Artist:
Pearl Jam
Formed In:
1990
Band Bio:
Pearl Jam rose from the ashes of Mother Love Bone to become the most popular American rock & roll band of the '90s. After vocalist Andrew Wood overdosed on heroin in 1990, guitarist Stone Gossard and bassist Jeff Ament assembled a new band, bringing in Mike McCready on lead guitar and recording a demo with Soundgarden's Matt Cameron on drums. Thanks to future Pearl Jam drummer Jack Irons, the demo found its way to a 25-year-old San Diego surfer named Eddie Vedder, who overdubbed vocals and original lyrics and was subsequently invited to join the band (then christened Mookie Blaylock after the NBA player). Dave Krusen was hired as the full-time drummer shortly thereafter, completing the original lineup. Renaming themselves Pearl Jam, the band recorded their debut album, Ten, in the beginning of 1991, although it wasn't released until August; in the meantime, the majority of the band appeared on the Andrew Wood tribute project Temple of the Dog. Krusen left the band shortly after the release of Ten; he was replaced by Dave Abbruzzese.
Ten didn't begin selling in significant numbers until early 1992, after Nirvana made mainstream rock radio receptive to alternative rock acts. Soon, Pearl Jam outsold Nirvana, which wasn't surprising -- Pearl Jam fused the riff-heavy stadium rock of the '70s with the grit and anger of '80s post-punk, without ever neglecting hooks and choruses; "Jeremy," "Evenflow," and "Alive" fit perfectly onto album rock radio stations looking for new blood. Pearl Jam's audience continued to grow during 1992, thanks to a series of radio and MTV hits, as well as successful appearances on the second Lollapalooza tour and the Singles soundtrack (Stone Gossard also embarked on a side project called Brad, which released the album Shame in early 1993).
Despite their status as rock & roll superstars, the band refused to succumb to the accepted conventions of the music industry. The group refused to release any videos or singles from their second album, 1993's Vs. Nevertheless, it was another multi-platinum success, debuting at number one and selling nearly a million copies in its first week of release. On their spring 1994 American tour, the band decided not to play the conventional stadiums, choosing to play smaller arenas, including several shows on college campuses. Pearl Jam canceled their 1994 summer tour, claiming they could not keep ticket prices below 20 dollars because Ticketmaster was pressuring promoters to charge a higher price. The band took Ticketmaster to the Justice Department for unfair business practices; while fighting Ticketmaster, they recorded a new album during the spring and summer of 1994. After the record was completed, the group fired Dave Abbruzzese, replacing him with former Red Hot Chili Peppers and Eleven drummer Jack Irons.
Vitalogy, the band's third album, appeared at the end of 1994. For the first two weeks, the album was only available as a limited vinyl release, but the record charted in the Top 60. Once Vitalogy was available on CD and cassette, the album shot to the top of the charts and quickly went multi-platinum. Pearl Jam continued to battle Ticketmaster in 1995, but the Justice Department eventually ruled in favor of the ticket agency. In early 1995, the band recorded an album with Neil Young. Meanwhile, Vedder toured with his wife Beth's experimental band Hovercraft in the spring of 1994 as Stone Gossard founded an independent record company; Mad Season, Mike McCready's side project with Layne Staley of Alice in Chains, released their first album, Above, in the spring of 1995. Comprised entirely of Neil Young songs, Mirror Ball appeared in the summer under Young's name; although the individual members of the band were credited, the name Pearl Jam did not appear on the cover due to legal complications. Pearl Jam released a single culled from the sessions, titled Merkinball and featuring the songs "I Got Id" and "Long Road," in the fall of 1995.
In late summer of 1996, Pearl Jam released their fourth album, No Code. Although the album was greeted with fairly positive reviews and debuted at number one, its weird amalgam of rock, worldbeat, and experimentalism dissatisfied a large portion of their fan base, and it quickly fell down the charts. The record's performance was also hurt by Pearl Jam's inability to launch a full-scale tour, due both to their battle with Ticketmaster and a reluctance to spend months on the road. The band spent most of 1997 out of the spotlight, working on new material; Gossard also released a second album with his side project Brad, titled Interiors. By the end of the year, Pearl Jam had completed a new, harder-rocking record entitled Yield. The album was greeted with enthusiastic reviews upon its February 1998 release, but its commercial fortunes weren't quite as clear cut. While their sizable cult embraced the album, sending it to number two its first week of release, Yield quickly slipped down the charts. Pearl Jam supported the record with a full-scale arena tour in the summer of 1998, issuing the concert LP Live on Two Legs at the end of the year; Jack Irons did not participate due to poor health, and was replaced by ex-Soundgarden drummer Matt Cameron.
In 1999, Pearl Jam scored an unlikely pop radio smash with their cover of the J. Frank Wilson oldie "Last Kiss," originally released as the seventh in a series of fan club-only singles that had also featured several incongruous covers in the past. Demand from fans and radio programmers resulted in the nationwide release of "Last Kiss," and it eventually became the band's highest-charting pop hit to date, peaking at number two and going gold. The group returned in 2000 with the Tchad Blake-produced Binaural. In order to circumvent bootleggers, their subsequent European and American tours were recorded in full and released in an unprecedented series of double-CD sets, each of the 72 volumes featuring a complete concert. 2002 saw the release of Riot Act, a muscular -- and critically lauded -- collection of new songs that found the group dabbling in experimental art rock. Two anthologies arrived in 2003 and 2004, Lost Dogs: Rarities and B Sides and Rearviewmirror: Greatest Hits 1991-2003. They were followed in 2006 by the eponymous (and all-new) Pearl Jam, a number two hit on the album charts.
Album:
Ten
Tracks:
1. "Once" (Vedder, Gossard) – 3:51
2. "Even Flow" (Vedder, Gossard) – 4:53
3. "Alive" (Vedder, Gossard) – 5:40
4. "Why Go" (Vedder, Ament) – 3:10
5. "Black" (Vedder, Gossard) – 5:43
6. "Jeremy" (Vedder, Ament) – 5:18
7. "Oceans" (Vedder, Gossard, Ament) – 2:41
8. "Porch" (Vedder) – 3:30
9. "Garden" (Vedder, Gossard, Ament) – 4:58
10. "Deep" (Vedder, Gossard, Ament) – 4:18
11. "Release" (Vedder, Gossard, Ament, McCready, Krusen) – 9:04
* Contains the hidden track "Master/Slave"
Review:
Ten is Pearl Jam's first album, released on August 27, 1991 through Epic Records.
Nirvana's Nevermind may have been the album that broke grunge and alternative rock into the mainstream, but there's no underestimating the role that Pearl Jam's Ten played in keeping them there. Nirvana's appeal may have been huge, but it wasn't universal; rock radio still viewed them as too raw and punky, and some hard rock fans dismissed them as weird misfits. In retrospect, it's easy to see why Pearl Jam clicked with a mass audience -- they weren't as metallic as Alice in Chains or Soundgarden, and of Seattle's Big Four, their sound owed the greatest debt to classic rock. With its intricately arranged guitar textures and expansive harmonic vocabulary, Ten especially recalled Jimi Hendrix and Led Zeppelin. But those touchstones might not have been immediately apparent, since -- aside from Mike McCready's Clapton/Hendrix-style leads -- every trace of blues influence has been completely stripped from the band's sound. Though they rock hard, Pearl Jam is too anti-star to swagger, too self-aware to puncture the album's air of gravity. Pearl Jam tackles weighty topics -- abortion, homelessness, childhood traumas, gun violence, rigorous introspection -- with an earnest zeal unmatched since mid-'80s U2, whose anthemic sound they frequently strive for. Similarly, Eddie Vedder's impressionistic lyrics often make their greatest impact through the passionate commitment of his delivery rather than concrete meaning. His voice had a highly distinctive timbre that perfectly fit the album's warm, rich sound, and that's part of the key -- no matter how cathartic Ten's tersely titled songs got, they were never abrasive enough to affect the album's accessibility. Ten also benefited from a long gestation period, during which the band honed the material into this tightly focused form; the result is a flawlessly crafted hard rock masterpiece.
In 1998 Q magazine readers voted Ten the 54th greatest album of all time; in 2003 the TV network VH1 placed it at number 79. In 2003, the album was ranked number 207 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 500 greatest albums of all time. As of April 2006, Ten has sold 9.4 million copies in the U.S. alone [1], having been certified 12x Platinum.
While the song "Black" charted #3 on the Mainstream Rock charts, it was never actually released as a single. Furthermore, "Once" and "Why Go" have since received considerable airplay as Pearl Jam's popularity has endured, while the album's closer, "Release," has ironically become one of the band's most popular concert openers.
Rating (Stars Out Of 5):
5
Release Date:
Aug 27, 1991
Label:
Epic
Chart Ranks:
1991 Ten Heatseekers 2
1992 Ten The Billboard 200 2
Billboard Singles:
1992 Alive Mainstream Rock Tracks #16
1992 Alive Modern Rock Tracks #18
1992 Black Mainstream Rock Tracks #3
1992 Black Modern Rock Tracks #20
1992 Even Flow Mainstream Rock Tracks #3
1992 Even Flow Modern Rock Tracks #21
1992 Jeremy Mainstream Rock Tracks #5
1992 Jeremy Modern Rock Tracks #5
1995 Jeremy The Billboard Hot 100 #7
Genre:
* Rock
Styles:
* Hard Rock
* Alternative Pop/ Rock
* Grunge
Bitrate:
* 320kbps
File format:
* mp3
File size:
* 122 MB
Similar Artists
* The Smashing Pumpkins
* Soundgarden
* Screaming Trees
* Nirvana
* Better Than Ezra
* Everclear
* The Verve Pipe
* Days of the New
* Our Lady Peace
* Sponge
* Moist
* Matchbox Twenty
* Candlebox
* Creed
* Sonic Youth
* Love Battery
* Satchel
* fIREHOSE
* The Black Crowes
* Blind Melon
* Phoids
Influenced By
* Neil Young
* R.E.M.
* The Who
* Dead Boys
* Stevie Ray Vaughan
* Minor Threat
* The Rolling Stones
* Jimi Hendrix
* Aerosmith
* The Doors
* Led Zeppelin
* Crazy Horse
* Neil Young & Crazy Horse
Followers:
* Collective Soul
* Moist
* Everclear
* Seven Mary Three
* For Squirrels
* Our Lady Peace
* Semisonic
* Marcy Playground
* Third Eye Blind
* Talk Show
* Creed
* Melon Diesel
* Twin Cam
* Tantric
* The Watergypsies
* Anger of the Lamb
* Default
* Sinch
* Course Of Nature
* Silvercrush
Trackers
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