Pearl Jam - Vitalogy (w/ guest Steven Hyden)

The Great Albums

Bill Lambusta

Albums, Music Commentary, Criticism, Billlambusta, Brianerickson, Music

4.3 • 749 Ratings

🗓️ 23 May 2016

⏱️ 122 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Bill and Brian are joined by rock journalist and music critic Steven Hyden (Pitchfork, Uproxx, Grantland, A.V Club) to talk about Pearl Jam's divisive third album Vitalogy (1994, Epic). Written on tour and recorded piecemeal and haphazardly, the band started to showcase its eclectic nature by featuring some noise collages and a more "punk" sound. Especially influenced by singer Eddie Vedder's trouble dealing with fame and the suicide of one of their closest peers Kurt Cobain, the album took on a darker, grittier tone that, although dismissed at the time, has become revered by Pearl Jam die hards. Steven talks about how Pearl Jam and their "feud" with Nirvana figures into his book, Your Favorite Band Is Killing Me, and how Nirvana helped shape his views on Pearl Jam and this album upon its release. Then Bill, Brian, and Steven discuss Dave Abbruzzese's excellent drumming and why his guns and sport cars got him dismissed from the band, how Eddie Vedder can be too good of a singer, how powerful the band is on "Corduroy," how using early takes both helped and hindered the album, PJ's penchant for trilogies, Vedder's ability to successfully write from a female perspective, how Pearl Jam has become the last huge rock act that has sustained its career, Vitalogy's similarities to Rust Never Sleeps, the importance of viewing this album as a whole, and much more as we make our way through the album track by track! Be sure to check out Steven's book, available at all fine book establishments, including at the following link! http://www.amazon.com/Your-Favorite-Band-Killing-Rivalries/dp/0316259152/ref=sr_1_1_twi_pap_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1463490702&sr=1-1&keywords=steven+hyden

Transcript

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0:00.0	I'm Bill. And I'm Brian.
0:37.2	And Brian, what were we just listening to right there?
0:40.1	Well, we're listening to Not For You by Pearl Jam off of 1994's Vitology.
0:45.8	That was their third album.
0:47.2	If you never listened to the podcast before, what we are is a music appreciation podcast
0:52.4	with a track-by-track review.
0:54.9	So what we're going to do in a little bit is kind of talk about like some personal anecdotes
1:01.6	and about like our relationship with the music.
1:04.6	And then we are going to give a little bit of info on the band.
1:08.5	And then we're going to get into that track-by-track review.
1:11.5	And we're not going to do it alone.
1:13.5	No, we are not.
1:14.8	But he's not here with us just yet.
1:16.6	We had Stephen Hayden, writer and podcaster himself, Skype into us, but because of time constraints,
1:25.3	he only had just enough time to kind of do the interview portion
1:28.7	that we decided to kind of do our intro here without him.
1:33.9	So that way we didn't have to tax him by listening to us talk about this stupid stuff.
1:39.8	Stephen is a, as I said, he is a writer who is, he's done some stuff for pitchfork.
1:45.1	I believe he's done AV Club as well.
1:48.5	He's written for a bunch of places.
1:50.4	And he also has his own podcast called Celebration Rock, which you can find, of course, on iTunes and all those other places.
2:00.0	But the thing that he really wants everyone to know about is his new book that's coming out.
	...

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