PJ's instrument playing improvemen over the past 20 years...

MAS

My personal take on it is that Ed's guitar playing over the years has gotten ALOT better....
McCready's solo's have def been more impressive as the years went on....
I can't really tell if Stone's or Jeff's playing has gotten better over the years or not...
and ill just leave the drummers out of this for now...


anybody have any opinions on this???

2-feign-reluctance

Agreed on all of this. EV's songwriting abilities are drastically improved (*see Into The Wild). What do you mean about drummers? Matt's signature tempos are not easy to digest if you are all about straight ahead 4/4 rock. I happen to think every drummer they've ever had are awesome in their own right. They've helped keep this band alive for 20 years.

lowbudgetlush

I do believe their playing has improved over the years. However Stone & mikes guitar tones have gotten worse in my opinion.

Satan's Bed is the best example I can come up with. Satan's Bed tone in '94-'95 was awesome. Satans Bed tone 2006 - is terrible.

TunnelThroughDenial

I've thought about this for a while. Ed really has a dedication to his craft. Yes there is a difference between art and craft. Ed in particular has really never stopped improving in all areas. Although he can't scream quite as well as the early days, he can actually sing way better now. His guitar work is dramatically better and he has mastered the uke and mandolin. The whole band is better over time because they didnt get lazy with their success..

Adam Hewett

this is a great thread!

stone has been the most interesting member to watch over the years to me.

i think when vedder started to have a heavy guitar presence stone's playing and guitar work just slowly started getting more and more boring.

even if you're a fan or not, listen to his guitar work with mother love bone, his talent with riff's shined and he even had some sick solo's apart from bruce. in pj20 he said after mlb ended he still wanted to just play his guitar all the time. what happened? vedder happened.

the fella, to me, has been absent in guitar work since "yield".

i love the comment above about mike and his guitar tones, it's so dead. i miss those damn plexi marshalls!

now, someone will say, "well, vedder is so strong in presence and it's his band.", and all that crap. it's still lame if you're a guitarist wanting your favorite player to put in more effort than doubling up with eddie on lame punk songs.

watch "just breathe" on snl. what the hell is stone doing? plucking one harmonic note? the entire song? is it even audible? more importantly, significant?

that song is so open to stones true talents, not that crap.

am i alone in the feeling?

MAS

Its weird, although I think Stone's guitar playing is very technically sound, I dont think he has the platform to showcase those talents Bc of Mike and Ed....
now Jeff is obviously a very capable musician, however,it is hard to definitively say whether he has noticeably improved since the MLB days... thoughts???

bootlegger10

Adam Hewett wrote:

this is a great thread!

stone has been the most interesting member to watch over the years to me.

i think when vedder started to have a heavy guitar presence stone's playing and guitar work just slowly started getting more and more boring.

even if you're a fan or not, listen to his guitar work with mother love bone, his talent with riff's shined and he even had some sick solo's apart from bruce. in pj20 he said after mlb ended he still wanted to just play his guitar all the time. what happened? vedder happened.

the fella, to me, has been absent in guitar work since "yield".

i love the comment above about mike and his guitar tones, it's so dead. i miss those damn plexi marshalls!

now, someone will say, "well, vedder is so strong in presence and it's his band.", and all that crap. it's still lame if you're a guitarist wanting your favorite player to put in more effort than doubling up with eddie on lame punk songs.

watch "just breathe" on snl. what the hell is stone doing? plucking one harmonic note? the entire song? is it even audible? more importantly, significant?

that song is so open to stones true talents, not that crap.

am i alone in the feeling?

I don't think you are alone. I think the overall mix and sound of the band live is kinda muddy. It doesn't bother me that much though.

I miss Stone's amazing riffs, but the other band members have come up with great stuff to offset it.

jordan k

bootlegger10 wrote:

Adam Hewett wrote:

this is a great thread!

stone has been the most interesting member to watch over the years to me.

i think when vedder started to have a heavy guitar presence stone's playing and guitar work just slowly started getting more and more boring.

even if you're a fan or not, listen to his guitar work with mother love bone, his talent with riff's shined and he even had some sick solo's apart from bruce. in pj20 he said after mlb ended he still wanted to just play his guitar all the time. what happened? vedder happened.

the fella, to me, has been absent in guitar work since "yield".

i love the comment above about mike and his guitar tones, it's so dead. i miss those damn plexi marshalls!

now, someone will say, "well, vedder is so strong in presence and it's his band.", and all that crap. it's still lame if you're a guitarist wanting your favorite player to put in more effort than doubling up with eddie on lame punk songs.

watch "just breathe" on snl. what the hell is stone doing? plucking one harmonic note? the entire song? is it even audible? more importantly, significant?

that song is so open to stones true talents, not that crap.

am i alone in the feeling?

I don't think you are alone. I think the overall mix and sound of the band live is kinda muddy. It doesn't bother me that much though.

I miss Stone's amazing riffs, but the other band members have come up with great stuff to offset it.

Funny this should be mentioned, as my lady and I were talking about this recently. I was commenting to her that I had never seen Stone perform like he did during the Canadian shows that I saw. He was amazing, granted I havent seen hundreds of shows or anything, but I d never seen him that noticibly into it. Truly great.

Adam Hewett

yeah. i said it more out of frustration than anger. it's hard not to miss those riff's!

anybody heard that early version of "even flow" on that demo tape? it was named something else, but wow!

you know stone is capable of some amazing stuff, i hope for an album where he is heavy again on that great riff work!

crazygeo

My personal take on it is that Ed's guitar playing over the years has gotten ALOT better....
McCready's solo's have def been more impressive as the years went on....
I can't really tell if Stone's or Jeff's playing has gotten better over the years or not...
and ill just leave the drummers out of this for now...


anybody have any opinions on this???


Ed touring solo is something you are going to see more of in the future. It is only a matter of time that the band plays less shows together and tour in different forms like Tres Mountains.....

AzWicker

Eds fingerpicking on the acoustic may have gotten better, but his guitar playing has always been underrated. Go see Rearview Mirror and betterman is easy to play on guitar, kinda hard to sing and play on guitar. I think Mikes guitar playing plateaued a long time ago, but he hit his peak early and stayed there in pentatonic heaven. Stone is Stone.

bootlegger10

crazygeo wrote:

My personal take on it is that Ed's guitar playing over the years has gotten ALOT better....
McCready's solo's have def been more impressive as the years went on....
I can't really tell if Stone's or Jeff's playing has gotten better over the years or not...
and ill just leave the drummers out of this for now...


anybody have any opinions on this???


Ed touring solo is something you are going to see more of in the future. It is only a matter of time that the band plays less shows together and tour in different forms like Tres Mountains.....

Yep. That is good thing too. It is awesome that PJ is together after 20 years, but we don't want them to turn into the Who or Rolling Stones where they become stagnant and just tour. We want them to be like Bruce Springsteen and release new albums and tick people off because they play new stuff at shows. The stuff outside of PJ helps them stay creative and come back to the band with new ideas.

mookeywrench

I'd say Eddie Vedder's lyrics have gotten less interesting over the years.

He used to write songs outside of his personal experiences more often. He used to create characters, there were great stories in his songs, there were concepts and ideas that were told in original ways. Now it seems the majority of his work is about his personal relationships, politics, or cover songs.

There's a world out there and Eddie Vedder is a great story teller, it's too bad he's limiting his scope as of recently.

UpSideDown

Ed has gotten much more versatile, but I can't really say that the rest of the band plays better now.