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Joined: Sat January 05, 2013 1:57 pm Posts: 32609 Location: Where everybody knows your name
epilogue wrote:
wease wrote:
epilogue wrote:
wease wrote:
epilogue wrote:
The short version ---
Didn't love PJ after their first three single (Alive, Even Flow, Jeremy). Best friend insisted I would like them if I gave them a chance. Gave me Ten on tape. Liked it but worried they'd be a one album band like so many others I knew back then. A different friend bought VS on CD. Let me borrow it. I saw they weren't a "one hit wonder" and fell in love. Bought Vitalogy late (not when it dropped). Bad experience (not the album or band's fault). Didn't listen to it again in full for a long, long time.
No Code was the first PJ album I bought the day it dropped but I'd considered myself a die-hard fan since 93 when Vs dropped.
So how did you feel in regards to the differences between what they released on No Code and Vs (and Vitalogy to a lesser extent, I guess, since you ignored it)?
I'm not sure I understand what you're asking... sorry...
Maybe this isn't what you mean but I would say that Vs is much more immediate and visceral and No Code is much more cerebral. I loved both at the times that I heard each. I think for a long time I though of Vs as the better album but No Code has probably climbed above it in my rankings, though they are close. The themes on Vs don't hit me quite as hard as they used to -- excepting of course the quieter numbers (Daughter, Small Town, Indifference). However, I'd also say that the lyrics on No Code don't move me as much as they did when I was younger, in general -- excepting of course In My Tree and Off He Goes which I think are Ed's best lyrics in the 90s.
Well, it’s a pretty drastic change to go from Vs to No Code. Especially if you don’t factor in Vitalogy and Mirrorball/Merkinball. I had friends that practically stopped being Pearl Jam fans when No Code was released and I was wondering how it hit you since Vs was your last real touchstone for them up to that point.
Gotcha. Yeah.
My best friend who gave me Ten on cassette did not like No Code. I bought it the day it dropped and he came over to my house and listened to it with me. After the first listen, I was overjoyed and thought it was so awesome and weird and fun and I hit play again immediately. He didn't want to listen again and went home.
Most of the people in my life were that way. They'd felt like Ten was a 10/10, Vs was a 9/10, Vitalogy was an 8/10, and so on... My friend Winston was the only other pal I had then that really dug No Code the way that I did. He bought a second copy of the CD just to unfold and hang on his wall. But most everyone kinda bailed.
I've never been one to desire or expect that a band I like repeats themselves. So, I was just along for the ride.
Kinda what I was talking about with differing psychologies, I'm much more a lean in and defend and support something I already like kinda guy. Once I like it, I fucking LIKE it and I'm loyal to it. If that makes sense. It's hard to get me off a train I'm already on.
Makes total sense. I think I’m like that for the most part but I have to admit to fatigue being a factor. The interesting thing for me is what fatigue seems to affect from album to album. Like why has it affected No Code for me more than Vs or Vitalogy? Both of those are older and I’m sure have been listened to by me way more than No Code. So why am I tired of listening to No Code moreso than either of the other two?
_________________ Let me tell you, Homer Simpson is cock of nothing! - C. Montgomery Burns
Makes total sense. I think I’m like that for the most part but I have to admit to fatigue being a factor. The interesting thing for me is what fatigue seems to affect from album to album. Like why has it affected No Code for me more than Vs or Vitalogy? Both of those are older and I’m sure have been listened to by me way more than No Code. So why am I tired of listening to No Code moreso than either of the other two?
Great question. I'm sure there are a ton of factors. Maybe one is the sort of style on Vs/Vitalogy as opposed to the style on No Code.
I don't know that there's right or good answer to any of this. It's all so subjective and circumstantial. But that's what I find so fascinating.
Trag says he used to feel the same way I still feel about IMT. Surely, we've both experienced and discovered new and different things in the time between. But the stuff I've discovered as only cemented my adoration and feeling for the song, whereas it's hurt trag's relationship with it.
Why?
It has to be a difference in the way he and I consume music or the way we relate to music. There has to be some kind of psychological component. Our tastes, sure, but also our personalities, our tendencies (which probably cross many facets of life and not just art/music), who we are plays a factor. It must.
And that's fucking awesome and really interesting to me.
Really enjoying your posts here and on your blog, Joe.
No Code was probably the first album I really had a journey with, you know -- an experience that involved defied expectations, and a compulsion to listen through things that confused and challenged me, in a way that I'd never really felt at age 13. A lot of that still really sticks with me.
It's funny how what are now my favorite Pearl Jam albums were albums I went into wishing they were going to be something way different, way easier, than what they ended up being. For most of my teens -- so 1996-2002 -- I think I approached new PJ albums similar to how the rest of the world did, i.e. just wishing for something that rocked indiscriminately again, not realizing that in my quest to make sense of what I was getting instead, I was inadvertently discovering all these quirky things I never knew I wanted from music.
A lot of that is, I'm sure, why I feel so strongly about these albums. Weirdly, once I internalized those things, and accepted that the script had been rewritten in terms of what I craved from the band, that's when the "return to form" campaign began in earnest. Go figure.
I love this "psychology of taste" type stuff and wish we could have more conversations that tap into it, without the burdens of the better than/worse than value judgments that so much dialogue seems to constantly hinge upon (though I get that in MM, that's kind of the whole point). All of which is to say, I agree it's fascinating and really enjoyable to read about. Thanks for sharing
This is a really interesting discussion, and liebzz is right, it'll be locked soon, so I wonder if maybe it can be split off into its own thread. I'd love to see, and perhaps participate in, more discussions like this. I know there's a lot of intelligent, articulate music-lovers on this board. Joe, I'm gonna go read your blog. I meant to a while back, but forgot about it for some reason.
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