Reflections From 2011 the Pearl Jam Edition: Vs./Vitalogy/Live from the Orpheum Theater/20

2011 was a year of numerous anniversaries. U2 celebrated Achtung Baby's twentieth anniversary. BloodSugarSexMagic by the Red Hot Chili Peppers should have. The Strokes' Is This It is offically ten years old. But one band seemed to be more celebratory than the others. Pearl Jam released 20, a documentary with an accompanying soundtrack and book as well as the re-issues of Vs., Vitalogy and the heretofore unreleased Live at the Orpheum Theater, Boston, April 12, 1994. As such, that's a lot of material to cover and material that should be covered wholesale, not piecemeal. As a band, they took the longview and in order to truly appreciate it, you should too.

I myself saw Pearl Jam live four times over the course of their first ten years. I can easily say that two of those shows were brilliant- better, even, than most bands have a right to be. The other two were quite possibly some of the most incredible experiences I've ever witnessed. One because of the fans. The other because it changed my life. That was October 1993. I was a freshman in high school. Vs. had just come out and I, like a lot of my peers, would start a garage band not much later.

At times, it's hard to explain the view we held of Seattle. You kind of had to be there and even if you were, chances were good you couldn't stand me or my ilk. Still, Seattle came to be a cultural mecca for a generation of us garage brats as we were convinced that it was natural, a right even, to have local scenes. Additionally, we were convinced that scenes were built to be co-ops in which all bands took an interest in seeing it succeed. Competition was encouraged, sure, but so was solidarity and brotherhood and communion.

It's close to twenty years later, and even though I spend less and less time in the garage, I'm still clearly affected by this time in my life. I hear it in the isolated but gleeful ennui of James Murphy's LCD Soundsystem. I feel it in the kick drums of Gogol Bordello's gypsy punk. I drink to it with every beer soaked chorus by the Hold Steady. For better or worse, Pearl Jam and their comtemporaries fixed an ideal in my head and my heart as to what music was supposed to be. For better or worse, they made music my religion and I, for better or worse, am still devoted.

Unlike my other obsessions (see U2, R.E.M., the Clash), I witnessed the construction of the mythology from the ground floor up. There was no catching up to the current album or navelgazing about missing the band after the fact. Pearl Jam was, by comparison, a contagion for which we had no anti-bodies and I caught the fever for the first album just in time to get excited about the second one. With twenty years hindsight, it seems more like being on hand to watch a controlled demolition in reverse. With Vs. and Vitalogy, of course, being the dynamite and blasting caps.

Given the monolithic enormity of Ten's impact, it's easy to forget what a fireball of an album Vs. really was. Looking back, though, it's easy to see how this album reperesented any number of things; a band on top of the world but uncomfortable with their position, a band unwilling to sell out or compromise, a band determined to grow something sustainable out of a fleeting opportunity. More than anything, however, this was a furious and defiant reckoning for the lost souls that populated Ten. Where Ten sought guidance, Vs. offered only retribution and a settling of scores. The old ways didn't work anymore and the only way forward was armed with youth and hope. Eddie Vedder would go on to say as much on "Leash."

"Delight in our youth," he snarled just breaths after screaming "Drop the leash, we are young, get out of my fucking face." As missions statements go, it was less than taciturn. But as anthems go, it was the feathered cap for an album full of anthems written by a band at war with everything. From the first invocation of Nemesis in "Go," the band rails at each other ("Animal"), conservative politics ("Glorified G"), the establishment ("WMA"), our parents ("Daughter"), the media ("Blood"), human nature ("Rats") and the past ("Rearviewmirror").

None of this would have been possible if not for the addition of drummer Dave Abbruzzese. His style was more refined than predecessor Dave Krusen and more explosive than successor Jack Irons. Only (current drummer) Matt Cameron has ever offered so much potential and, even then, it's impossible to imagine another drummer who could have filled the kit so capably when Pearl Jam lived with their backs to the wall.

The addition of Brendan O'Brien as a producer is also worth noting here. He brought a clarity and focus to these records that was missing from Ten. Whereas Ten opened with the murky "Music for Cows" before exploding into "Once," Vs. started immediately with a muscular hi-hat/snare workout by Abbruzzese. Propulsively taut, it clearly defined the agenda for the next twelve tracks.

Lyrically, however, the old modus operandi of Ten would still rear its head from time to time. "Daughter," certainly the biggest song from the album, underscored the wounded isolation of adolescence with a knowing sense that liberation comes with time. Given the longing regret of "Elderly Woman Behind the Counter in a Small Town," however, one had to wonder if that sense was wrong. But the most compelling character of the album had to be Vedder himself as he defined his agenda (and that of the band's) in "Indifference."

"How much difference does it make," he asked repeatedly to no consequence. The question was rhetorical as "Indifference" was not an ode to apathy. It was a clear manifesto that no matter what he endured, he would not be stopped, he would be heard. It was as defiant as "Leash" before it in the knowledge that youth's optimism trumps all if you demand it.

Vitalogy arrived doggedly on the heels of Vs. at little more than a year later. In this time, Kurt Cobain's body was found dead from a self inflicted gunshot wound. With Nirvana effectively ended, expectations from the media and fans grew to epic proportions and nobody bore the brunt of this more than Pearl Jam. Vitalogy delivered a lyrical meditation on mortality, suffused with religious and historical imagery that bore heavy implications of temptation and personal loss. It was impossible at the time to ignore the spectre of Kobain and, to a large degree, Seattle as a scene.

Despite being Pearl Jam's strongest debut yet, the album was deemed more dour than usual and the band seemed more miserable. One couldn't help but start to wonder if the engine was throwing rods. Initially, what seemed like a creative struggle between Stone Gossard and Jeff Ament on Vs. soon turned out to be friction between Vedder and Abbruzzese. And while that conflict defined Vs. in combustive ways, it was starting to wear thin.

It was starting to become clear that this wasn't a band. It was a creative warzone with the largest conflict taking place between Eddie and the world at large. Pushing back against the demands of fame, Vedder's lyrics centered around individuality and self determination. Musically, he was just as determined to confound when he pushed the band's hard but radio friendly sound straight into hardcore abrasiveness.

The effectiveness of "Spin the Black Circle" and "Tremor Christ," a split lead-off single, invited scrutiny. But as a harbinger of the weirdness to come, their efficacy left no doubt. "Spin the Black Circle" was a hardcore thrash anthem to the lost love of vinyl and "Tremor Christ" was built around serrated guitar chords, martial drum beats and Mephistophelian imagery. Nevermind that there were actual ballads on the album like "Betterman." Who needed a hit when you had song sketches like "Pry To," "Bugs," "Aye Davenita" and "Foxymophandlemama?"

Unlike later experiments that would reveal Vedder as a hidden Talking Heads fan, these songs were solely disruptive- they were the sound of the band pumping the brakes on their rocket to stardom. Had theses songs actually been excised, Vitalogy could have been a truly dynamic modern rock masterpiece. Balanced between their "man" ballads ("Better" and "Nothing"), their full throttle rockers ("Spin the Black Circle," the pro-choice "Whipping") and their anti-fame anthems ("Not For You" and "Courdoroy"), Vitalogy could have easily lived up to the 1-2 punch of their first two records.

Internally, this was the true emergence of Eddie the guitarist. The possibility of Pearl Jam as a three headed guitar monster had been suggested on Vs. with "Rearviewmirror" but Vitalogy made that a reality with Vedder deciding more of the band's direction. Morose, anti-social and just plain weird, his agenda seemed clear: find another bandwagon, posers, this one is being circled by the pure of heart, the punk rock faithful, the kids. And as erratic as his direction may have seemed at the time, he revealed it to be more than petulance in album's defining anthem "Not For You."

"All that's sacred comes from youth," he sang half pleading, half testifying, "dedications, naive and true... I still remember. Why don't you?"

The fifteen year old in me took this to heart and still remembers. As a result, this is the Pearl Jam that I remember most fondly- the one that took herculean efforts to keep the world at bay while simultaneously shouldering all of its burdens and occasionally bitching about it. This is the Pearl Jam that changed my life, that set the expectation to be young and daring. And while I mean no disrespect to the group or their subsequent artistic visions, this was a dangerous, unpredictable and inspirational Pearl Jam. Which is why, of course, they couldn't last. Abbruzzese was fired, Jack Irons was hired, Jack Irons quit, Matt Cameron joined and a few albums were made that never came close to selling what they used to. But for a time, they got to be the Who.

Live at the Orpheum Theatre is a pretty accurate reflection of that band. It's also a pretty accurate reflection of how I and many other music obsessed, angst riddled teens remember that band in our hearts. As teens, we voraciously traded bootleg after bootleg amongst ourselves and the inclusion of both "Sonic Reducer" and "Fucking Up" is a gracious mea culpa to that. They may not be studio versions, but beggars can hardly be choosers, especially when those beggars have rubbed the heads off their old tape decks.

Pearl Jam has always been a phenomenal live experience and there are numerous live albums that will testify to that much. But this is the crucible that made them so. And while most bands aspire to playing as if their lives depend on it, this is one of the few bands that I actually believed were. Certainly, they were the only ones that I worried about afterward. Their playing was violently cathartic, like kids pushing their joyride into the red and beyond. They pushed on regardless of whether or not they could turn the corner, forget about what was beyond it. As high wire acts go, they were the most thrilling one out there and, now, all the more so for having survived the experience.

As such, Live at the Orpheum Theatre is a nice postcard from the bootlegs that defined my adolescence almost as much as the music that was on them. Recorded between Vs. and Vitalogy, it covers a period of the band that has never really been captured on their live releases to date. Pearl Jam's major label live release was more like a greatest hits package live and the band was still a few years away from recording and releasing bootlegs of their own shows.

When they made the decision to record and commercially release their own shows, they effectively legitimized the bootleg culture in a way that not even the Grateful Dead had managed to. As a result, Cameron Crowe's love letter to the band, 20, had an incredibly deep well to draw from for live recordings.

Crowe's love affair with the group goes way back to their beginning. He interviewed the band for their first Rolling Stone cover and this was after he cast them as Citizen Dick in Singles. Emotionally invested from the start, Crowe makes 20 more than a soundtrack to its namesake documentary and book. Stocked with live performances and demos, it could easily be seen as the ultimate insider's bootleg. But Crowe, their biggest and oldest fan, goes beyond that to lovingly deliver the ultimate mixtape to his brethren.

As an overview, 20 becomes the Mother Teresa of lost singles as it makes compelling case after case for songs that may have fallen flat or just to the side on previous records. In particular, Binaural's live take on "Nothing As It Seems" opens up in a smoldering fashion. "Faithful," "Thumbing My Way" and "Just Breathe" show a mature band capable of functioning without the sturm und drang that they once made so fashionable. Every fan has a favorite that never got the proper time or attention and Cameron Crowe has compiled them all here.

It would be cynical to suggest "Crown of Thorns" as the obvious selling point for 20 but, then again, it would be naive not to. There's a certain mythological wish fulfillment that arrives with Vedder singing the most celebrated song of the tragic MotherLoveBone. Frankly, they were never my cup of tea to begin with as I was too young to see the irony of Andrew Wood's GnR rock poses. That being said, "Crown of Thorns" is the obvious sellling point here. It's the only performance you'll find of Vedder singing the song and it serves as a nice reminder of what a nuanced singer he is.

The other song that jumps out on this collection is "Black" from their appearance on MTV Unplugged. It's opening chords are instantly memorable as that specific performance is well weathered and burned into my brain. What was Michael Stipe mumbleese on record became very clear and real in performance if not absolutely gutwrenching. Here was a man, ripping his heart out and baring for all to see as he wailed "we belong together." In one heartbreaking performance, he brought a sincere if not cathartic pathos to a whole generation. The ideal of how not to sell out was congealed in our hormone addled, confused and collective consciousness.

I imagine it was a turning point for them as artists as much as it was for me as a listener. The eventual payoff of playing Unplugged is easy to hear in the anthems of "Daughter," "Elderly Woman in a Small Town" and the Sweet Relief rarity "Crazy Mary." This was grunge?

Looking back on the records that I loved as a teen makes me think back to the joy of discovering my father's old records. It makes me wonder if there's a comparable joy to teens today. And I don't mean to gloat, but then a part of me wonders if they're capable of handling our old records at all or if their little teenage hearts would be atomised by the rampant emotion of it all. Mine was. And because I remember the power of hearing those records for the first time, it still is.