only because I found one printed as a self titled album instead of ‘Vs’ so you see…ah…forget it.
If I totaled up how much money I spent on Pearl Jam alone I probably could probably resolve our current financial crisis.
Now for some media. I may post more later but for now…
A few b-sides from the era: a live version of Blood, acoustic version of Elderly Woman, and an official recording of Alone (a Ten era demo).
Also, Hard To Imagine, a song from the Vs. sessions redone and released in a couple of configurations.
Lastly, Bee Girl.
Later y’all.
(note to self: remaster Eric’s interview with Eddie Vedder, and the St Louis show at the Fox in March 1994)
I could be wrong, but I believe Rush Counterparts came out the same night.
I myself made a pilgrimage to my local record shop (packed) at midnight to purchase both. And came home and listened to them both. Counterparts is not bad and has some good tracks on it, but Vs. still stands as my favorite all around Pearl Jam album, even over the classic debut.
I vaguely seem to recall talking to Scott on email that night about it too.
Comment by Alex Miller — October 29, 2008 @ 9:18 pmI was in Carbondale, IL that night, and went with buddies from my dorm to purchase said CDs. But my motives were basically the inverse of yours – I viewed it as the night Counterparts was released, and the new Pearl Jam just so happened to come out the same night so it was the bonus. I’m sure there were only approximately 247 other people in the country who viewed it that way, but hey, I’m a bass player and at the time Geddy Lee was my God (and Neil Peart was highly revered as well).
Great album, Vs., and I think the last one I bought of theirs until they sold discs from each of their tours stops in the late ’90s – I have the one from Riverport.
What immediately struck me about Counterparts (when I put it on my Sony single-disc CD player in the dorm room at 12:30) was that Rush had dropped the high-on-treble tones of their previous few albums and had much better, more ‘live’ tone. Geddy dropped his Wahl basses and extensive direct-amplification and went to a Fender Jazz plugged into Trace Elliot amps. And it was good.
Comment by Cleezmo — November 20, 2008 @ 2:00 pmI can see that Cleez. I really got into Counterparts a lot not too far after. Alex and Scott probably had a bit to do with that and it’s one of my favourite Rush albums. As far as the sound, there was an article at the time where they talked about taking a more organic (before that word meant ‘expensive melons’) approach to the recording; moving microphones around instead of using a computer to tweak the sound, stuff like that. I remember that tidbit because I took that to my years engineering at KDHX and a couple of different living rooms throughout the metro area.
Comment by Nick — November 21, 2008 @ 4:06 pm