Your First Pearl Jam Recollection?

zenith · January 2008

i have a pretty weird memory - gaps everywhere... im the sort of person that someone will say hey..remember when... and i'll reply "huh???'

but, strangley i remember every detail, even the smallest, of the very first time i saw pearl jam. I guess they made such a huge dent in there - half this story will loose a bit of meaning to anyone who isnt familiar with australia - canberra in particular.

anyway - i was living in a group house in canberra. I was out late one nite, and got home. The loungeroom was up a level from the hall, you had to walk up steps into this sort of french door opening. There was a black lounge - the daggy immitation leather sort. an old long wooden coffee table - two huge windows with those horrible long vinyl blinds that rattle and get caught in everything - and in the corner was a tv unit with the tv on. The room was dark - there were a few people up - we always had people there. And a late nite australian music programe - rage - was on. it never had intro's to songs. just played them, one after another. a song came on - and i sat down and watched it thinking holey shit, who is this! never heard them, or heard of them. I was hooked there and then.
went out the next day to a little shop - impact records - which at the time was still a tiny little shop in a dingy out of the way part of civic (centre of canberra) up near all the independant cinemas. Bought the little red cd single ALIVE - i still own it and it still has the little "$1.95 Special Price!" sticker on it

Impact records eventually moved into a huge shop in main civic - and its now been taken over by jb hi-fi which is a shame because i bought a lot of stuff from them over the years i lived in canberra, and just loved browsing around in there.
Pearl Jam came to canberra four years later for the first and only time - the first time i saw them live - up front and more addicted than ever.

my only regret is that i never joined 10c back then. i guess because it was a mail addy on the back of the cd's.

itsevobaby · January 2008

zenith wrote:

my only regret is that i never joined 10c back then. i guess because it was a mail addy on the back of the cd's.

yeah i regret that too, always thought about it but never actually did it till many years later

The Waiting Trophy Man · January 2008

itsevobaby wrote:

yeah i regret that too, always thought about it but never actually did it till many years later

Same here.

Jeremy1012 · January 2008

I had seen the Alive video a bunch of times and had always liked the song but my first proper memory was watching the unplugged show. Porch stuck in my head... not the song but Eddie's performance. It was mindblowing. The song that totally floored me though was Black. Just incredible.

It took me at least another year before I bought Ten. Never looked back.

Hartydog · January 2008

I grew up in ME and there weren't a lot of channels on cable (I think we had 30 when I graduated from high school in 1995). But at a friend's house I saw the video for Alive but more importantly heard what may be to this day one of my all time favorite songs. It made the hair on my arms stand on end and gave me the chills

Kilgore_Trout · January 2008

i was driving to the mall with my cousin (a HUGE PJ fan) when i was 5 and i can remember listening to evenflow... he used to quiz me about what song it was we were listening... hes the reason i got into PJ... there was alot of time between then and binaural that i had shitty taste in music, but then i found PJ again and 15 years later ive probably become an even bigger fan than my cousin!

Drop The Leash 10 · January 2008

i was 12 when my dad brought me to the 9/29/04 show and its been all uphill since

IAmMyself · January 2008

In '91, I had just turned 18, freshmen year at college. Some guy knocked on my dorm door, I answered, he said listen to this right now. I still can't believe I didn't #*^! him right there and then. My life instantly changed, and it's never been the same. Thank god!

Chicagone · January 2008

Alpine Valley Wisconsin 92 - raining all morning, late to the show. Went to see the Chili Peppers and Soundgarden. But when PJ came out and f'n blew up the stage, I was hooked right then and there. Soundgarden was good, Matt jammed, Peppers were so-so, but PJ stole the show. Anticipation was killing me and the next available show was the New Regal Theatre in 94. Was out of town for the madhouse on madison show :( - still sick to this day about that. But when Ed climbed the side of the theatre and did the 30 foot crowd dive, I calmy walked straight up to front row dead center and watched Ed make his way back up to the stage and I caught the last 4 or 5 shows about 10 feet in front of him. 67 shows later, toured the world, still loving everything they do. NO other band rocks like PJ since Zeppelin - period

CitizenRick · January 2008

I was 20...it was late 91'...I used to hang out in my buddy Mike's garage with the same crew of about 15-20 guys every Friday and Saturday night.

We would listen to rock music, play pool and drink beer. One Friday... his older brother came home and went directly into the garage and changed out the Tesla cd we were listening to and said "check this out...it's a new band called Pearl Jam...they fuckin' rock...and the singer is really different".

Once played (wow...the singer IS different...and they do fuckin' rock!)

Even Flow played (is that a groove I hear?...and what the fuck is he saying?)

Alive played (holy shit...my soul has been saved!)

I'll never forget that night as long as I live. I finally had a true heart felt connection with music.

The ride began that night...and it's still going today.

Sorry for the length.

whispering hands · January 2008

Hmm well I posted this once and it seemed to disturb peeps, but oh well. The first time I HEARD Pearl Jam I had a gun in my mouth and was trying to remind myself that I was supposed to pull the trigger in order for this suicide thing to work, when I heard the first few bars of Garden, ( no need to name an album fer that song :-) ). It was so solemn and haunting,,it reached right inside my wounded mind and somehow seemed the perfect sounding song to whch to end my life. Instead, I ended up waiting to hear the lyrics and what do ya know they just happened to make so much sense to me, that I started bawling. I was just SOBBING, so hard even that I chipped a tooth on the barrel of the gun. My younger sister came in and talked me out of the idea, I buried the gun in the back yard with the lyrics to Garden with an end note that read: " Only I have the power to end my own life, and after 15 years ( at that time I was 19, but remember my first suicide attempt was at 4 years old) with no success at dying,
I give up on dying. Now I am able to survive, for I have the safety of one whom seems to understand..possibly. To life..To Pearl Jam whom ever they turn out to be."

then God like oh just a few years ago when my brother got married, we ( older sis and I) flew out for his wedding and during the process of gettign drunk, my younger sis and I decided to drive the 45 minutes from Riverside area to hemet to our old house to see if the gun was still there. It was nolty.. they new owners had removed the tree AND the brick wall between which it was buried. We were too chicken-shit to knock and ask thouygh.. I always wonder what those people thought about that note..I wonder what they thought of our family...maybe they just assumed we were crack heads.. lol

Anyhow since that time, to this day I've only missed buying an album ON its release date, three times, it was Ten, Yeild and Binaural. I was nearly a year late buying Yeild, because I was living in an abandoned storage unit. So I clened a friend's house for the money and so I could buy food fer me dog. That album got me through a really tough year..awwww memories.. lol sorry fer me rant

CitizenRick · January 2008

whispering hands wrote:

Hmm well I posted this once and it seemed to disturb peeps, but oh well. The first time I HEARD Pearl Jam I had a gun in my mouth and was trying to remind myself that I was supposed to pull the trigger in order for this suicide thing to work, when I heard the first few bars of Garden, ( no need to name an album fer that song :-) ). It was so solemn and haunting,,it reached right inside my wounded mind and somehow seemed the perfect sounding song to whch to end my life. Instead, I ended up waiting to hear the lyrics and what do ya know they just happened to make so much sense to me, that I started bawling. I was just SOBBING, so hard even that I chipped a tooth on the barrel of the gun. My younger sister came in and talked me out of the idea, I buried the gun in the back yard with the lyrics to Garden with an end note that read: " Only I have the power to end my own life, and after 15 years ( at that time I was 19, but remember my first suicide attempt was at 4 years old) with no success at dying,
I give up on dying. Now I am able to survive, for I have the safety of one whom seems to understand..possibly. To life..To Pearl Jam whom ever they turn out to be."

then God like oh just a few years ago when my brother got married, we ( older sis and I) flew out for his wedding and during the process of gettign drunk, my younger sis and I decided to drive the 45 minutes from Riverside area to hemet to our old house to see if the gun was still there. It was nolty.. they new owners had removed the tree AND the brick wall between which it was buried. We were too chicken-shit to knock and ask thouygh.. I always wonder what those people thought about that note..I wonder what they thought of our family...maybe they just assumed we were crack heads.. lol

Anyhow since that time, to this day I've only missed buying an album ON its release date, three times, it was Ten, Yeild and Binaural. I was nearly a year late buying Yeild, because I was living in an abandoned storage unit. So I clened a friend's house for the money and so I could buy food fer me dog. That album got me through a really tough year..awwww memories.. lol sorry fer me rant

Whoa! That's some heavy shit man!

Congrats on staying alive!

LikeAnOcean · January 2008

Summer of '93.. my best friend forced me to listen to Ten.. Even flow caught my attention for the first time.. I'll never forget that moment.

svenstephy · January 2008

Get_Right wrote:

Casual fan after ten
bigger fan after Vs
Vitalogy-wow this band kicks ass

Exactly!! I bought the jeremy single after i heard it on the radio...I was 9. My first "big" moment as a pj fan though was getting sent to the principal's office in 6th grade for disagreeing with a teacher on the meaning of Better Man. I'll never forget that

meme · January 2008

My first recollection is looking at VS.'s CD cover, bought by my brother, in my living room in Milan.

Can you believe I didn't become a hard core fan until 11 years later?!

bettermanofthehour · January 2008

In 91-92 we lived in the country. Nobody had cable, or satelite. So, we were behind the times a little. The only rock stations we got were 70's and 80's.. My best friend and I were really into bands like Zeppelin and Gn'R.

Anyway he got Ten. I'm not sure if it was a gift to him or what, but he hated it. So he gave it to me to see if I liked it. At this point I had never heard of Pearl Jam before. I put that CD in and I don't think it came out till VS. came out.

I remember I had that CD at home. In my car I had a tape deck. I think I went through four or five Ten cassettes.

Pearl Jam was the only band from the "grung" era that I ever really got into. To this day I hate Soundgarden. I do like a handfull of Nirvana songs. Plush was decent album, but I think that's because it reminded me of Pearl Jam's sound.

These days I still listen to Pearl Jam primarily. Plus other bands that I love because of Pearl Jam. ie Sleater-Kinney, Kings of Leon, Mother Love Bone, The Sonics, The Fastbacks, Green River, The Black Keys....the list goes on.

Sorry for babbling on and on there. I got caught up in the moment.

gozzo5058 · January 2008

1991, toronto in a friend of my bro in laws apartment, he had the ten cd, borrowed it...

HushBull · January 2008

I'm sorta a youngin' amongst some of the other forum posters. But, my brother(6 years older) introduced me to them through our touching bedroom walls. Then, I began to actually seek out there music, I would take his cd's when he left the house...returning them eventually. This was after the Yield release. A year later Binaural was released and I had to have it the first day it came out. Within a years time, at the age of 13, Pearl Jam became my favorite band. Good memories!

deadnote · January 2008

i found pearl jam in a ccircus magazzine article

they mentioned the doors and zepplin so i bought the album and thought that they did better than the legends

now pj are legends

great isstn it have a piece of pizza for me

Anon · January 2008

It was early 1992 and our dining hall at my university had MTV on and there was Ed singing Alive...hooked right then and there!

Your First Pearl Jam Recollection?

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