Pearl Jam - Ten (Redux)

[Frozen Sooner]

Since I was going to spend most of the morning cutting trim (trying to get the house in shape to sell) I grabbed this album to listen to while working. Already owned Ten, but apparently PJ has never been happy with the mix of the album, so they remixed it and threw some B-sides on there.

Kinda digging it. The vocals are a lot more crisp in the remix, and there's a bit more low-end. At least to my ear.

When did Home Depot stop cutting trim to order? Had to drag the damn chop-saw/miter box combo out of the shed and cut out in the cold. Bastards.

[KC//CRIMSON]

Great CD, but I think their sophomore effort Vs. is still their best.

[John Kochtoston]

Had no idea that they were re-releasing this this week. Broke out my Mookie Blaylock jersey in KC this week.

Kansas fans aren't as basketball savvy as I thought. Most thought I wore it to honor Pearl Jam, or that I was paying tribute to Dominique Wilkins. :mad:

[TopDawg]

So THAT is why KATT played that album Sunday night.

It is a good one. I also like Vs. too. A little more variety on that one.

[soonerinabilene]

Great CD, but I think their sophomore effort Vs. is still their best.

For me, its Vitalogy.

[sooneron]

Great CD, but I think their sophomore effort Vs. is still their best.
concur

[yermom]

I can't really pick a favorite. Seems i grab No Code the most often for some reason. I probably need to toss Vs in the rotation again.

I'm gonna have to go pick this up

[KC//CRIMSON]

Pearl Jam's Perfect "Ten"

On the eve of their 20th anniversary, bassist Jeff Ament discusses revisiting a grunge grail

By Alan Light
Special to MSN Music

In 1990, bass player Jeff Ament and guitarists Stone Gossard and Mike McCready were in Seattle, going nowhere fast. The trio had joined together out of the wreckage of two previous bands, and they were working on some new songs, trying to recruit a drummer and singer.

They slipped a five-song demo tape to former Red Hot Chili Peppers drummer Jack Irons; Irons, in turn, passed it on to a friend, a sometime vocalist, sometime gas station attendant in San Diego named Eddie Vedder. While surfing one day, lyrics began to come to Vedder. He recorded vocals over three of the songs ("Alive," "Once," and "Footsteps") in a suite he called the "Momma-Son Trilogy," and sent the tape back to Seattle.

When the three musicians heard this home recording, they flew Vedder up to audition in person. Within a week, Vedder had joined the band.

The "Momma-Son" cassette is the moment of genesis for the group that came to be known as Pearl Jam, and those three songs formed the core of its 1991 album "Ten," one of the biggest rock albums of all time. Though Nirvana's "Nevermind," yin to the yang of "Ten" as the dual foundations of the "alternative rock" revolution, is usually considered the defining album of the age, the 12-times-platinum "Ten" actually wound up selling more copies.

While working on a new, expanded reissue of "Ten," Ament stumbled upon the "Momma-Son" tape for the first time since it arrived. "I was amazed at how a couple of the songs came out on the record almost identical to those demos," he says, on the phone from Seattle. "I played it for Ed, and we laughed about it a lot. He said he knocked it out in the middle of the night, and didn't know if anything would come of it. I have to say it was definitely much better than I thought it was going to be."

A replica of this mythic cassette is included in the "Super Deluxe Edition" of "Ten," along with LPs of the album remastered for vinyl, a DVD of the band's 1992 "MTV Unplugged" session, a two-LP live recording from 1992, and copies of various notes, mementos, and flotsam from the era that saw Pearl Jam catapulted to superstar status. (There are four different versions of the release; the basic "Legacy Edition" is a remastering of the album, packaged with a new remix of the songs by longtime Pearl Jam producer Brendan O'Brien, plus six bonus tracks.) The reissue kicks off a two-year catalog re-release campaign, leading up to the band's 20th anniversary in 2011.

"As a listener, I'm always looking for demos or alternate takes, to see how songs grew and developed," says Ament. "It allows you to get inside the songs and see the growth -- or the mistakes, depending."

MSN Music: Where did the idea for revisiting "Ten" originate?

Jeff Ament: There have always been things I wasn't happy with about "Ten." There was a bit of a power struggle between me and the art department at Sony over the artwork. The last version that came to us is the one everybody knows, and at the time they basically said, "If we change this, we can't put the record out for six months." The most important thing for us then was to get out and play and be a better band. But we always intended for that pink color on the cover to be more burgundy. So, first, this was a great opportunity to go back and correct that. Then, in the process, we started to look at the whole thing. Ed found a box of stuff from back then, I found some stuff -- there was this incredible package of preserved items. And, eventually, we convinced Brendan O'Brien to remix it, after he spent 15 years saying that he didn't want to go back and touch such a classic, and it's vastly improved.

Were you always dissatisfied with the sound of the album?

When we made "Vs," our second record, I remember thinking, "Man, I wish our first record sounded like this." I thought it was more direct, more powerful. I know Stone felt that the reverb on "Ten" was covering up our own inability to play at the time, but when I found a tape of the rough mixes, it sounded killer. That really made me keep bugging Brendan to consider doing this.

Everyone just wanted to see what he would come up with. When we heard it, it became apparent that they had to be included -- that, at the least, they were a very good alternative to the original mixes.

Were you at all reluctant to alter such a monumental album? The only precedent that I can think of is what the Beatles did with the "Let It Be ... Naked" project, removing the work that Phil Spector did on the released album and then remixing the original recordings.

That's a good comparison, because I love "Let It Be." It was one of the first records I ever bought, and I got used to what Phil Spector did with those songs. But I can understand why Paul McCartney would think that the "Naked" version was superior.

(...Story Continued from Previous Page)

There's less of an imprint by the producer on those songs. I think these mixes are more like Truffaut, like the black-and-white version of "Ten." It's a much starker, more present sound. The package includes both, so which one is definitive will really be up to the listener.

What did you hear in the band's playing when you went back into these recordings?

I knew that we played really energetic shows, but my memory was that we just weren't that great as players. But to go back to the demos and listen in raw form, now I think, "Wow, we really weren't that bad." The version of "State of Love and Trust" with Dave Krusen on drums is so much better than what ended up being released. I had been thinking he wasn't that great a drummer, but he actually did an amazing job, and I really found a new respect for him.

Pearl Jam is still hugely popular, so were you all sure that it was a good idea to devote this much attention to a reissue?

Yeah, any time you talk about reissues or new versions of old projects, it does start to feel like, "Wait a minute, we're still a viable band." We're working on a new record now, and you don't want anything to get in the way of that. But, especially with "Ten," there were just things that really didn't get done the way we wanted. I don't know about all the rest of the albums. I'm pretty happy with most of them, but I committed myself to really get into this one.

And, in the process, we all got to hear what everybody's memories of that time are. It fills in some of the blanks, because it was such an insane time. Things were moving at a pace that none of us were prepared for. For a year and a half, on a typical day we would wake up, do five or six interviews, do an in-store, go sound check, do another interview or two, play the show, go to the after-show, stay up all night, and then do it all over again the next day. It was just impossible to retain it all.

What's the first thing that comes into your mind when you think about that period?

There was a show in Cincinnati, I think, or maybe Columbus. We'd only done a handful of shows in the States, and then we went to Europe for six or seven weeks, and while we were away the album blew up. This was before cell phones or the Internet or whatever, so I guess our managers kind of told us, but we really had no idea, it really hadn't sunk in. In Europe, we were playing 200- to 300-seaters and when we got back, it was supposed to be in [400-] or 500-seaters. But all of a sudden we came back and were playing in 2,500-seat theaters -- it was like, "Whoa, what was that?" And after this show in Ohio, there were 500 people in the parking lot, surrounding the bus. We'd never experienced anything like that before. That's when we recognized that something had changed.

We'd all been in bands for eight or 10 years, and to go from working all month to set up a show -- printing the fliers, putting them up, making the T-shirts, renting the PA -- to, all of a sudden, Keith Richards wants you to play his birthday party and Neil Young wants you to go on tour with him, it's really hard not to just keep saying yes to everything. And we really were at our wits' end before we said, "We just have to stop." Really, it's a lesson in, "Be careful what you wish for," because it suddenly all just came true.

Is spending so much time with this material influencing the album you're working on?

We started the writing process before getting into the "Ten" stuff, so some of it was already in motion. But listening to the demos, and some of the stuff that didn't make it onto the record or didn't even turn into finished songs, it reminded me of a time when we were playing with a lot less rules. We didn't have much in the way of music theory, we didn't really know "this is major, this is minor, that doesn't fit in this scale."

Do you hear that coming out in the new songs?

I've written a couple of things since then and thought, "Yeah, I can put this weird note in here," even when my current instincts tell me it's wrong. So it's cool to remember that rock and roll isn't about playing within any confines.

[tidalmouse]

There was a Documentary-Like show on VH1 this morning on "Ten".Lots of Footage from I guess you could say their"Ten Tour".Lots of Long Hair.
Pearl Jam kinda replaced The Who as my Favorite band.So Dowloading Who songs performed by Pearl Jam is pretty nice........ :cool:

[SoonersEnFuego]

"Ten" was available for download on RockBand last night.
So I scooped up some Jeremy, Black, and Even Flow.

[Dio]

George Lucas thinks this is a great idea.

[yermom]

got a walkie-talkie buried under my clothes

[OUAlumni1990]

I saw Pearl Jam play in Austin (of all places) back in '95. Good show.

[soonerboomer93]

Saw them play in 1992 (Lollapalooza) and 1993 (Vs.)

The '93 show was at the CU field house while I was home for Turkey day.

I remember going at midnight to that record store over by campus corner (right next to where the tailgate is now) to buy Vs.

I stopped by BB last night to pick up some stuff, and couldn't find the reissue :mad:

[yermom]

Guestroom had it here when i was there the other day

[soonerboomer93]

heh, the store I was at was out. I went to a different one today and got the last one they had

[KC//CRIMSON]

I can't really pick a favorite. Seems i grab No Code the most often for some reason. I probably need to toss Vs in the rotation again.

I'm gonna have to go pick this up

I just completed listening to their entire catalog over again. I have to say, although Vs is still my go to favorite, Binaural and Riot Act are pretty damn good. I guess I never gave them a full listen all the way through without interruption before. They're both really solid.

Here's the new Cameron Crowe directed video The Fixer off the new yet to be released cd Backspacer.

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Well, regardless of whether this video is good, bad, or simply a series of performance shots with a backdrop of more performance shots, the important thing is that Pearl Jam is still relevant.

[OUMallen]

Favorite "Ten" song - Porch. Vs. is the best. :)

[AggieTool]

I hate "whiney" rock.:mad:

[sooneron]

Yeah, ok, whatever.

[AggieTool]

Yeah, ok, whatever.

And that goes for U2 also....

Wha...Wha...Wha....:(

[sooneron]

And that goes for U2 also....

Wha...Wha...Wha....:(

Please point out a whiny PJ song, please.:rolleyes:

[yermom]

Black is pretty whiny :O

[OUMallen]

Please point out a whiny PJ song, please.:rolleyes:

There's a song they have all about W called Bushwhacked or something. Pretty whiny.

[sooneron]

There's a song they have all about W called Bushwhacked or something. Pretty whiny.

You mean the song that contains my fave Switzer quote?

I guess if you're a W humper, you find this whiny just because it's a differing opinion.

How does he do it? How do they do it? Uncanny and immutable.
This is such a happening tailpipe of a party.
Like sugar, the guests are so refined, (look like melting mice)

A confidence man, but why so beleaguered?
He's not a leader, he's a Texas leaguer
Swinging for the fence, got lucky with a strike
Drilling for fear, makes the job simple
Born on third, thinks he got a triple

Blackout weaves its way through the cities
Blackout weaves its way through the cities
Blackout weaves its way,...

I remember when you sang
That song about today
Now it's tomorrow and
Everything has changed

A think tank of aloof multiplication
A nicotine wish and a Columbus decanter
Retrenchment and hoggishness
The aristocrat choir sings
"What's the ruckus?"
The haves have not accrued
The immenseness of suffering
And the odd negotiation, a rarity
With onionskin plausibility of life,
And a keyboard reaffirmation

Blackout weaves its way through the cities
Blackout weaves its way through the cities
Blackout weaves its way,...

I remember when you sang
That song about today
Now it's tomorrow and
Everything has changed

I don't get a whiny tone from this, sorry.

[KC//CRIMSON]

Just because a band may or may not have a whiny song in their catalog doesn't necessarily mean they can be labeled a whiny band.

Take for instance, Use Somebody by the Kings of Leon. Their singer sounds like he's having the worst day of his life-whiny, but I wouldn't call them a whiny band.

[OUAlumni1990]

It would be hard to find a band out there that doesn't have at least 1 whiny song lurking around in their catalog. Ans as much as I like Neil Young, some of his songs sound unbearably whiny. But he does have some solid tunes otherwise..

[BillyBall]

Great CD, but I think their sophomore effort Vs. is still their best.

This

[sooneron]

^That

[BillyBall]

Those?

[AggieTool]

Just because a band may or may not have a whiny song in their catalog doesn't necessarily mean they can be labeled a whiny band.

Take for instance, Use Somebody by the Kings of Leon. Their singer sounds like he's having the worst day of his life-whiny, but I wouldn't call them a whiny band.


Maybe, but since PJ started from grunge, and grunge by definition is whiney....

[yermom]

?

define "whiny"

[AggieTool]

?

define "whiny"

Always complaining 'bout sumptin?:)

[AggieTool]

You mean the song that contains my fave Switzer quote?

I guess if you're a W humper, you find this whiny just because it's a differing opinion.

How does he do it? How do they do it? Uncanny and immutable.
This is such a happening tailpipe of a party.
Like sugar, the guests are so refined, (look like melting mice)

A confidence man, but why so beleaguered?
He's not a leader, he's a Texas leaguer
Swinging for the fence, got lucky with a strike
Drilling for fear, makes the job simple
Born on third, thinks he got a triple

Blackout weaves its way through the cities
Blackout weaves its way through the cities
Blackout weaves its way,...

I remember when you sang
That song about today
Now it's tomorrow and
Everything has changed

A think tank of aloof multiplication
A nicotine wish and a Columbus decanter
Retrenchment and hoggishness
The aristocrat choir sings
"What's the ruckus?"
The haves have not accrued
The immenseness of suffering
And the odd negotiation, a rarity
With onionskin plausibility of life,
And a keyboard reaffirmation

Blackout weaves its way through the cities
Blackout weaves its way through the cities
Blackout weaves its way,...

I remember when you sang
That song about today
Now it's tomorrow and
Everything has changed

I don't get a whiny tone from this, sorry.

This song just oozes whiney.:D

[sitzpinkler]

Maybe, but since PJ started from grunge, and grunge by definition is whiney....

sounds like you're confusing grunge with emo

[KC//CRIMSON]

and grunge by definition is whiney....

going to have to disagree with that one, I don't associate the definition.

[AggieTool]

going to have to disagree with that one, I don't associate the definition.

Kinda the whole depresso Kurt Kobain cloudy dreary Seattle brooding coffee thing I guess.:)

I kinda got a depressing vibe from that whole scene back in the '90s and still do.

Then they channel Niel Young and make it even more "woe is me-ish".

Just my from my view point and taste in music.:)

[OUAlumni1990]

Kinda the whole depresso Kurt Kobain cloudy dreary Seattle brooding coffee thing I guess.:)

I kinda got a depressing vibe from that whole scene back in the '90s and still do.

Then they channel Niel Young and make it even more "woe is me-ish".

Just my from my view point and taste in music.:)

So what kind of music do you like? Let me guess....Michael Jackson?

[yermom]

depresso at times? yes

whiny? check out New Found Glory or something :D

and Pearl Jam is pretty tight with Neil Young...

[OUAlumni1990]

Always complaining 'bout sumptin?:)


Don't you realize some of the hardships these musicians have to endure??
I mean herion, isn't exactly easy to come by especially when your on tour...

Never judge a man before you walk a mile in his shoes (or smoke from his bong) :cool:

[soonerboomer93]

Maybe, but since PJ started from grunge, and grunge by definition is whiney....

grunge relates more to the dirtier sound to a degree

[StoopTroup]

Was Evenflo about Eddie not being breast fed?

[King Crimson]

grunge is a word that middling music writers made up. i'm not the biggest PJ fan, but they were a band before there was a word "grunge".

[KC//CRIMSON]

grunge is a word that middling music writers made up. i'm not the biggest PJ fan, but they were a band before there was a word "grunge".

True. When I think of grunge I think of Mudhoney.

[StoopTroup]

Leadbelly?

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[AggieTool]

So what kind of music do you like? Let me guess....Michael Jackson?

Actually I'm an old school metalhead with a penchant for virtuoso guitar work.

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nPGA3vjMLgE

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[StoopTroup]

EZHFtMYyf9E&feature=related

[AggieTool]

EZHFtMYyf9E&feature=related

Now that's good stuff right there.;)

[GottaHavePride]

Man, that Yngwie Malmsteen thing just sounds like an electric guitar version of a Paganini violin concerto.

[sooneron]

This song just oozes whiney.:D

Please learn how to ****ing spell.

It sounds more like a protest song to me. Which is what a lot of Rock N Roll is founded upon. I guess you're big Starland Vocal Band fan or something. Maybe you're pining away for a Cowsills reunion?

[sooneron]

grunge is a word that middling music writers made up. i'm not the biggest PJ fan, but they were a band before there was a word "grunge".

Yep, well put. Grunge is a term for the musically lazy that like their info simplified/glorified for them.

[AggieTool]

Please learn how to ****ing spell.

It sounds more like a protest song to me. Which is what a lot of Rock N Roll is founded upon. I guess you're big Starland Vocal Band fan or something. Maybe you're pining away for a Cowsills reunion?

Look above weenie.;)

My tastes are Shakespeare to your "Flynt".:D

:D

[StoopTroup]

Man, that Yngwie Malmsteen thing just sounds like an electric guitar version of a Paganini violin concerto.

n2oJQSvjd9Y

[StoopTroup]

G3gHtPLXQOI

[StoopTroup]

mfpWChgkT4g&feature=related

[StoopTroup]

mYzajpeAWuA

[StoopTroup]

hOw6gCPDEQ8&feature=related

[StoopTroup]

WIWSVTaytOw&feature=related

[StoopTroup]

r2BOApUvFpw&feature=related

[AggieTool]

r2BOApUvFpw&feature=related

Now you're just sucking up.:D

[OUAlumni1990]

I personally like playing grunge on the guitar, I can miss some notes and nobody cares, they think it's just part of the song. :D

[AggieTool]

I personally like playing grunge on the guitar, I can miss some notes and nobody cares, they think it's just part of the song. :D

Now you're in my world.:D

[Crucifax Autumn]

I personally like playing grunge on the guitar, I can miss some notes and nobody cares, they think it's just part of the song. :D

A late friend of mine was something of a guitar prodigy before getting killed in a car wreck. He had this cool thing he'd do where if he screwed up and went to the wrong chord he'd immediatly launch into a different song that starts with that chord. It was always funny when he did that.

[Crucifax Autumn]

Actually I'm an old school metalhead with a penchant for virtuoso guitar work.

t25AOSxZZkI
nPGA3vjMLgE

aS_IYe5JTZ4

I actually have to hand it to you Tool...those are all great players, Petrucci in particular.

As for the Malmsteen-Paganini comment, that's not by accident. Malmsteen's biggest influences are Paganini, Bach, Ritchie Blackmore, and Uli Jon Roth.

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Petrucci is just pure awesome.

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[AggieTool]

I actually have to hand it to you Tool...those are all great players, Petrucci in particular.

As for the Malmsteen-Paganini comment, that's not by accident. Malmsteen's biggest influences are Paganini, Bach, Ritchie Blackmore, and Uli Jon Roth.

F-ctuwM3fYc

Petrucci is just pure awesome.

v8pUqln36po

-5VwPfyEq3w

U8Mr9ZQdGAM

JP has gotten lot better since he was my student.:D

[Crucifax Autumn]

heh...