Pearl Jam

What about some love for Soundgarden? I FINALLY tracked down a copy of "Badmotorfinger" with the extra "SOMMS" disc, 14 years after I saw it at Musicland. It's got some cool covers -- "Into the Void" by Black Sabbath, "Girl U Want" by Devo, "Stray Cat Blues" by The Rolling Stones. Really heavy, but with strange little hooks.
They're a solid, solid No. 3 in the grunge lineup.

 

Superunknown is a good album. Down on the Upside is a great album.

 

I didn't start l iking Pearl Jam's stuff until Vitalogy, but I had loved Soundgarden and Alice in Chains stuff way before Pearl Jam's. I love Mad Season, but I think AinC's stuff is better than that album, and I still think their top three albums (debut, Dirt, Jar of Flies EP) and Soundgarden's three main albums Badmotorfinger, Superunknown and Down On the Upside, offer more than Pearl Jam's top three from the standpoint that those bands' sounds are is so much more unique than Pearl Jam's. Pearl Jam's a great, great band they're my favorite now, but they sound like how you'd expect good rock n roll to sound. like someone posted earlier, SG has a knack for guitar tweaks and downtimed riffs that just work. Alice in Chains had a very unique sound too with Layne's ability to sing low or high and Cantrell's ability to bend his guitar riffs.

 

You summed it up for me. I loved the RHCP and grunge both, but before then, the RHCP were the main attraction for me going into my senior year of high school. But Pearl Jam was phenomenal the day I saw them, too.

It's been way too long since I've seen them play, though. Way too long.

 

I really like what SG did, too. Not that I don't like PJ, but to me, they don't seem to have done much to distinguish themselves in the last decade. Nothing really stands out for me. Perhaps they're a victim of their own success and longevity in relation to the other bands. Even the best bands have a hard time staying 'fresh' for more than 8-10 years if death, ego, etc. doesn't prevent them from staying together even that long.

 

OK.

A month of immersion has left me with this:

Along with U2, they are the only group that can hold their heads up as torch-carriers for the bedrock laid in the 1970s.

Second... I apologize for only asking for five. Like any great catalog, it was asking the near-impossible.

1. Corduroy
2. Better Man
3. Black
4. Alive
5. Once
6. Yellow Ledbetter
7. Even Flow
8. Daughter
9. Dissident
10. Elderly Woman


Thank you, everyone.

What an ass-kicking thread ... for one person, at least.

 

It is a great thread. And just as a reminder, PJ will be on between bad SNL skits tomorrow.

 

Live, or on tape?

 

They've had songs since 1994 that are worthy of a top 10, in my opinion, but your list is your list. That's the beauty.

 

Live with Lindsay Lohan.

 

Saw this Billboard story today (too long to post here):

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060415...ulxFb8C;_ylu=X3oDMTA5aHJvMDdwBHNlYwN5bmNhdA--

 

If I may go off on a semi-related tangent...

I was in high school in southern California when the first Red Hot Chili Peppers album came out. I was a huge fan, and used to see them play in dinky clubs like the Golden Bear in Huntington Beach. I went off the college at the University of Oregon and they came and played the beer gardens in the student union cafeteria.

When "Blood Sugar Sex Magik" came out in 1991, they announced a concert at the state armory in Salem, 60 miles away. There were two opening acts and I hadn't heard of either one. I thought the CD was a huge letdown, I'd seen them in much better venues and Salem is a shithole, so I decided not to go. I changed my mind a few weeks before the show but they had sold out, so I was out of luck.

The opening acts were Nirvana and Pearl Jam. They were absolutely unknown when the concert was announced; "Nevermind" was the #1 album in the country the week of the concert, and Pearl Jam was just starting to break.

I'm still kicking myself in the ass over that one.