— Pete Stanton
David Hepworth and Mark Ellen, along with producer Alex Gold, were recently discussing Pearl Jam's upcoming concert at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium in London. They seemed astonished that the quintet with members who are approaching the age of sixty would be able to sell out a show for around 70,000 people. Gold then made the helpful comment that they were all that was left of the grunge scene so where else was everyone to go?
Like the still-emerging Britpop, grunge didn't have a great deal of depth. You had Nirvana, Alice in Chains, Soundgarden and Pearl Jam. I know there's Mudhoney and Screaming Trees and a bunch of other bands I've totally forgotten about but those were the four groups that everyone was aware of. People either liked them or were at least aware of them. Being that it was meant to be a D.I.Y. movement, bands of even the highest quality were bound to slip through the cracks while the lucky few got signed up to big contracts. But just how lucky were they? Kurt Cobain's suicide naturally brought Nirvana to a halt and addiction derailed both Alice in Chains and Soundgarden. But Pearl Jam kept chugging along, something they continue to do to this day.
Respect to them, particularly when it comes to how they've stood up to corporate greed (even if this still hasn't stopped them from charging outrageous prices for tickets to their shows), I just wish I could enjoy their music on some level. Having not really heard them in probably a quarter century, I was struck by how timeless my disinterest in them is. I couldn't stand "Jeremy" when it came out back in 1992 and I still find the vast majority of their stuff impossible to get into.
I wouldn't say, however, that Pearl Jam's music is unlistenable. I've quite happily put on The Residents, Yoko Ono and Ornette Coleman's Free Jazz and listened to them. A piece of music would have to go an awful long way before I had it down as "unlistenable". As such, "Go" is perfectly listenable, I would just rather not have to do so. The problem is it's so lacking in enjoyable qualities as to make it unplayable.
Jazz purists like Philip Larkin used to assert that the genre lost something when it ceased to be a style of music people would dance to. (The very idea of Larkin dancing to anything is laughable) For some reason, young people sitting and snapping their fingers to a Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie record didn't constitute a sufficient level of enjoyment to count. I do not dance and didn't even like doing it back during that very brief period of my life in the late nineties when I would get dragged to clubs like The Embassy. I knew that the act of boogieing down wasn't the only way to show appreciation for a pop song. We may snap out fingers, nod along, tap our toes or do a sad little airband routine. We may sing along to either to the correct lyrics or whatever we've come up with in our minds.
In short, there are hundreds and perhaps even thousands of ways to express our enjoyment of music — and I can't think of a single way to do so with Pearl Jam's "Go". I'm willing to acknowledge that it must sound great in a mosh pit even though still somehow doubt it. The super aggressive grunge rock isn't exactly ear candy but it's the utter lack of a melody that really holds it back. Kurt Cobain was going through his most extreme period with Nirvana's third album In Utero and even it has plenty of hooks and tunes to stay with you. But that's the easy part. I like Nirvana but what of a band like Soundgarden, a group I've never thought much of? Well, at least they grew up on metal which always put some stock in dynamics and choruses and that shit. "Black Hole Sun" isn't exactly my thing but at least it might float around the back of my mind from time to time.
Due to grunge and MTV Unplugged, the nineties really revived guitar rock — and, with it, a self-righteous defense mechanism that bordered on the absurd. "At least they're not (insert name of pop phenomenon/boy band here)" was the common refrain from fans of alternative music if you so much as questioned the quality of a band like Pearl Jam. Sorry, not good enough. I may despise what a plastic pop princess stands for but there's always a chance I might dig one of her records; if the best I can say for Eddie Vedder is that I empathize with his politics then there's not a whole lot more to be said. I'm don't doubt that he would be a swell guy to have a beer with but I'm not in a position to experience this. And, anyway, what would we have to chat about after having admitted to him that I think his music sucks?
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Also Reviewed This Fortnight
Paul Weller: The Weaver EP
Not quite yet the embarrassing Modfather, Paul Weller was already being feted for his supposed phoenix-like rebirth on second solo album Wild Wood. Looking back, it seems like an over-correction from those final days of The Style Council as it led to a number of increasingly lifeless recordings that all sounded the same until he gradually began finding his way once again in the early 2000's. While previous hits from '93, "Sunflower" and "Wild Wood", are both pretty strong, if a tad underwhelming, "The Weaver" needed the padding of a value-for-money EP just to make it worthy of singlehood. "This Is No Time" is no less forgettable than the title track but things come to life on third track "Another New Day" which brings to mind some of ver Council's overlooked instrumentals such as "Blue Cafe", "Our Favourite Shop" and "The Little Boy in the Castle / A Dove Flew Down from the Elephant". Proof that Weller didn't need his garbled voice to carry a recording and that he was always at his best when he was at his most ambitious. He just had to get this bizarre need to be boring out of his system before he re-discovered it.
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