seventh grade...

"Wishlist"


Pearl Jam. I discovered "ten" in seventh grade. my best friend was april zelt. we listened to this for hours while "laying out" in her back yard by the pool, or while hanging out in her room. if you know me now you probably wouldn't expect me to love this band so much, because their recurring themes deal with depression, homelessness, abuse, and death. however, look at the time. 7th grade. where i was beginning to learn that life isn't always happy. that my life wasn't the only kind of life out there. that my happy homelife wasn't typical. i was just learning that the world is a difficult and oftentimes sad place. pearl jam took all of that sadness and made beautiful music out of it. they showed that a difficult life is not a singular event, but that we all could learn from it. they had beautiful acoustic guitar based ballads, as well as the harder style more typical of a grunge band. now, while i cannot say that i fancied myself in any way abused...i certainly wore torn-up levi's and dr. martin's.

1991 ten was pearl jam's debut album - after 2 of the guys from mother love bone (jeff ament and stone gossard) added in eddie vedder, mike mccready, and dave krusen. most of the songs started out as instrumentals - then kicked up a notch with lyrics by vedder. they've been accused of grunge latecomers - but, they were highly instrumental in popularizing alternative rock to mainstream listeners. case in point: who's heard of mother love bone? (beside me). this album went platinum 12 times.

none of these songs are from the "ten" album, i figured everyone is familiar with those. like the hit singles: alive, even flow, and jeremy. i thought i'd share some that i enjoy that you might not have heard.

"Last Kiss"


"Yellow Ledbetter"


if you'd like to hear more recent musical contributions from eddie vedder, check out this blog post on "into the wild" by tj.