A Return to Relevance
LoveBoatAdmiral
Posts: 1,191
Anyone else get the feeling that Backspacer's gonna breed a lot more casual fans than the last four or five albums? My buddy, who usually greets me with a ball-busting "Pearl Jam blows", said "I really like that song they keep playing during Monday Night Football, who is that?" (I just laughed, I'll let him figure it out on his own). But my point is, are the days where the common response to Pearl Jam are "you mean those Even Flow guys" and "It's too bad they broke up after Vitalogy" gonna be on hold for a while?
2006- Boston I
2008- Boston I+II
2009- Toronto, Philly III+IV
2010- Bristow, Hartford, Boston, Newark
2008- Boston I+II
2009- Toronto, Philly III+IV
2010- Bristow, Hartford, Boston, Newark
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Thankfully success has nothing to do with being 'relevant', nor does time.
We still have troops dieing everyday and the world is still falling apart, yet Backspacer is a "happy album"....so in the sense of the word...Self titled was more "relevant".
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There are a lot of reasons for this, but the main thing is that the majority of young kids are not interested in 40 year olds playing great music. They are (and will always be) interested in something they can relate to, or something they want to be. The Music Corporation just keep churning out band after band, and song after song that is targeted to these 11-18 year olds......and Pearl Jam doesn't fit in.
no
Pearl Jam bootlegs:
http://wegotshit.blogspot.com
Yes, popularity over relevance. And no, this won't change it. Not only are they too old to appeal to the younger crowd (which comprises the majority of anything considered a new fan base), but the scene has changed since the early '90s. I really think the young crowd then was more open to this sort of music, probably because there was more of it on the mainstream market. I mean you had bands like Alice in Chains, Chili Peppers, Nirvana, etc. getting lots of airplay. True, those were all bands that fit within the demographic of the new young crowd, but I think it helped that there was more of it out there at the time. While Pearl Jam was and remains to be wildly unique and distinctive, they fit within a larger genre and their approach to music was more similar to other groups at the time.
I think the music scene has changed enough now that the standard pop music of the day has moved farther away from Pearl Jam than it may have been back in 1991. That's not to say that the boys were ever pop, but I don't think it was as much of a stretch back then for the younger crowd to migrate over to Pearl Jam or Alice in Chains or the Red Hot Chili Peppers. If Ten were released today, by a Pearl Jam in their mid-20s, I'm just not sure it would be as popular as it was back then. I really do think enough has changed, that enough crap music has infected the youth, that it's harder for a 14 year old today to get into the kind of music that Pearl Jam plays than it might have been in 1993. I don't know, I'm sure this doesn't make a lot of sense to people, but I just think it's a different time.
This is the band of a different generation. It's our band and never will be the band of the young generation of 2010. And that's fine, I think that's what helps us to identify so well with them. So in answer to the OP's question: no, I don't think this will make PJ more relevant or popular. That doesn't mean that it won't be a great album, it just means that it probably won't be appreciated as much by the younger generation today. And that's alright, I'm sure I'll enjoy it, and I will enjoy it more because I've been with the band since the early days and remember what it was like to be part of that generation. I'll remember what it was like to have Pearl Jam be the voice of the generation for me. That's why today's crowd won't latch on to it the way we do.
Enough of my ranting.
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I think it will.
I think a good example of this is KIngs Of Leon.
Look what "Use Somebody/Sex on Fire" Did to their sales and popularity.
I agree with you. The one thing that gives me pause is that Green Day was hardly new when they broke through to the mainstream again with American Idiot. Of course, that might just be a special case.
for the least they could possibly do
I could care less what other people think of PJ. I have been getting made fun of by most of my friends that left the grunge scene back in high school when it was no longer cool, you know, the "stuck in the 90's" comments and all that.
Pearl Jam are as relevant to you as you want them to be.
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That's a good point. I guess relevance to me just means that they live in the public conciousness. Relevance has nothing to do with success or talent. Many great writers were not popular until after their deaths, making them "irrelevant" while they were alive. It's a flawed standard at best, but it's a way to get a sense of a band's ability to draw an audience outside of us nerds.
2008- Boston I+II
2009- Toronto, Philly III+IV
2010- Bristow, Hartford, Boston, Newark
I'm am deleting them from my radio. They are stuck in the 90s anyways.