Pearl Jam’s got something new going on (but you can’t hear it)

I’ve reached my limit, and I’m breaking up with Pearl Jam.

Their New York City lawyers contacted me today, telling me to remove the fan-recorded file of a new song below, which was captured outside the venue door at a recent secret show. This is the third time during the lifespan of this blog that I have been contacted by Pearl Jam or their representatives to remove something from my site that they feel is objectionable — always a live fan recording of something we’re all stoked to hear, and always a post that has come from a place of earnest and enthusiastic fandom. Well, I’m tired of fandom.

Even more disturbing than the crackdown on the live recordings that Pearl Jam has long embraced is the fact that, according to multiple sources, the internet is being vigorously scoured of all forms of even TALK about this new song and the recording session that happened on Thursday. This post vanished, leaving only the Google cache to remember it. This girl deleted hers. Threads on the message board are vaporized. And holy mackerel, I just went to reference the Rolling Stone post and the entire thing from this morning has vanished. 404 error. File not found.

This type of suppression of information seems to be their chosen mode of operating as a band over the last few years, and it is leaving me with a bitter taste in my mouth. I’m not sure what has changed with them. I can’t defend them anymore. I also must say that as one of the few voices in the independent blogosphere that even seems to care about what Pearl Jam is doing with any urgency, their kindness and support for genuine fandom would be most consistent with what I always understood their punk-inspired ethos to be.

The new song is out there, the horse is through the gate, Elvis has left the building — and in 2009 it is futile to undo it. Seize the buzz, Pearl Jam. Acknowledge the fans that have stuck with you for over fifteen years. In ten hours everyone’s gonna have heard the new song on Conan anyways, if you perform it. The only people interested in the fan recording are the passionate uberfans who will follow everything you do anyways. I would stoke those fires if I were you, not run around trying to smother to death everyone who dares talk about it. So few of my generation care passionately about what you are doing these days, and think that you are relevant and potent.

I’m saddened to say it ain’t gonna be me anymore.

[UPDATE]

Pearl Jam took to the stage Thursday at Seattle’s famed Showbox to rock a brand new song, while Cameron Crowe (Cameron Crowe!) filmed it. Stealth audio from one of the extras sounds like this:

Something’s Going On – Pearl Jam
(we’re guessing on the title — could also be “The Fixer”)

Soaring, melodic, tightly-wound, and fiercely rocking — color me pleased. Read more details here. Now maybe we know what they will play tomorrow night on the Conan Tonight Show premiere!

The Pearl Jam 2008 Christmas single for this California girl

The Pearl Jam “Christmas” single for 2008 is just starting to hit mailboxes worldwide, a scant five months late. As I’ve said before, punctuality has never been a reason to love these fanclub-only vinyl singles that Pearl Jam records almost each year since 1991.

Simply put, I am having a small seizure of happiness.

As a California girl, when I saw that the songs on this year’s release are “The Golden State” (a John Doe cover with Corin Tucker of Sleater-Kinney) and a brand new original Pearl Jam song called “Santa Cruz,” my heart beat in triple-time. I grew up in San Jose, just forty-five minutes and over the green mountains from the beach town of Santa Cruz. This naively feels like a gift just for me, a soundtrack to the terrain I love and miss.

2008 PEARL JAM CHRISTMAS SINGLE
Golden State (featuring Corin Tucker) – Pearl Jam
Santa Cruz – Pearl Jam

The lyrics to the harmonica-laced “Santa Cruz” couldn’t be any better for my insides; I can almost see the redwoods flashing past, and smell the salty air of the ocean as we approach over Highway 17. I’ve driven it so many times.

Santa Cruz
Heading south the compass reads
Look at our speed, we’re going 63
Look out the window as the trees go green
I look at them and they look at me

I got Neil Young on the stereo
He comes along whenever I go
There’s something different as I hear him now
Heading south on a familiar route

I can feel the lifting of my blues
I can see a wide horizon loom
I got the feeling I just can’t lose
Pulling into Santa Cruz

I got an old friend, he remembers me
From way back when we were seventeen
We’ve got kids and we’re older now
But when I see him we’re still seventeen

I need the beach to set me free
I need the wind to make me breathe
I need the water to wash my soul
I need my loved ones to let me go

I can feel the lifting of my blues
I can see a wide horizon loom
I got the feeling that I just can’t lose
Pulling into Santa Cruz.

Up in the Northwest we’ve got it good
A little soggy, but we’ve got it good
Can’t help thinking that I wish I would
Move my ass down to Santa Cruz

I got a feeling I don’t wanna lose
Pulling into Santa Cruz

I saw Pearl Jam play a secret show in Santa Cruz back in 1997, so the A-side feels like coming home to a nice time in my life.

The unaffected love song b-side of “Golden State” is a different version than the one that appeared on the John Doe Golden State EP, with less reverb and a sweet acoustic purity to the harmonies.

Well, that was worth the wait.

Pearl Jam announce East Coast summer tour dates

Nerdy superfans have been awaiting a big announcement of some sort from Pearl Jam today, crashing the message boards in the process somehow. Once the site got up and running again, there were some new tour dates announced for this summer!

The face-meltingly rad Kings of Leon will be opening the first four dates, and Ted Leo & The Pharmacists the others. I would travel to see Kings of Leon with PJ; South Carolina anyone? I’ve always wanted to go.

We’re also hoping that this might be the first leg only of a larger nationwide tour.

PEARL JAM TOUR 2008
June 11 – West Palm, FL Cruzan Amphitheatre
June 12 – Tampa, FL St Pete Times Forum
June 13-15 – Manchester, TN Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival
June 16 – Columbia, SC Colonial Center
June 17 – Virginia Beach, VA Verizon Amphitheater
June 19 – Camden, NJ Susquehanna Bank Center
June 22 – Washington, DC Verizon Center
June 24 – New York, NY Madison Square Garden
June 25 – New York, NY Madison Square Garden
June 27 – Hartford, CT Dodge Amphitheater
June 30 – Mansfield, MA Tweeter Center

Let’s See Action (live) – Eddie Vedder & Pete Townshend

Had to be good for Santa Claus: Pearl Jam 2007 Christmas single

In all my years of collecting the Pearl Jam Christmas singles, I can tell you for a fact that the annual 7″ has never arrived on Christmas Eve, in the purple twilight, with snow dancing all around me.

I stopped by my mailbox a few hours ago on the way back from last minute grocery shopping for the Christmas dinner I am making tomorrow. As I stood there shivering, fumbling the key with my frozen-in-two-seconds fingers, I got a fantastic Christmas present in plain brown wrapping, stamped “Ten Club” in the corner. As every year, my heart began to thump as I savored the slow unwrapping. Most years we use the term Christmas single loosely because it turns out to be a Presidents Day present or an Easter gift. But for 2007, Ten Club — your timing was impeccable.

Merry Christmas, guys.

Santa God – Pearl Jam
Jingle Bells – Pearl Jam

Thanks to DropTheLeash for the audio rip and SYM

Don’t mean to push, but I’m being shoved :: Twelve years of live Pearl Jam

So it’s not like I light a candle or get a tear in my eye, but I do always smile when I write the date on November 4th because the dork in my brain will always remember that as the first time I saw Pearl Jam live in concert.

Nov 4th 1995 was the rescheduled make-up Bay Area date for the aborted Golden Gate Park show five months earlier where Vedder bailed after seven songs due to food poisoning and the remaining members played a scorching set with Neil Young, dubbed “Neil Jam.” As you can see above, this was their alternate ticketing tour using non-Ticketmaster venues. This translated into really cool [Ames Bros] ticket art.

It was my junior year of high school and I had been waiting for almost two years to see Pearl Jam live. The show was held at San Jose State’s Spartan Stadium, an outdoor amphitheater. I remember joining the front end of a snaking line around the venue with my friends early in the day for the 2pm show, after purchasing a Mr. Point t-shirt (that I still wear on rare occasion).

In the late morning, the garbled but powerful melody of a soundcheck chorus and thundering drums rose through the autumn air. Hence I’ll always remember that the first song I ever heard Pearl Jam do live was “I Got Id” during the soundcheck.

[photo credit]

We had arrived early enough to wedge ourselves right up in the front section, and settled in for some hours of waiting. Ed came on for the pre-show before The Fastbacks and Ben Harper, playing a hushed acoustic version of the then-unreleased song “Dead Man.” He wore a fedora and smiled at all of us wryly, remarking, “So these are the faces I would have seen if I could have lifted my head up in San Francisco.”

As for the show itself, I hung on for as long as I could in the roiling masses of circa-1995 PJ fans — as it turned out, my capacity was about six songs. Once “Not For You” kicked in, I thought I was going to die and had to get pulled out in favor of a spot a bit further back.

I know.

SELECTED TUNES, SAN JOSE 11/4/95

Release (live 11/4/95) – Pearl Jam
unexpectedly languid opening song for the main set, but hearing this even tonight I get little tingles and can feel the electric excitement in the air and the whole sea of people ebbing and churning against me

Corduroy (live 11/4/95) – Pearl Jam
I remember facing the cooling dusk air and singing along with my full lung capacity, especially for the opening lines, “The waiting drove me mad . . .”

I Got Id/Shit (live 11/4/95) – Pearl Jam
After hearing it a few hours before at soundcheck, I got the full treatment of this almost eerie, soaring song with some of those great visceral screams

Leaving Here (live 11/4/95) – Pearl Jam
still one of my favorite covers they do, a feisty feministic anthem with kick and (dare I say) sass. A Holland-Dozier-Holland tune from 1963, the PJ studio version was released two months after this performance, on the Home Alive benefit album

Porch (live 11/4/95) – Pearl Jam
memorable because this is an excoriating version, and Ed returned to 1992 form and climbed an enormous tower of scaffolding, hanging in a way to make me hold my breath a bit. There’s also a “Three Little Birds” tag thrown in here as well – every little things gonna be alright indeed

Indifference (live 11/4/95) – Pearl Jam
from the opening tambourine shakes and the near-mystic melody, this was the perfect final song in an exhilarating concert. My first of many PJ-induced exhausted/euphoric-bliss moments. When everyone chorused “I’ll swallow poison until I grow immune, I will scream my lungs out ’til it fills this room. . .” I was right there in the thick of that. As I walked out, I remember feeling urgently within my 16-year-old self that everything was going to be okay if that kind of connection existed in the world.

Looks like the whole show is available here
[and thanks jake for loaning me the CD!]

In other Pearl Jam news –

A new hardcover book was announced last week on the fantastic topic of Pearl Jam artwork: Pearl Jam vs. Ames Bros. PJ’s been blessed as a band to have longstanding partnerships with artists Ames Brothers (Jeff’s brother Barry Ament, and Coby Schultz — they actually designed the Mr. Point shirt & ticket stub above) and since 1999 with Denver-bred artist Brad Klausen. Collectively these guys have produced some of the most unique and energetic original posters of any other band I know.

The new book is 264 pages, and features commentary on individual posters from all five members of Pearl Jam and from the poster designers — offering insight into the inspiration, concepts and process of poster creation. There was a little excerpt of the new book in the most recent PJ magazine Deep, and it was fascinating even to me (a very-very-non-artist) to see the way that the poster concept develops and emerges, and reflects something of the music and the mood of the city. Your coffee table will be 86% cooler.

PREORDER:
PEARL JAM VS. AMES BROS

Hot damn I did it! Theater screening in Denver of the new Pearl Jam movie: Immagine in Cornice

Well, this week is shaping up to be significantly better than last. I’m beyond thrilled to announce that I have actually arranged a big-screen showing of the new Pearl Jam concert movie, Immagine in Cornice, THIS Wednesday Sept 26th at the Denver Film Society/Starz FilmCenter theatre! That’s in downtown Denver near the Pepsi Center (off 9th and Auraria) and in keeping with our Italy theme, it’s very appropriately located in the Tivoli student union building. Couldn’t have planned it better if I tried.

Showtime is at 7pm on Wednesday, and it will be a fantastically FREE event. Watch an excerpt from the film here.

Like-minded fans can meet up with us before the showing (say 5:30pm) at Brooklyn’s across the street to get in a festive mood. They’ve got a good selection of beers, plus I think there are pool tables and your usual assortment of very healthy fried foods, also many loaded with cheese. If you think you will come to Brooklyn’s first, please email me so I can give them a rough count. This will allow them to have adequate staff there if we all descend en masse.

Come on out and bring friends who like any of the following things:
a) music
b) Pearl Jam
c) Europe
d) movies
e) free things

Here is a poster you can print and tack up to help get the word out on relatively short notice. If you are a student at a college in our area, or know somewhere that you could put some up, please do! Let’s make this ferociously awesome.

Rock on, and don’t let the bastards grind you down.

[photo credit Kerensa Wight]

Pearl Jam movies are so hot right now

[thanks to pearljamevolution for ripping/youtubing the video clips; that acoustic Lukin made me laugh out loud in its wonderfulness]

The new Pearl Jam tour DVD Immagine in Cornice which chronicles their scorchingly fabulous Italian shows from last summer (directed by Danny Clinch) will be released upon the salivating masses of PJ fans on Tuesday. My copy is somewhere in the mail in between Seattle and Colorado, according to the Ten Club, and I may try to attend what we fondly call a “dork gathering” of friends to watch this blessed film when it arrives in mailboxes all over the Colorado Springs/Denver/Boulder area.

However, for those unbelievably lucky saps living in “select cities” (Tulare but not Denver?) you get to go see an all-digital fancy schamncy movie theater premiere experience next week. I would love to see this movie on the big screen, since my speakers are just the built-in ones that came on the TV. I actually checked airfare to, like St. Louis and Vegas (but, uh, see previous post). For more information or to buy remaining tickets, see the D&E Entertainment page.

September 24
UK and Ireland Screenings
Covent Garden – Odeon
Surrey Quayes – Odeon
Manchester – Odeon Printworks
Dublin TBA

September 25
U.S. Screenings
Atlanta – Midtown
Austin – Highland
Berkeley – Elmwood
Boston – Kendall Square
Chicago – Lake Theatre
Chicago – Charlestowne 18
Detroit – Novi
Grand Rapids, MI – Celebration
Lansing, MI – Celebration
Las Vegas – Galaxy
Los Angeles – Plant 16
Memphis – Paradiso
New York – Zeigfeld
Philadelphia – Clearview
Riverbank, CA – Galaxy
St. Louis – Chesterfield
San Diego – UltraStar
San Francisco – Embarcadero
San Luis Obispo – Movie Experience
Santa Rosa – Lakeside
Seattle – Metro
Seattle – Galaxy
Tulare, CA – Galaxy

Also, the Into The Wild premiere was in L.A. last night, featuring a soundtrack by Ed Vedder (and is it just me or does Sean Penn look like he just fell off his barstool in that picture?). It opens ONLY in New York and L.A. this Friday, for those of you searching the movie listings fruitlessly. Apparently it will get wider release on October 12; I finally got the book from the library so I am preparing myself according to my philosophical principles (“always read the book before you see the movie”).

Trailer for new Pearl Jam live Italian tour DVD: Immagine In Cornice

If you’ve known me for more than a week, you might know that two of my favorite things in life are Pearl Jam and all things italiano. I lived and studied in Italy for a time, and I am completely smitten with the language, the culture, the people, the coffee, the food, and even the music.

So this new DVD forthcoming from Pearl Jam is enough to make me fairly pass out from the pleasure wiring in my brain short-circuiting with a zillion tiny sparks.

I believe the official title of the DVD is Immagine In Cornice (“Eemah-geenay een Cor-nee-chay — “Picture in a Frame,” named after the Tom Waits cover performed in Milan) although they’ve gone back and forth on translation issues (it could be “Telaio”). The DVD is due out September 25, with a presale starting through pearljam.com on August 22.

The film was shot in a variety of formats from Super-8 to Hi Def, and was directed by Danny Clinch, a man who has worked with tons of greats. Some of my favorites from Clinch are the September feature with Ryan Adams, the Pleasure and Pain documentary with Ben Harper, and the recent Broken Radio video with Jesse Malin & Springsteen. You can also explore Clinch’s very cool Three on the Tree Productions site to learn more about the rad work he does. I want his job.

Clinch says, “Picture in a Frame is a film I’ve really wanted to make. The band invited me to Italy and gave me the access I needed to show a side seldom seen by their fans. It has become a collaboration as well. The band even offered me some music that has never been heard and Mike went into the studio to create some more music for the soundscapes. This is a look at Pearl Jam that no one has seen yet. A trip through northern Italy with the band, through the document and through abstraction.”

Here is the first glance at the trailer. I’m dying . . .

Hearing Eddie speak in Italian makes me so happy, you seriously have no idea. He doesn’t do too badly, either.

The last three seconds of this trailer are priceless (“Jam? Like [spreading motion] jam?”)

Pearl Jam at Lollapalooza tonight: crazy good

Pearl Jam full set at Lollapalooza (mp3, 2 hours)
Capture of streaming audio from AT&T BlueRoom video feed

SETLIST
Why Go, Corduroy, Save You, Do The Evolution, Elderly Woman Behind The Counter in a Small Town, Severed Hand, Education, Even Flow, Given To Fly, World Wide Suicide, improv: Don’t Go BP/Amoco, Lukin, Not For You, Daughter/Another Brick In The Wall, State of Love and Trust (!!), Wasted Reprise, Alive.
ENCORE 1: Betterman/Save It For Later (!!), Crazy Mary, Life Wasted, Rearviewmirror (!!)
ENCORE 2: (new song) No More w/ Ben Harper, Rockin In The Free World w/ Ben Harper and “a bunch of people on stage”
[thx and thx]

Holy leaked Pearl Jam demos, Batman!

Recently a cool little Pearl Jam promotional CD which circulated during the production of Lost Dogs made its way to my ears, and I am beyond excited. It’s a loose assemblage of demo versions and rough mixes of Pearl Jam songs from over the years, with the occasional live cut tossed in. A couple of these songs have never been heard before by John & Susie Q. Superfan (including me), while others were tunes that I have on various cassette tapes (like this KISW performance of Bee Girl, the alternate version of Alone, or Just A Girl) but haven’t dug out or heard in years.

When something is a great find, my innards shake a little while I am downloading them. This was an innard-shaker.

Anything In Between (unreleased, Binaural outtake, 1999)
In The Moonlight (rough mix, Binaural outtake, 1999)
Fatal (rough mix, Binaural outtake, 1999)
Sad (a.k.a. Letter to the Dead, rough mix, Binaural outtake, 2000)
Wishing Well (live) (written by The Free, Mookie Blaylock, 1990)
Hitchhikers (rough mix, Binaural outtake, 1999)
Puzzle And Game (unreleased, vastly different demo of “Light Years”, Binaural outtake, 2000)
Education (rough mix, Binaural outtake, 1999)
Sweet Lew (rough mix, Yield outtake, 1997)
Sunburn (unreleased, w/ Stone on vocals, No Code outtake, 1995)
Hold On (rough mix, Ten outtake, 1991)
(Just A) Girl (rough mix, Ten outtake, 1990)
Alone (rough mix, lyrics differ from Lost Dogs version, Ten outtake, 1991)
Brother (rough mix w/ different vocals, Ten outtake, 1990)
Don’t Gimme No Lip (rough mix, No Code outtake, 1996)
Bee Girl (on Rockline, KISW FM, Seattle, 10/18/1993)
Against The ’70s (From Mike Watt album ‘Ball-Hog or Tugboat?’, 1995)
“New” Jeremy (live version from Red Rocks, CO, 06/20/1995)

ZIP UP THE PEARL JAM DELICIOUSNESS

Also, for those baseball fans out there (I can’t talk about the Giants this year, it’s too painful) Ed’s gonna be singing at the Cubbies game this Friday. Now that’s my kind of seventh inning stretch.