Consumed Summer

Well, Labor Day is in the rear view mirror, football season has started and the hot coffee to iced coffee ratio is starting to go up. Even though Autumn doesn’t officially start until next week, it sure has felt like it for a while now. I’m sure that has more to do with the terrible weather we have had since August — I think last Saturday was the first day I had the top down on the Jeep since early-to-mid August — than the rapid fall from the playoff chase of the Sox, but I have been anxious for the Fall as it is my favorite season of the year. However, before I go on about that, I thought it would be nice to do a wrap-up of Summer consumables like music, movies, sports and whatever else that sticks out. For the sake of most things, I am going to go with the unofficial dates of Summer and say it starts Memorial Day weekend and ends Labor Day weekend (when it comes to movies, the studios want you to believe Summer starts May 1st). Anyway, between that time I consumed 29 discs and half of them stand out in my mind for different reasons. Five for being incredibly kick ass, five for being really good and five or sucking ass or being plain disappointing. The album... Continue reading »

Pearl Jam = Crap

Just kidding, but I did sort of drop that idea in Kurt. You see, it had been a while since I really listened to any PJ discs and as far as my poor memory could recall, they had released a lot of crap since their first three discs.

Jason called me out on my statement in his comments about the Kurt post. I had actually already started thinking about what I wrote, almost as in I couldn’t believe I wrote it, but it’s there. So, that weekend I started ripping all my PJ discs so that I could give them a spin and reeducate my ignorant self.

Over the course of two days, I listened to the catalog I own (no live discs though) and I did so in order of release. I’ll just run thru some thoughts on each and tidy up at the very end.

Ten Without a doubt their very best. I remember when I finally bought it I played it over and over. Alive, Evenflow, Jeremy and Black are all amazing songs and remain timeless. The rest of the disc is almost as good and I found myself singing along in my exaggerated Eddie Vedder voice with every one.

Ten actually dropped a month before Nirvana’s Nevermind, but didn’t pick up steam until Nirvana started getting airplay (according to the... Continue reading »