How did you get into pearl jam?

it's funny because i'd seen pearl jam several times and was like hmmm; they're okay because i really couldn't understand what eddie was singing, and i love lyrics, so they were just okay.

then my husband left for a deployment and I was stuck way down south without him, and i started buying him the bootlegs and listening to the songs to connect with him, and then i was like, wow, holy shit -- this band is amazing.

i would write little notes to him and draw all over those wonderful cardboardy bootlegs and send them off, and he would write back about being on the boat with his head phones on watching the most beautiful sunsets the ocean's ever seen and listening to them, and they became a form of communication for us. just amazing this band is to us, amazing.

when we're pissed at each other, oh, watch out, we'll be turning up this is not for you or some such and being like take that.

then when we're happy it's all about the hail, hail. it's good to have a band.

I think I have the silliest story. I used to be into Creed in 1999 and I heard they were thought to be a rip off of Pearl Jam. i was inclined to investigate, since i had heard of PJ when i was younger. I bought Ten, and since, it has been my favorite band of all time. Sometimes i go thru periods when I dont want to listen to anything else except Pearl jam...right now am not on that phase, but it'll come back. It always does.

When I listened to Even Flow, I was positive I heard it when i was a kid. Also, prior to buying Ten, I had listened to Jeremy on the radio, and was completely blown away. It was one of my greatest moments when I first listened to Ten I heard that mysterious song I didnt know who played it.

Out of their music i pick up a lot of socialism, views on friendship and reminding me to not judge so hard...the creepy guy in the corner might contribute something amazing when am not looking. (i do see myself as that guy around certain people). Pearl Jam helped me in an existentialist funk i had 4 or 6 years ago. Their name is perfect, a jam of pearls. Rock riffs full of beauty, passion, rythm and just plain soothing. Of course, i found out why they named themselves Pearl Jam, but i think my interpretation might be valid.

We've had many threads on this so here we go:

Pearl Jam came out in 1991-1992. At the time, I was a seventh-grader, no big deal there but throw in the fact that I had severe acne and was painfully shy. While it's not the worst thing in the world for a seventh grader in a new school it's up there. Anyway, how this relates to Pearl Jam, I don't know. I know I saw the videos for Evenflow and Alive sometime during that school year and liked them.

Too young to actually spend a lot of money on albums, i went through junior and high school just knowing whatever made its way to radio and the video music awards, meaning i knew the following songs "Alive, Evenflow, Black, Jeremy, Daughter, Animal and Betterman.

Fast forward to freshman year of college, another first year for a quiet kid that struggled to fit in, I began to get into Pearl Jam and dig deeper. I borrowed Yield and No Code from the CD Rack of the local library and put them on to audio tape played them over and over again.

Also college was the first time I had regular access to the internet so I was finally able to figure out the lyrics to Evenflow and Alive among others.

I bought the "Live on Two Legs CD and as I got older and gained more income, I finally made my way to a show at Jones Beach in 2000. I saw them again 2003 at MSG - their first trip to NYC since 9/11 and then I saw them again last year in Reading at the VFC concerts.

The bottom line I always identified with Pearl Jam and most of the other bands that started in the early 1990s out of Seattle because they made it possible for a quiet, ordinary kid to identify with them, instead of the glam rock from the 1980s that was all about sex and debauchery (sp)

So now that I'm old enough, there are very few Pearl Jam songs I don't know or albums I don't have.

I never wish to be older. But if I could, I'd have liked to been old enough to see the early Pearl Jam concerts.

The first time I remember hearing them was when a friend was playing Vs. a lot back around the time it came out (and I was about 12). Gradually accumulated a few albums over the years but I didn't get hooked until 2000, my freshman year of college. I was living around a couple guys who were really into them, so that helped. Music just started to speak to me. I like a song that has a whole lot of meaning behind it and can be interpreted on a pretty deep (and varying) level. I think Black was the first song I got really obsessed with and it's still my favorite.

Well, my case... It was late 1991, when a 10-year old girl was sitting out of her brother's bedroom door, and she enjoyed so much the music she was listening to, that she begged to her parents if they could buy the "Ten" cassette.

Now I'm 24... why do I love them? There are a lot of reasons: excelent lyrics & music, excelent values, and it may sound really stupid, but in a way their music helped me through a really really tough stage in my life, and their music gave me the joy of living once more

Well it was probably in grade 9 when Even Flow came on the radio; I thought it was one of the coolest songs I'd ever heard, so from that point on I basically listened to more and more of PJ. I had a few friends who really liked them too which was cool. The rest is pretty much history; I get more into them as I go along and I finally just saw my first concert after a few years of waiting!

my best friend had a radio show at her college in our home town. when i was around in the summer i would help her out. it was supposed to be a new music show and we were supposed to preview the music before we put it on but we usually based it on song titles. we pulled a promo that had a song called deep on it and played it and we're blown away.

a few months later i saw them on the first night of their tour with smashing pumpkins and red hot chili peppers. it was flea's birthday and we hung out by the stage door to meet the chili peppers and i was torn as i watched jeff get on the the bus, but alas, i hung out and got autographs and photos with the chili peppers instead of chasing down jeff. http://www.juliannesjournal.com/images/rock/CELEB-ANTHONY.JPG

the next summer we did our radio show again and slept out to get lollapalooza tickets. everyone else was getting tickets for 6 or 8 people and they were ending up super far back. there were only two of us and we ended up in the fourth row which was great! we spent the whole summer bragging on the radio about having great tickets for the show.

pearl jam played second and soundgarden played third. soundgarden was not well received in wisconsin. people threw sod from the lawn which wasn't cool at all. when they were done chris announced that he was going to check out jim rose on the side stage so we went up to the top of the hill and watched and sure enough a few minutes later here comes a golf cart with eddie in it and then a few minutes later another one with chris. we rushed down to the stage where jim rose circus sideshow had just finished and we got right up front. chris and eddie played hunger strike then chris did seasons and eddie did some folk song that i never did figure out the name of. we walked around the rest of the afternoon telling random people that we just saw chris and eddie.

that was the last time i saw them perform until vancouver last week. the show last week was just as good but it was different seeing the crowd go nuts for them. it was pretty cool to see them as the headliner and i had the honor of being backstage (with the supersuckers) and i got a few cool photos http://www.juliannesjournal.com/pearl_jam.htm

i've now moved pearl jam to the top of my ipod playlists and am enjoying getting back into all of that great music!

I was in 8th grade, 1994 I think, and my brother had Unleashed in his room and everytime I went in to snoop (hehe wink wink) I'd glance over it like, "WTF is up with this lamb close-up cd cover?". Then my friend mentioned them and played a few songs from Ten for me pointing out all her favorites and how much she liked them. I went home and grabbed that "lamb" cd and sat in my room for hours listening to it. I think that Pearl Jam is one of the only bands that I have had the chance to grow-up with. And every year I continue to anticipate another amazing album. The band has always been in my life since then and once you're hooked, you can't let go.

i first heard pj in cannes, fr at a record store. i had been real sick for two years and ran away to europe, where i knew noone. i had been gone for several months and the record store stereo was playing ALIVE. i realized i still was and danced in the store! i didn't care, there was noone in the store at the time. pj music is very personal...