Pearl Jam Radio

As we were leaving the arena carpark after the recent Pearl Jam Manchester concert, the car cd/radio player knocked itself out. Dead. I had planned well in advance to play Ten very loud on the way home that night, but perhaps in some empathetic musical and cosmic connectivism, the radio had decided it would be a spiritual irreverence to follow such an uplifting live performance with the nadir of a mere recording.

Perhaps. That was ten long silent days ago, but this afternoon I repaired the cd/radio. It was a blown fuse for the joint cigarette lighter and radio circuit that had been shorted when a dodgy Sat Nav connection spaked a far more mundane reality behind the night's mute reposte. I knew that all along, but writing it here gives me the opportunity to post a pic of my ticket, recall the brilliance of that night, and let it be known I listened to a belated Ten today. Very loud.

Pearl Jam, Isle of Wight, 23rd June, 2012

Prostitution

Baudelaire has written how we all prostitute ourselves at some time in our lives, so if you subscribe to Sky you will be able to watch Pearl Jam live at the Isle of Wight tonight on SkyArts1 and be in good company. I bought my council house too back in 1987, but I think my links to Thatcher and Murdoch are tenuous enough to be completely overwritten by a lifelong love of great music and a principled stand on most important matters in my life.

Pearl Jam - Manchester Arena, 20th June, 2012

Pearl Jam - Manchester Arena, 20th June, 2012

As an American resident in England for over 40 years, I have both an English and an American voice, and the former will occasionally exercise control over the latter, for example in preventing my ever saying the word awesome to describe a meal I have just eaten, or a view just seen, or a nap just taken - choosing instead words more precise and meaningful - and indeed the title of this blog, for anyone who hasn't noticed, takes pleasure in poking fun at that particular American superlative for anything better than bad, but after seeing Pearl Jam last night in Manchester, there is only one word that will do, though I will prefix it with an adjective I regularly use, accepting its attributing function is now linguistically international as a pre-modifier:

fucking awesome!!!

And in the momentary spirit of my laissez-faire attitude to communication, note the naive over-use of the exclamation mark too. You can see that I just don't care!!!

There's not much more to be said now either, that word for this exceptional moment sufficing to characterise this exceptional live performance. I've seen Pearl Jam only three times across their two decades of existence: at the Wembley Arena in the mid nineties, at Cardiff in 2000, and last night in Manchester. This was, without doubt, the best of the three. Launching their European tour, the band was fresh and exuberant; the sound quality was superb - even for those of us listening with the gods - and Eddie Vedder was in brilliant voice and evident happy spirits.

Before the concert began, my daughter and I were discussing the price of tickets these days - not complaining about last night's in particular because it was Pearl Jam [!], but simply observing how expensive it has become over the years to see the 'big' acts. Soon after this anticipation-filler, the band came on and the lights dimmed to deep blue and the opening song Release filled the stadium with its beauty, Vedder's vocal in awesome control. When finished, my daughter and I turned to one another and said the ticket price was worth that one song alone. And we meant it.

The two and a half hour set was stunning. The performance finished on a second encore of five songs, the final three being Jeremy, Alive, and music-affirming Rockin' In The Free World. For that by now familiar Neil Young closer, the lights came up in the stadium and everyone was on their feet singing and dancing. It was a party atmosphere where crowd and band coalesced in the moment that makes live music so precious, especially on this one night with Pearl Jam.

I mustn't finish without commenting on McCready's brilliant guitar playing throughout the night, and of course the band's entire excellence, but as ever for me and so many it was Eddie Vedder's dominant, and certainly last night, fresh vocal that made this concert the word-I-don't-need-to-use-again experience it was. Exclamation marks.

History Lesson

At the beginning of the 90s I’d been teaching for ten years and these were good professional times: independent, creative, fulfilling. I wasn’t financially comfortable, and there had been struggles in the previous decade, but I was three years into a mortgage [a principle shattered as I readily grabbed at Thatcher’s legacy of offering the cheap chance to buy a council house, mine having been rented as teacher accommodation] and there was plenty of 60s/70s music to keep me fully entertained as I’d moved up from the Amstrad stereo [though it did have that thundering volume boost button] to a Toshiba system – I think the Kenwood was later, and I now have Cambridge: these listening stepping-stones a critical aspect of the aural journey.

So this was neither exceptional nor terrible in the life and times of a 36 approaching 40 year old English teacher and father of two whose loves were family, teaching [at that time], writing and music, but with regard to the latter where I’d primarily mainlined on nostalgia, bands like Temple of the Dog, Pearl Jam, Brad, Alice in Chains and, to a lesser extend in terms of familiarity at the time, Soundgarden, all kick-started that new decade with their heavy albeit newly-named grunge sound, and it is clearly the quality of this music coupled with a rather amorphous other emotive reality that turbo-charged this launch. In my previous posting on Brad I also mentioned The Black Crowes who brought out the classic rock revival of Shake Your Money Maker in 1990, therefore joining this rejuvenating mix, and there were other bands like Stone Temple Pilots and Screaming Trees filling and exploding my 80s void. Students at the time were making me cassette tapes of these new bands – it’s how I first heard Temple of the Dog – and a close friend was also regularly introducing me to these contemporary musical riches: pulling one from the abundant offerings would be Mark Lanegan’s 1994 solo album Whiskey for the Holy Ghost. 

All of these bands had great rock/grunge vocalists and that did much to attract and appeal. The centrality of the guitar with wah-wah and/or fuzzed and/or extended solo also returned to detox the 80s’ contamination. Highlights from some of the bands mentioned would be all of Pearl Jam’s Ten [already a nailed-to-the-wall Top Fifty], Temple of the Dog’s Hunger Strike with Eddie Vedder taking over the lead vocal from also excellent and accompanying Chris Cornell, and consummate grunge anthem Rooster from Alice in Chain’s monster album Dirt. Brad’s generally softer sound, reviewed as such yesterday, earned its distinct placing but was also carried on the back of the overall sense of musical renewal linked to the palpable if inexplicably generated feelings I had at the time.

It’s a snapshot musical history of the time, but I wanted to try and articulate, what I think I intuited in yesterday’s Brad posting, how this period made such an impact. It can’t compete with those teenage listens to the life-defining sounds of the 60s/70s, but maybe that is the key factor: the early 90s’ experience was an adult one, informed by adult preoccupations but always attached to those teenage foundations – thus nostalgia and echo became another defining moment in the construction of musical appreciation, memory and meaning.