Remember When

ms. goldenwords

ponytd wrote:

And going to record store after record store to find the Daughter import single that had Yellow Ledbetter on it. Ah the good ole days.

I remember finding that one too!

I think my favorite memory though is from when Vs. was coming out. The anticipation was SO thick!! The local record store re-opened at midnight the day of the release to start selling them - the ones without an album title on it - remember? I BEGGED and BEGGED my big brother (because I couldn't drive yet) to go get one for me. He did, and I clearly remember him walking into the living room and throwing it at me like a frisbee, adding as he walked out "let me listen when your done." I sat there on the floor listening to it (twice through), and obsessively rifling through the liner notes for hours. Man, I still love this band, but that insane teenage passion kind of fades... but every time I score tickets, or at every show when the music starts, I get it back for few seconds

Gonzo1977

WOW!!!
This is easily the best thread I've read in a long time

It really makes me really nostalgic.

I guess it's easy to forget what it was like to be a teenager, and getting into music, and Pearl Jam big time

I'd hear songs like "Leaving Here" "Crazy Mary" "Breath" "SOLAT" and "Yellow Ledbetter" on the radio and being just blown away at how amazing Pearl Jam was. I couldn't believe that they had these great albums and unreleased covers and B-sides out there.

I remember hearing a brand new Pearl Jam song on the radio and frantically diving across my bed, streching my arm out to try and hit Record on my cassette player and eventually only getting the last half the song on tape. It's crazy the amount of hours I'd spend waiting for them to play the song again.

When "Daughter" first hit the radio, It was great when the radio would play that little "You Guys Ready" part. It gave all us tapers a good enough lead time to hit Record

I remember driving out to this record store in Yellow Springs Ohio and finding a bootleg of Solider Feild as well as a bootleg with "Brother", "Angel", "I've Got A Feeling", and "Dirty Frank" on it. The fucking Solider Feild bootleg was like $50.00 but I didn't care how much money I spent , I just cared about getting those elusive rarities and B-Sides.

Those drives home from Yellow Springs seemed to take a lifetime...I only had a cassette player in my car and couldn't listen to the CD's until I got home. I'd sit in the car and try to Imagine what they sounded like as I drove home; making up my own words, and picturing this amazing unreleased song that'd I'd never heard.

Funny how...9 times out of ten...the song ended up sounding better than I could have ever imagined.

In 1996 when No Code came out. I went to the midnight pre-sale. It was so amazing seeing all these people from your town, that you'd never met before, lining up outside the doors hours early, talking about Pearl Jam, and blaring Vitalogy from their car stereo's as we all waited in line, money in hand, waiting to get our hands on the new record and pour over the artwork.

Music has changed so much since those days. The Internet, You Tube, and MP3 sites have kind of taken all the fun out of that elusive magical search for new or unreleased music. You can pretty much find anything you want at your fingertips. Of course that's not a bad thing...but it definately takes some of the fun out of finding the music.

Lately I've gotten back into collecting vinyl. It's kind of a way to bringing that feeling back. I'm like a kid again...Even though I pretty much have all these records on CD back at home, It's still cool to get out there and find an Original Copy of "The White Album" or "Stickey Fingers" on vinyl. It's a great way to spend a Saturday. The other day I was in this Antique store in Hamilton Ontario Canada and found (I shit you not) a pristine copy of "Yeild" and "Vitalogy" on vinyl!!! It's kind of scary how Pearl Jam vinyl is now considered an Antique...Oh Well...I was so happy that day, you should have seen the smile on my face

I find it amazing that as the technology keeps gets more and more advanced, and tries to make everything so easy for us, how it only ends up making us look back and long for the time when things weren't so goddamn easy.

elevation622

Awesome Thread

It was like '93 or something and the local radio station X107 was giving away a PJ B-Side bootleg to the first car with an X107 bumper sticker, that came by their parked van. I heard this just as I was passing the van, which was across the four lane road I was driving. So naturally, having just got my license I ripped a horrible U turn, dangerously cutting off some oncoming cars. I pulled into the dirt "parking lot" with my car facing the van, jumped out and ran over to the van, pointing at my car. The guy in the van just motioned to my car, which was slowly rolling backward, with the driver side door open, toward the busy road. I ran back to my car, for some reason to the passenger side, and tried to pull the car to stop. That didn't work, so I ran to the back of the car and tried to push it to stop. That didn't work, so then finally coming to my senses, I jumped in the drivers side and yanked it into "Park" inches from the road.

The car stopped so violently, I got whiplash. So I get out of the car, rubbing my neck and go over to the van, sweating my balls off and the X107 guy's laughing at me. Then he hands me a blank tape with a home made label on it. Not a bootleg CD, a bootleg tape their interns must've made. He said that after watching my clown show, he was giving me the tape anyway when the whole time, my bumper sticker was in the back and he couldn't even see it (until I took off I guess). So I look at the tape and the only song I didn't already own from the $40 CD bootlegs was "Bee Girl". Soon after, not so coincidentally, my car's transmission blew.

So basically I almost killed a couple of motorists, destroyed my car, got whiplash and made a complete ass of myself for "Bee Girl". Good times!