I mentioned this in the random thoughts thread, and decided it was compelling enough to give it a go. I won't actually do my LAL until tomorrow, but I wanted to start things off with this introduction.

For me, Lost Dogs came out at the peak of my Pearl Jam fandom. I had been obsessively obtaining and devouring their albums, though I can't recall with certainty if I had heard all of Yield and No Code by that point. I actually don't think that I had, but even so, they were, without doubt, my favorite band.

Lost Dogs revealed another side of the band. In addition to the emotive and powerful music that I knew, there was also a Pearl Jam that was irreverent, occasionally amusing, and sometimes shrouded in mystery (though that last point was amply displayed on their proper albums, as well). I was only vaguely familiar with the concept of b-sides and castoffs at that point, but I was about to find out that sometimes what's left behind can be just as interesting as that which made the cut.

So, as the title suggests, "Let's actually listen..."

It was the early part of 2006 when I purchased Lost Dogs. I had been a fan since 1999 but I didn't like Riot Act much and the release of Lost Dogs just passed me by. I was listening to clips of Gremmie Outta Control and really wanted to hear the whole thing(I didn't do much downloading due to being scared of The Man). I decided I would buy it at Best Buy one day after work.

I gave a female co-worker a ride home. She was kind of hot, a lesbian from what I had been told, and all around nice person. I dropped her off and headed to Best Buy. They had some in stock(the America of 2006 was a crazy time of plentiful CD's to be had and people still wearing loose clothing). I headed home and listened to Leaving Here(I had never heard the studio version) and Gremmie Outta Control right away. Both were very, very good. About three years later I threw away or traded in all of my CD's.

Disc 2 is great, though the inclusion of Dirty Frank sucks. Disc 1 is a mess as a single listening experience, but some of those songs are their best ever.

Lost Dogs is one of the first Pearl Jam albums I got, it still holds a special place in my heart.
Disc 1 may be a mess, but I love listening to it.

I've never considered Lost Dogs an "album" and I very rarely listen to it, but fuck if there aren't some great songs mixed in there (with a whole bunch of other stuff I don't care about). The Binaural b-sides are awesome. Those was the real gems of the collection, and the main reason I ever even think about LD. Almost everything else I already had from some other release anyway.

One other thing before hitting play: I had no idea many of the songs on here existed before I listened for the first time. Some I had heard of around the internet, but I was only familiar with a handful. That also means that all the 'fixing' that went on to attempt to make this into a coherent experience was unknown to me at the time. I've since sought out other versions of many of the tracks, and it's true that most would have been better served without the updating, but this is what we got.

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Opening with "All Night" was a great move by the band. All these years later, and it remains one of my favorite b-sides. The layered vocal harmonies gave it a 'fresh' feeling on first listen, and even now, there's a satisfying density to them. The riff is energetic, and propulsive, though not particularly compelling. Instead, it's the structure of the song that makes it; it feels like it's building ever upwards until it's collapse, including the neat little false ending.

I had heard of "Sad" under its original title of "Letter to the Dead," which I think I prefer, and due to its legend on the web as being the best song from the Binaural sessions, a mistake to be cut. I don't quite agree with that notion, and I've gone back and forth on how good I really think it is. At this listening, I'm liking it quite a bit. The spindly guitar figure that opens the riff, Mike's spacey tone that like much of Binaural evokes some '50s and '60s rock, Ed's delivery; even the weird little ditty that ends the tune.

"Down" is another song that I've never felt quite as strongly about as others. It's okay enough with it's heartland rock style and generally positive and forward-thinking political lyrics, but it's never really connected. I do quite like the last section, after the solo, though.

Someone once pointed out the Sonic Youth-like breakdown in "Hitchhiker" and it made me realize that there's a bit more to the tune than the surface appearance. The main body of the song has a kind of surf rock vibe going on, while Eddie obviously rants about moochers. Then we get to that part where everything turns all trippy: Matt's drums go into "Interstellar Overdrive" mode, the guitar parts stretch out and begin to break up under static interference. It's the best part of the song, I think, and elevates it above pure novelty.

I love this compilation, but a compilation it is -- having been familiar with most of these songs from their original sources, its sense of "jumble" is palpable, especially when you factor in all the re-recorded vocal tracks and superfluous guitar and harmonica overdubs and whatnot, all of which are a blight on their respective tracks. I don't really care for the loud/soft disc separations either, here or on "RVM" -- they have too many tracks that don't fit comfortably into either category for this method of division to work for them.

That said, there are just so many great songs here, and enough of them were "new" at the time of its release for there to have been an element of freshness to it. Warts and all, an essential PJ release. I'll LAL soon.

I like when Stone gets a turn on the mic, though I can't say his songs are all that good, most of the time. I do quite like "Mankind," but it's little brother "Don't Gimme No Lip" is kind of annoying. The bridge is nice, of course, and the verses are better than the repeating chorus, but it's an easy throwaway.

"Alone" is perhaps the biggest offender of the Lost Dogs version being a poor substitute for the original b-side. As it is, the song's not bad, a fairly typical early PJ blues rock style, but the re-recorded vocals do it no favors, coming off as strained an frazzled even before we got to that era of Ed's vocals on the regular.

Another early favorite was "In the Moonlight." I love the chunky, stuttering verses and Eddie's radio-distorted vocals, while the dreamy choruses elevates another step. Matt writes some awesome songs when he indulges his and mysterious side, and this is one of them.

"Education" has a weird shuffling beat, with little bits of desert twang to it. It manages to sound mildly exotic without shifting far from Pearl Jam's standard instrumental setup. It's a bit slight feeling, in all, and though it does share some common ground with other Binaural-era tracks, it kind of feels like it could have existed with No Code as well.

KD gets it.

Oh yeah, I forgot about the re-recorded efforts. Not a fan of those. Had they been alternate takes from the period the songs were written, that's cool. But new vocals years later?.... ehhhhhh.

I absolutely adore All Night and Sad (especially the layered vocals on both). Along with Down this is one hell of a strong beginning to a serving of leftovers.

I love the little 'ditty' as Brett called it at the end of Sad and the way it evokes the sound of someone balling their eyes out.

I think the sequencing is actually not bad until you get to Leaving Here, but a lot of the tracks after that were never going to work well in an album format.

I really love this compilation. Yeah, it flows really weird. But somehow thats one of the things I like about it now.
So many essential tracks here. I've always really loved 'otherside'.

But they left of: Long Road, Sonic Reducer, Angel, Leatherman, Just a Girl, just to name a few.

It's really time for part II now....

I adore lost dogs...It was a really cool item when it came out, and its still a pretty good album to listen to...There are a lot of great songs and those outtakes are gold...All Night,Sad, Sweet Lew and In the Moonlight are my favorites.

About the re recorded stuff...i like them...We have the other versions so its fine if they werent ok with stuff and changed it..you can choose from whatever version you like more.

A lot of the songs that I'd discovered in my youth are damaged by reworks, moments I'd fantasizes about (a full piano-inclusive Footsteps) failed to appear, and the Binaural cuts proved my impression of that album as a half-attempted redimagining that was cut short by cowardice.

But Lost Dogs would probably be the last purchase, chronologically, that I would recommend to someone today...the first being Vs.

Even when the originals are superior (as they almost are) the differences in the new versions work like fun little easter eggs or give you a comparison point that encourages you to revisit and reconsider the original.

If we like having hundreds of live versions of songs surely we can suffer through some studio edits.

Ugh, I completely disagree. It's very similar to George Lucas's revisionist approach to the OT. The mass-marketed media should be canon. Imagine if we had ten different versions of the Mona Lisa? Variations in live versions, or even the release of demos or re-mixes is fine, as long as they are labeled as such. But seeing Who You Are re-released with a new lyric, without any change to the title of the song? That is artistic blasphemy.

Yes, as I said when this topic has arisen in the past:

Team Spenno it is then.

I think that replacement has already happened too - I don't think there's any legitimate way of finding the original versions of Footsteps, BRY, Alone, Undone (etc) without tracking down second-hand copies of those CD singles.

How would somebody, coming to Pearl Jam's catalogue for the first time, appreciate that the versions on Lost Dogs aren't the original versions and make attempts to track down the originals?

Same with the alternate version of Who You Are from RVM, which is now the standard commercially-available version (it's on the reissued vinyl as well as any new digital copies from iTunes, etc.) Who will remember twenty or thirty years hence that it's actually not the originally released version?

While i agree with everything you guys said, it doesnt bother me at all with LD, i consider them almost as another takes from the same sessions.
How to get those versions? They are on spotify, you can download torrents with them, you can get them as second hand cds like you said, etc..