Being old school like you, I had a hard time deciding between Vs. and Ten as my favorite. I think Vs. is in fact my favorite, but Ten is probably their best, if that makes sense. I feel that way because they set out with the goal of making it less commercial and rock radio friendly than Ten. Of course, plenty of songs still made it on the airwaves.

@JFCC – Well, all I can say is I can’t believe you put Vitalogy last! You make an excellent point about the band consciously deciding to not be marketed as the next great rock band. With Ten, they really did come out of the grunge gate as the biggest band and with Vs., they decided to take a step back.

I don’t necessarily agree with you on the video aspect of it. I mean, do people really watch videos anymore in the age of TRL and MTV not showing videos? I’ve heard of this MTV2 concept, but never seen it. Videos are all about selling a band’s image and PJ has ever been about that.

I can’t even call bands like Staind and Godsmack pretenders (I am purposely not adding those other two as I think they suck, suck, suck – not that I am spinning any Godsmack — new album tomorrow why? — or Staind these days either) because they came along in the Nu Rock slash Nu Metal wave that hit, yes, in no small part due to Limp Bizkit and MTV. They were in turn replaced by all the “The” bands who are already being replaced by the Emo bands.

Grunge, Nu whatever and the “The” guys are just different brands of rock, no? The industry seems to cycle thru genres, so I’m sure the next great rock band is out there somewhere and no doubt looking to PJ as inspiration.

In high school I was all about the long jean shorts and the flannel shirts. I learned to play guitar, got a Fender Stratocaster, the whole nine yards. I’m psyched to see PJ live next month when they hit the Fleetcenter, or the Garden or the Yahoo Search Engine Arena or whatever the hell they’re calling it now. They can’t play Great Woods (the Tweeter Center? whatever) anymore because they went over curfew the last time they came around (I was at that concert—that was the time they decided to play every song they’ve ever played live over three concerts…they even did a little acoustic thing before the main show on the last day, the one I went to—again, very cool.).

Ten and Vs. used to be my favorite PJ albums, but you can only hear those songs so many times before you get a bit tired of them. So here’s my current order of favorites (based on how often I listen to them):

1. Binaural
2. Yield
3. Lost Dogs
4. Vs.
5. Ten
6. No Code
7. Riot Act
8. Vitalogy

I have high hopes for Pearl Jam. “Worldwide Suicide” is pretty good, though “Unemployable” isn’t that great. They’ve really avoided putting out a really catchy single (unless it’s a low-key piece like “Better Man,” “Wishlist” or “Last Kiss”). They either can’t or won’t go back to the kind of commercially viable sound they had on Ten or Vs.. They’ve come close, particularly with Yield, which outsold the previous No Code by 100K and outsold every album after.

But let’s face it, the real reason for Pearl Jam’s declining popularity isn’t their sound. It’s their unwillingness to be a part of the marketing machine—no music videos, no MTV, no video awards shows or any of that high-profile stuff that a band like U2 thrives on. I know this sounds cynical, but if Pearl Jam had heavily promoted any of their albums they way they did Ten, I think that those albums would be more highly regarded.

In many ways I haven’t moved beyond the mid-nineties in terms of music tastes, but that’s partially because there really hasn’t been much good commercial rock music since then (in my ever-so-humble opinion, of course). Pretenders like Staind, Creed, Nickelback, Godsmack, and so forth just aren’t the same. (I won’t lump in the Strokes, the Hives, Franz Ferdinand, and the White Stripes…I like some of them, but they’ve got the whole 1970s-dance rock/punk revival thing going on—it’s different.)

I recently rediscovered the Sponge single “Wax Ecstatic”…holy crap, that song rocks. What the hell happened to rock music? I blame Limp Bizkit.

Also of note – that SNL appearance came days after they had played UMASS in the Campus Center Ballroom. Within a year they’d be headlining 30,000 – 50,000+ seat arenas – but here they were on our campus, just mere minutes before they hit the stratosphere, playing a sweaty room of a few hundred.

Joe has a great anecdote involving a buddy of his who was responsible for booking acts to play on campus. This guy had to pick Eddie and the gang up at the airport and give them a lift to the hotel. He said the stench emanating from our grunge gods was so overpowering – he ended up napalming his VW minibus. Anyway – that’s a good intro for Joe to give us the 411 on that tale in these pages. I’m sure I lost something in translation.

This is an excellent piece on my favorite band of all time. I agree that Ten is their greatest album – and in my mind is permanently etched in my Top Ten of All Time. As for the others, I have a hard time choosing – so I label them all strong seconds – although Vs. (which was also called ‘Five Against One’ at one point) is up there.

Essentially Ten is the most consistent album – the others have a few tracks per disc that I could trash in a heartbeat (Bugs, anyone?) After Joe’s story – ya’ start to understand where Eddie found the real world experience to write “I’ve got bugs in my hair” and suddenly, he doesn’t seem quite the mad genius. : )

Ultimately, I think Pearl Jam’s greatest strength is in the song-writing. Vedder and co. know how to tell a tale and always place you in the point of view of their subject. From elderly women toiled away behind small town lunch counters to nowhere men who desperately wish they could be the souvernier you kept your house keys on, they let us role play like no one else.

I remeber reading an interview with Tim Robbins, around the time Dead Man Walking was released, where he talked about his selection of Eddie Vedder to record that film’s haunting track “The Long Road”. He was inspired by Vedder’s ability to sketch an honest character study in verse – to draft a character and impart a lived in feel to that person – to etch lines on their face and miles on their feet and let the listener walk a few steps in their shoes.

That’s evolution, baby!