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Joined: Wed February 06, 2013 2:47 am Posts: 17535 Location: Scooby Doo
I have Alive fatigue. I enjoy it live but I never have the desire to play it or hear it. Both of these are great PJ songs and today if I had to listen to one of them it'd be Release.
Joined: Wed February 06, 2013 2:47 am Posts: 17535 Location: Scooby Doo
LetMeSleep wrote:
I have Alive fatigue. I enjoy it live but I never have the desire to play it or hear it. Both of these are great PJ songs and today if I had to listen to one of them it'd be Release.
So I listened to both of them. Alive soars and is truly magnificent. Release is damn fine too but Alive is the true winner.
Joined: Thu February 02, 2017 10:39 am Posts: 5619 Location: Most likely at the office...
And it's still Release. Just love it.
I'm sitting at home, pretty beer buzzed, this fine Saturday night, and decided it might be fun to enlist the wiffey's help with these choices.
After I explained that it was once again that time of year where me and my "Pearl Jam internet friends" (her words) vote on songs, she (rolled her eyes) and said it should be called March Sadness...(with love though - her words).
Turns out Release is her 2nd fave PJ tune. Who woulda thunk it?
"Alive" is a weird song for me. It was one of the few PJ songs whose "legendary" status was already a sort of received wisdom when I got into the band in 1995, and growing up I think I just kind of accepted its greatness without ever really processing what the song meant to me personally. Years later, after having heard the song about a billion times, in every context imaginable, I'm still not sure I've ever had that moment of individual connection with it -- it has a great riff, a nice groove, it rocks in that undeniable-classic-rock-dinosaur kind of way, yet it's not special to me in any kind of tangible way, and never really has been.
"Release" isn't necessarily a personal favorite either but it's definitely in the upper tier of "Ten" songs for me, and certain live versions still really get under my skin -- the KC '03 version that's been referenced several times in this tournament, for instance. Easy vote for me.
Was driving around yesterday and Alive came on the radio. Normally, I would immediately turn the channel, only b/c I've heard it a billion times by now.
But something in me decided to turn it the fuck up instead. I was struck by how heavy everything sounds, in a good way. One of the tracks on Ten where the production really does it a favor. The guitars sound like they're falling down on you from above.
And that outro - hoo boy. Absolutely what got me hooked on the band in the first place. Krusen is murdering it and McCready's solo is a perfectly sequenced hurricane .
Listening to it with fresh ears made me realize it's a tough song to pin down, genre-wise. It's got a classic rock sound to it, mostly because of the giant riff and soaring chorus. But the energy in the playing makes it sound so vital and current, even 25 years later. I guess the only band I could relate it to would be The Who, but they never really did riff-rock like this.
To this day, it's one of the classics that I don't tire of in concert b/c of that energy. Betterman and Daughter and Even Flow could all be retired, and I'd be fine with that. But Alive is still... alive after all these years. *sad trombone*
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