For Christmas I got (among other things) the Pearl Jam Live at the Gorge box set that came out earlier this year. 7 discs, 100 tracks, 69 individual songs. Also picked up with my iTunes gift card the U218 Singles collection, and have been enjoying both, but Pearl Jam far more for some reason.
My taste for Pearl Jam has been a strange one over the last few years. I tend to go long lengths of time without listening to them, and then when I pop a CD back in, it takes maybe 3 tracks for me to fall in love with them again and wonder why I ever stopped listening to them. I think it has something to do with the fact that, at least on their albums, Pearl Jam are never as glitzy or as clean as other bands. They never have been, and probably never will. Very few songs are immediately memorable for a good hook or a chorus that gets jammed in your head. Again, not what they do. What they do do is write a song or album that you can hear a few times and maybe acknowledge, or maybe it turns into background noise, but then when you hear one of those songs out of context, say, either when iTunes is in shuffle mode or on the radio and it's then that you say "Wow, THAT'S Pearl Jam, that's REALLY cool!".
As the Gorge box set proves and as millions of concertgoers would tell you, PJ put on one hell of a live show. I forget who it was that said that Pearl Jam can make a massive arena show seem like a small club, but it's true. I'm not even halfway through listening to all 7 discs and already the softer tracks like " I Am Mine" and "Elderly Woman Behind The Counter In A Small Town" carry the same level of conviction and attention as crowd favorites "Even Flow" and "Given To Fly". One of my favorite moments on the set so far is after a particularly up-tempo performance of "Severed Hand" when Eddie Vedder talks to the crowd and tells them, referring to the heat "Y'all take care of yourselves, each other out there, we'll try to do the same."
Also unique about Pearl Jam's live show are the covers. Not many current rock bands have the balls to play a cover that came out before a fan's lifetime. Covers of classics like The Who's "Baba O'Riley" and Neil Young's "Rockin' In The Free World" are mainstays of a Pearl Jam live set, as commonplace as their own slew of hits. I don't know what halted my last round of Pearl Jam enjoyment, but it's not likely to happen again.
U2 has a slightly different situation. It's a known fact that Bono's constant preaching drives me nuts, and generally tends to turn me off to his music. But what's lost in that is the fact that more often than not the music is good. Not on the same level as Pearl Jam, but there's no denying that U2 is in fact a good band, in spite of its overzealous lead singer. If I have to choose one, then advantage: Pearl Jam, but either way, my love for the 1990s and its music is reborn.
Pearl Jam - Baba O'Riley (Live in Albany 4/29/03) [Who Cover]
U2 - One
==TJ==
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