Vitalogy was even more diverse than Vs, although most of its experimentation had been channelled into silly, throwaway moments such as 'Pry, To' and 'Hey Foxymophandlemama, That's Me'. Somebody else plumped for Vitalogy which had indisputably excellent packaging (even its cassette pressing was to die for) and included some of Pearl Jam's best songs, particularly the two ballads with 'man' in the title. Personally I preferred its follow-up, Vs., which I felt had a greater miscellany of flavours and textures and a far better front cover (a cheesy group high five is no competition for a close-up photograph of an irate sheep). I'll invite you via the Facebook group.Īnyway, one of my schoolmates was a loyal advocate of Ten, insisting that Pearl Jam had never bettered their raucous debut. That's got to beat the solemnity of Dignitas. It seems as good a way to go as any, though I was never a fervent fan of footy so when I receive the inevitable inoperable diagnosis after a lifetime of consuming battered processed sausage instead of the existence-prolonging cuisine that is fish, all I'll need to do is hire a classroom with the appropriate ceiling beams, relearn the words to 'Even Flow' and ensure that I land in a fatal enough position when my arms give way. When asked by his loving family how he'd ideally like to die, one of the immobile real-life Jim Royle Dads on Channel 4's Gogglebox replied that he would preferably wish to expire during the act of playing football in the park, using jumpers for goalposts, with all his old schoolmates. The latter involved swinging from the rafters of our unsupervised form room like Mr Vedder did in the 'Alive' video while whoa-whoa-ing as deeply as our only partially broken voices could muster and all these years later I realise that was the happiest I have ever been. A great number of lunchtime arguments were waged over this lack of consensus, alternatively resulting in belly-laughter, tears, physical fights or a competition to see who could do the best Eddie Vedder impression. Now I don't know about you but when I was at school virtually every one of my friends had their own different favourite Pearl Jam album. Both have an Ed in the band and two As in their name, and you might think they're stylistically disparate but play Radiohead's 'Bodysnatchers' back-to-back with Pearl Jam's 'Do The Evolution' and you might have to reconsider.Īnd if Pearl Jam had their very own Kid A moment then it was in 1996 with the release of No Code. Both have written a song called 'Present Tense'. Both Pearl Jam and Radiohead, and particularly their singers, could be accused of maintaining a certain arrested adolescent mopishness. As Lowe implied, they each move in a similar league, maintaining both huge popularity without pandering to the populist by-numbers naffness of U2 whose own creative urges have been permanently fulfilled by dressing up as The Village People and shouting the word "discotheque" in front of a large shiny lemon. O'Brien's disclosure that he'd recently seen Pearl Jam perform for the first time in his life wasn't the most revealing remark of all time but the similarities between his band and the Seattle grunge merchants are worth exploring further. I wouldn't piss on them if they or their sex were on fire. Interviewing the second upon the release of In Rainbows, Lowe compared the Oxford group to their apparent American counterparts on the grounds that they "do exactly what they wanna do and they continue to make great records and they have the back catalogue to back it up." To this Ed O'Brien replied, "I saw Pearl Jam last year and it blew my mind." Then they span 'My Party' by Kings of Leon, who are so patently not in the same league as the other two that it's like making good use of a WH Smiths 3for2 offer by purchasing Jude The Obscure, East Of Eden and The Formulaic Romance That Could Be Easily Be Adapted Into A Screenplay by Nicholas Sparks. A massive fan of massive bands, the radio disc jockey Zane Lowe once tried to draw a parallel between three of his favourite big hitters: Pearl Jam, Radiohead and Kings Of Leon.
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