Speaking as a child of the 90's.....

kramer73

I was in college from 1991-95, the best time to hear new music. Saw the videos on MTV, went to the record shop in the fall of 93 with a friend and bought Vs. on tape, since I didn't have a cd player.

As with everyone else, the rest is history...although I didn't see them live until October of 2000.

lawguy

I was born in 1980, so about 11 or 12 when Ten came out....and I totally ignored it. I just did not care about music at that time in my life. I remember one of my sisters thinking Eddie was hot so I clearly remember watching the Jeremy video multiple times.

Fast forward a couple years, I still am not that into music. Much preferred sports, movies, other pop culture, etc. But my sister has Vitology and plays it a lot when it came out. My room was right next to hers and I remember hearing Better Man and hoping she would play that song again. I stole a mix tape of hers (yes, this was at the tail end of mix tapes, just before the recordable CD's made their mark) that had Daughter on it and I loved that too. Despite liking 2 of their bigger, radio-friendly hits, I still didn't think much about it.

Then comes my freshman year of college in 1998. I bought my first CD player for my dorm room and I think I bought a DMB and U2 cd just to have some kind of entertainment (and I figured girls would like it if I found myself entertaining some in my room. Sadly, I pretty much did not). A guy moved in to the room next door to me and he had a pretty big CD collection and let me borrow some from time to time. I remember listening to the first Creed album at the time and thinking it had a couple of good songs....uggghhh. Soon after, I borrowed Ten. To this day, I have yet to return the CD back to my buddy. Later that year I bought Yield, my first official PJ album that I owned, and loved that too. Then I went and grabbed Vs, Vitology and No Code from my sister because she did not really listen to them any more...her loss.

That summer of 1999 (I think it was), I go see my first show at Alpine Valley. I remember being surprised they didnt close with, or even play, Jeremy because I thought that was their biggest hit and all bands play their biggest hit in concert. I think it my 20 or so shows, I have heard Jeremy played all of one time.

12 years later I get to see them at PJ20 in the place where I first saw them live. Lots of fun.

Its funny, I am still not a music lover. Pretty much the only music I buy is PJ. But for whatever reason, I love it.

mfc2006

my oldest sister was in art school in Kansas City, while I was in jr. high in Houston. she knew that i liked Soundgarden & knew they were from Seattle. she heard PJ's Ten cassette at a party & immediately thought of me. she asked the host to make her a copy & they did. 3 days later, my mind was blown. i still have that tape.

Mamasan23

I was into much heavier music like Pantera and COC when PJ came out and pretty much shunned the entire 'alternative' movement that was going on. Thought it was pansy crap and I despised PJ just on sole principle...even though I never gave them a good listen :oops:

My sister was totally into them and forced me to watch their performance on the Mtv music awards ('92 maybe) when they played Jeremy. Their performance honestly blew me away and I've been obsessed ever since!

78FLH

dmpoints wrote:

I moved to Seattle from Oreagon in 1989. Was really into music. Was out alot, going to see shows by the posies, hammerbox, inflatable soule, alice n chains, etc. However, my favorite music was that of Pearl Jam. I liked Ten, but I loved Vs. I have been a devoted fan ever since. Sadly, I have never had the opportunity to see Pearl Jam live. I buy alot of bootlegs and live performance dvd's, but it just can't be the same. Someday, the planets will alighn and God will part the crowds and I will be waiting with a ticket in hand to see my favorite band live. Pray for me all you lucky fans who have been fortunate enough to see them live. Someday my friends, someday.

Just hang in there and it will happen.

iammine16

Watching them perform "Alive" and "Porch" on SNL in 1992 did it for me. I was 11 at the time, and when I saw that I was instantly obsessed! After that I never missed buying an album on the day it was released!

aennil

It is very interesting to read all of your different first-time-PJ-experiences

I'm one of the new kids around here - and yes, it is mindblowing to hear a Pearl Jam-album for the first time!

Nearly a year ago, I was working late at my school, listening to the Into the Wild soundtrack, loving it and really loving the voice of the singer... Made me wonder who he was. So I searched on Wikipedia, and what do you know: this Eddie Vedder-fellow is the singer of the American rock band called Pearl Jam. I knew the band by name, but I did not know that when Eddies voice is combined with the music of Jeff, Stone, Mike and Matt, magic appears!
...I must admit I probably wasn't very efficient on that particular schoolday...But instead I have been given a musical rollercoasterride I wouldn't trade for anything in the world

The first album I listened to was Ten, and I couldn't explain why, but beside from being fantastic and quickly put on repeat, it also seemed oddly familiar...I have two older brothers, who were in their teens/late teens in the beginning of the 90's. I was only a little girl at the time, not caring much about music. But I have later found out that they both had a Ten-cd, and were playing it non-stop in my childhood-home - which is probably why Ten seemed so familiar to me

capthowdy1027

I was hooked from the time they started playing Alive on MTV and the radio. I was about 10 years old at the time :shock:

I bought Ten right away and I've bought every album on the day of release since then. I still have my Ten and Five Against One cassettes somewhere in a box in the basement and Vitalogy was the first one that I bought on CD.

Other than my mom and a couple of friends, nothing has been apart of my life as long as Pearl Jam has. 2/3 of my life I've been listening to this band.

pj0705

Ironically i was 10 wen Ten came out. I was an MTV junkie already and the Alive/Evenflow videos got me. I remember going to summer camp and only listening to my Ten and Nevermind tapes exclusively. I still have both tapes! Fortunately for me neither tape had a parental advisory sticker otherwise I wouldnt have been able to get them haha

RiotZact

Long but great story, I was born in 1992 and my parents were only 18 at the time so my dad and uncle were big fans and played it all the time, they both still lived with my grandma and slept in the same room where my crib was, if I would wake up before them in the morning I would smack my crib off of the wall over and over screaming "Po Jam Po Jam" and I wouldn't shut up until they either woke up for the day or turned on the stereo My uncle also has a video of me still in diapers in the front seat of his car holding on the steering wheel jumping up and down to Why Go..........

Then I quit liking them, actually I can't recollect liking them until 2009 when I bought rock band 2 and within a few days Alive was one of my favorite songs to play, my stepdad noticed (he used to be a fan) so he started showing me youtube clips and such and I liked it, so I bought the greatest hits album and within the month I had all the albums ordered from eBay, since then me and my uncle have went and saw PJ twice and EV twice and I can't wait for more! Out of my dad, uncle, and stepdad my uncle is the only one that really stayed a hardcore fan, he's now seen them 6 times plus the 2 EV solo

vant0037

I was 8 or 9 when Ten came out and I always thought my older brother was very cool because he had a 5-disc CD changer in his room and a ton of CDs. He had all the great alternative stuff: Everclear, the Toadies, Nirvana, the Foo Fighters (later on), Seven Mary Three, Collective Soul, Soundgarden, Soul Asylum, and of course Pearl Jam. While some of those bands are clearly long gone now (name another song besides "Cumbersome" from Seven Mary Three...I dare you), PJ really connected with me then. I remember he had Ten when it came out and I remember sneaking into his room when he was at work (he hated that I was in there all the time) and blasting the album, especially "Jeremy" over and over again. I also remember when the video for that song was on MTV...a lot. I guess I don't really have an "it" moment when I got hooked on PJ, because that's more of less of what I remember about getting into them, a hazy dream in an in an 9-year-old's head that still exists 19 years later.

vant0037

Mikee J wrote:

Just imagine you heard PJ for the first time last week! ALL THAT AMAZING MUSIC.

I am going through this with Neil Young right now. I always thought he was alright, but never really got into him until the last few years. DOZENS of albums to learn...dozens. Over 40 years of music to catch up on. Its freaking great.

merkinball

Had Ten when it first came out, but it really kicked into high gear w/ the '93 MTV awards show when they brought Neil Young out. Animal into RITFW with Neil? Such a great performance. That hooked it for me.

BrainOfMA

I was in 5th grade when i picked up my Mom's copy of Ten and listened to it. It was mindblowing to me. Then i listened to later albums like Vs, Vitalogy, No Code, and all the others. I was addicted. I'm 13 now in 8th grade and still LOVE PJ. I listen to PJ everyday on the bus. I have tons of bootlegs and all the albums. I hate when i get that look from people when i wear a PJ shirt to school. I guess other people my age can't appreciate good music when they see it. Pearl Jam changed my life for the better. Thanks for all the amazing music Ed, Stone, Jeff,Mike, and Matt. My life will never be the same.

kb272930

1992 cutting high school driving in my friends car . He puts in a copy of ten in the cassette deck and that was it . Kind of lost them for a little through the club and techno days then re-found them in 2000 when i saw them for the first 2-times at Jones beach . Since then have seen them 25 or so times !!!

lcusick

I bought the cassette tape of Ten, played the hell out of it. But being a mother of 3 young kids at the time, I never followed the band beyond Ten. Then my boys played Pearl Jam all the time when they were in Middle School and High School. I started loving them again (2000). Then I bought all there CD's, saw them in concert and the rest is history. The best Mother's Day Present was when PJ came to Cleveland on Mother's Day (2010) and we all went to the concert together as a family!

frazba

I was 22 (hey kids :wave: ) when Ten came out. I was at my girlfriends house when her step sister came in and put it on, this would have been very close to release day. I'd been a music obsessive since I was 11 (still am) and I'd read about this new Seattle band ( I was a big Nirvana/Mudhoney fan) but this was the first time I'd heard PJ, I was blown away, it was love at first listen, I've never looked back.

And may I just say, Thank You Linda, wherever you may be, you changed my life that day

AgRyan04

Born-again 10-Clubber....

My first introduction to Pearl Jam was way back in elementary school when I had just joined Boy Scouts ('91/'92). There were a bunch of us crammed into someone's conversion van on our way to some sort of camp out/jamboree and I was sitting near a kid who was in high school. For whatever reason he and some of the other older kids were singing, "Sheets of empty canvas....bashdabeeny bannee."

Soon after that my mom took me to Sound Waves by our local Gerland's grocery store and I picked up Ten, on tape. I also got Megadeth - Count Down to Extinction. No clue where Megadeath came into the picture. Those were the first real music albums that I bought (I'm talking beyond Vanilla Ice/MC Hammer/Cocktail Soundtrack).

It was at that point that I discovered that the words "bashdabeeny bannee" are no where to be found in any Pearl Jam song, let alone the song Black.

Shortly after I made my big purchase my mom confiscated both of the tapes after a local boy killed his mother claiming that he received a message from the devil in the form of a Megadeth song. I can't really blame her for that, can I? We all know that Megadeth and PJ are really far apart musically but at the time I'm sure my mom lumped it all together.

After enough of me begging for my Ten tape back my mom and I sat on the end of my bed and tried to read through the lyric sheet - of course it's in Ed's handwriting and she couldn't read it....but we didn't see any words that looked like "Kill" or "Mother" so I got it back. I'm not sure whatever happened to my Megadeth tape.

It was around this time that I also bought my first band poster at a school book-fair. It was the classic Stickman with a bunch of their '93 European tour stops listed at the bottom. I really wish I still had that.

I read somewhere that your favorite music all dates back to the ages of 13-18 and that is right on the money for me. I was pretty saturated with Pearl Jam when I was 13 which coincided with my awkward, goofy, peach fuzz mustache teenage years.

I picked up Vs. and Vitalogy the day they came out....I joined 10 Club for a couple of years (I know I got the Angel X-Mas single). I listened to Vs. more than any other CD I ever owned. I would put Daughter on repeat for HOURS as I sat in my room and read all my baseball cards. I'm pretty sure my mother hated that song.

There was also a concert that was broadcast across the radio which at the time was a really big deal and 104.1 KRBE broadcast it in Houston. I spent the night at a friends house and we recorded it onto tape. I've torn through all my old stuff looking for that tape but I can't find it. (can anyone tell me what show that might have been?)

After Vitalogy, I drifted away - this was as I was entering high school. My music tastes changed and when No Code came out I was into something else. During college my brother bought me Riot Act. It was quite a bit different from the Pearl Jam of my youth but it got me back in the groove again and I started to download a bunch of the band's bootlegs and acoustic stuff and was really into that for a year or so. Until this stretch, the only version of Yellow Ledbetter I owned was from that radio bootleg concert that we dubbed.

Then in 2010 I just so happened to catch a few minutes of Saturday Night Live, which I don't really ever watch anymore, and the musical guest was on. It took me a few seconds but I said, "Hey, that's Eddie Vedder. Does Pearl Jam have a new album?" I was sooooooo far out of the loop.

Right around that time my brother and I were planning a trip to Boston & New York to go to a game at Fenway and see NYC. I was poking around on the internet trying to figure out if they gave tours of Boston Garden when I saw that Pearl Jam was playing there a couple days before arrived. I thought, "Man, that sucks it would be awesome to see them play with my brother (he has always been way more into music than I am)." Then it hit me - if they're on tour then they are probably playing somewhere nearby fairly soon after that show. Bingo. Madison Square Garden on Friday May 21st.

The next 2 months consisted of me completely engulfing myself in everything the band put out beyond Vitalogy. It was like I was cramming for an exam. I couldn't get enough. I ended up being more excited about the show than I was about Fenway and everything else we had planned.

Then the night of May 21st changed my life. It was the greatest event I had ever been to.

Since that day I think there might have been three non-PJ albums that have hit my speakers. I think I'm over 1,000 bootlegs now. I'm a tad bit o.c.d.

The music has become a soundtrack to my life - I'll be in a conversation with someone and they'll say something that will remind me of a song lyric and it'll be stuck in my head all day.

My brother and I made the trip up to Alpine Valley for PJ20 and we'll be hitting up both of EV's Houston shows. I can't wait for their new album to come out and for the band to set up another tour!

HAIL! HAIL!

Forrest

I was 20 in 1991 and was completely blown away by Ten. Been attached ever since.

Disco

It was 1991 and grade 9, Nevermind was getting big. I bought it and Metallica's Black album on a school bball trip to the city. They were my 1st albums I bought myself. Xmas 91 and my childhood friend gets 2 copies of Ten, one of them from my folks. I tell them I'll take the extra copy as I'd heard Jeremy playing in the gym during lunch bball pickup games. I didn't get it, but kept MTV on as much as possible to catch a glimpse. Lack of funds and persistence on my part kept me from getting Ten until 1993 after I had stolen my sisters copy of Vs. None of friends were into PJ either so copying/stealing it from them wasn't an option either, but once I had it I wore the liner notes out from pouring over them for hours.

I bought Vitalogy shortly after release on another school trip to the city and remember a few guys from the team asking how it was. Of course I was biased and gave it a glowing review, not that it didn't deserve it. Around that time was the birth of Internet access in our area and this new font of information opened fed my PJ needs. 5Horizons, the old synergy site and all the other early PJ related sites were my only source of info. I had a bunch of Eddie quote wav's that I really wish I still had. I have no idea why I never joined the fan club back then. I knew it existed, but wasn't aware of cool perks at the time.