How About a Pearl Jam Obscure Fact Repository

Blredyellow

Exactly. It's "one more time?" References doing another take of song while recording. PJ would never be that obvious of a pot/drug band, because that would be pretty lame.

primussucks

pleatherman said:

At the PJ20 museum, a lyric sheet entitled "I Won't" was on display with the following note- "a song to be released someday."

I don't remember seeing this. Anybody have a picture of this?

HesCalledDyer

Well, I dunno. At one of the shows I saw in 06 or 08, I don't recall which one at the moment... Ed changed the lyric in Given to Fly to "made it to the ocean, smoked a joint in a tree." And last year in Cincinnati he told a story centered around his joint being bogarted. A lot more obvious than a split second utterance on an album track that can barely be heard.

pleatherman

Thanks for taking the time to go through this unruly thread! I certainly enjoy reading everyone's contributions. There are still mysteries to be solved, like the potential band names Stone trademarked (e.g. Pee Boy, He, and Butterhorn) for everything from sound recordings to stickers
https://trademarks.justia.com/owners/gossard-stone-831436/
Or the video project from 1993 credited to Mark Pellington that took the form of Eddie wandering the streets disguised in a fly mask, as seen in PJ 20.

primussucks said:

pleatherman said:

At the PJ20 museum, a lyric sheet entitled "I Won't" was on display with the following note- "a song to be released someday."

I don't remember seeing this. Anybody have a picture of this?

primussucks

The band had a release date and 10 song track listing set for a new album in November 1995. Saw it in a magazine in august 1995. Songs included "Brain Of JFK" "Tommy Who" "I Got Shit" "Lukin" "All Night". Speculation is that "Tommy Who" is actually either "Who You Are" or "Black Red Yellow". If I remember correctly I believe both "Open Road" and "Long Road" were also on there. Wish I had kept that magazine!!

eeriepadave

Apparently Sweet Lew was written about an awkward meeting with his Rock n' Jock coach Kareem Abdul-Jabbar at the second annual Rock n Jock B-Ball Jam in 1992

pleatherman

"Tame the Beasts"
A spoken word performance by Eddie Vedder. Directed by Mark Pellington

Way back in 1993, during a MTV interview, Eddie alluded to this collaboration with Pellington following their work together on 'Jeremy.' Turns out to be a nice creative outlet for Ed's deranged mask phase.

Paul Devlin, the editor of the project, provides some brief background on the video.
"Director Mark Pellington, walked into my edit suite at Chromavision one day with a bunch of surreal B&W footage, and a wild spoken word piece written and performed by Eddie Vedder of Pearl Jam. The task was to create some interstitial content for the big screen at the Lollapalooza shows. After a few hours of editing improv, this is what we came up with"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NJTgPQhIj5Q&feature=player_detailpage


https://youtube.com/watch?v=NJTgPQhIj5Q

*Also briefly mentioned in your Vs. & Vitalogy Super-Deluxe composition notebook.

MonkeyDan72

Boom uses Hawaiian sea turtle eggs as a curl activator.

rgambs

HesCalledDyer said:

Well, I dunno. At one of the shows I saw in 06 or 08, I don't recall which one at the moment... Ed changed the lyric in Given to Fly to "made it to the ocean, smoked a joint in a tree." And last year in Cincinnati he told a story centered around his joint being bogarted. A lot more obvious than a split second utterance on an album track that can barely be heard.

Columbus 2010
"Made it to Columbus had a joint in a tree"

Cincy '14 Bogart story was just awesome, the Mick Jagger story, and the Stone joke...his humor was right on that night!

Abe Froman

pleatherman said:

"Tame the Beasts"
A spoken word performance by Eddie Vedder. Directed by Mark Pellington

Way back in 1993, during a MTV interview, Eddie alluded to this collaboration with Pellington following their work together on 'Jeremy.' Turns out to be a nice creative outlet for Ed's deranged mask phase.

Paul Devlin, the editor of the project, provides some brief background on the video.
"Director Mark Pellington, walked into my edit suite at Chromavision one day with a bunch of surreal B&W footage, and a wild spoken word piece written and performed by Eddie Vedder of Pearl Jam. The task was to create some interstitial content for the big screen at the Lollapalooza shows. After a few hours of editing improv, this is what we came up with"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NJTgPQhIj5Q&feature=player_detailpage


https://youtube.com/watch?v=NJTgPQhIj5Q

*Also briefly mentioned in your Vs. & Vitalogy Super-Deluxe composition notebook.

This is awesome. I can't believe I've never seen this before!

pleatherman

From 1993
"FATHERFUCKER"
by Eddie Vedder



To me, this almost shares a certain sentiment to some words he wrote twenty years later in "My Father's Son." Similar to the "Momma-Son" trilogy, personal experience spins out into a fiction all its own.

pleatherman

The (other) inspiration for the song 'Angel.'

The well-known and documented lyrical origins for 'Angel' derive from a 19th c. poem by William Watson entitled "Eloping Angels." The most thorough article on the subject can be found here:
twofeetthick.com/2009/12/08/fan-club-single-3-like-an-angel-part-1/

However, the freedom of creative license allows multiple sources to filter into lyrical content.
For example, the second verse of 'Jeremy' is largely based on Eddie's personal experience as described below:

"I actually knew somebody in junior high school, in San Diego, California, that did the same thing, just about, didn't take his life but ended up shooting up an oceanography room. I remember being in the halls and hearing it and I had actually had altercations with this kid in the past. I was kind of a rebellious fifth-grader and I think we got in fights and stuff. So it's a bit about this kid named Jeremy and it's also a bit about a kid named Brian that I knew"

'Angel' is another song supplemented by an actual event in Eddie's life. The following is a newspaper excerpt from 1991.

Vedder's intensity about this life and uncertainty about whether anything follows it comes through as he tells how he came up with the idea for a new song he's working on, about "being an angel and how upsetting it would be."
He said he had seen the post-punk band Fugazi play for a small group of people in the Mojave Desert one night, and afterward he noticed a flashlight beam going up a nearby mountain. He decided to chase it.
"I'm tripping and flying over bushes, but I'm running to catch this beam of light going up. I finally catch up to this stranger one-third of the way up the mountain. We became friends and reveled in the fact that we were up there and how beautiful it was.
"I think he was the one who said it -that he felt like an angel. We were looking down on this, and that lasted for about two minutes, and then I wanted to be back down there."

PJ_Soul

pleatherman said:

"Tame the Beasts"
A spoken word performance by Eddie Vedder. Directed by Mark Pellington

Way back in 1993, during a MTV interview, Eddie alluded to this collaboration with Pellington following their work together on 'Jeremy.' Turns out to be a nice creative outlet for Ed's deranged mask phase.

Paul Devlin, the editor of the project, provides some brief background on the video.
"Director Mark Pellington, walked into my edit suite at Chromavision one day with a bunch of surreal B&W footage, and a wild spoken word piece written and performed by Eddie Vedder of Pearl Jam. The task was to create some interstitial content for the big screen at the Lollapalooza shows. After a few hours of editing improv, this is what we came up with"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NJTgPQhIj5Q&feature=player_detailpage


https://youtube.com/watch?v=NJTgPQhIj5Q

*Also briefly mentioned in your Vs. & Vitalogy Super-Deluxe composition notebook.

Very cool obscurity.

DB15740

Great thread! Thanks for sharing some truly great PJ lore!

Undrakan

Thanks everyone for this thread, amazing! Special thanks to Pleatherman!

BinFrog said:

For those who want to check it out:

http://spinners-web-design.com/PJtunes/Random/Pearl Jam - Porch Acoustic.mp3

Great version. I still want to know who he mentions too!

FoxyRedLa

I'd send you a card if it were a bomb. That is quite the statement.

pleatherman

The first Pearl Jam T-shirt is sooo old....

they had only come up with half the band name at that point.

While Mookie Blaylock continued on tour with Alice in Chains during the early months of 1991, their yet to be recorded debut album was already marked for a summer release. Clearly, the need to dump the temporary moniker of 'Mookie Blaylock' was on the band's mind. During a particular concert on 2/11/91, Eddie comments about the inevitable showdown with Mookie's lawyers. He also shares the news they will be changing their name soon. As he jokingly suggests Nuclear Love Frogs as a replacement, Lo and Behold, in giant letters, Eddie's t-shirt adorns the word 'PEARL'!
Quite possibly, it is a one of a kind shirt made by Jeff. It shares the same letter design as Ament's note found in the Alive promo EP shown below.


The absence of the word "Jam" from the shirt is unsurprising since this occurred almost 2 weeks prior to the legendary Neil Young/ Sonic Youth show when Jeff said he first suggested the latter half of 'Pearl Jam' to his bandmates.
Even as they are still being introduced on stage as Mookie Blaylock, Vedder's shirt indicates that the transition into Pearl Jam is well under way. In the video, there are plenty of blink and you'll miss it moments. I suggest watching a 30 second clip beginning at 9:50. The shirt definitely backs up Jeff's claim in a 2006 interview, while describing the band's name origin, that "everybody loved 'pearl'." Now, the real mystery is the writing below 'Pearl' on the shirt. Partially thanks to a singer that can't stand still, apart from a few letters, it remains indecipherable to me. Unless my eyes are playing tricks on me, I think it almost begins with a "ja" and ends with "nz". Followed by a space and Roman numeral for 1? That's likely wrong, so if anyone can read it, please share.

And while we are on the subject, Krusen performs with Pearl drums.

Update 2/22

pleatherman

Light Years video

Some Pearl Jam videos have never been released, both long form (3/1/03 Yokohama, Japan) and short ('You Are' or the Rocky Schenck directed 'Even Flow'). There are also ones that, for one reason or another, stalled out (Martin Scorsese was contacted to work with the band in '93).

Fitting neither of those categories, the video for 'Light Years' remains a true anomaly. The promotional clip was actually released, yet somehow fell thru the cracks. Although it predates the release of TB2000, it was produced, presumably, using the same methods, shot live in Greensboro N.C. on 08/06/00.

Spiritual_Chaos

PJ_Soul said:

majleap3 said:

MIke didn't enjoy Corduroy in 2001

DA: Here's a question. What's the worst Pearl Jam song?

MM: Oh, wow. What do I not like of ours that we play? Maybe some odd song that we don't ever play called "Bugs." I get a little tired of playing "Corduroy," but don't tell Eddie that because he'll get pissed. We play that almost every night.

More proof that EV knows exactly what he's doing when he writes the setlists. Corduroy kills it with the crowd at every show, and the fans never get sick of it. It's one of their best live songs, so should be played frequently.

I think McCready knows that too...

Spiritual_Chaos

pleatherman said:

Interviewer: (Is Pearl Jam) learning the Neil Young songbook?

Young: We won’t do any of the old ones... The way it’ll work is they’ll do Eddie’s songs and then they’ll do my songs. Sometimes I sing some of Eddie’s songs, and sometimes he sings on my songs. There’s a long way that it could develop.