Episode 173: Welcome to the Jamily
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Time Crisis, back again. Drinking whiskey, eating horse meat, listening to Pearl Jam.
Some and perhaps all of these things will be discussed today. I get together
with Jake and Seinfeld to hash out culture, life, and love on this week's
Time Crisis with Ezra Koenig.
They passed me by, all of those great romances.
They were a value of me, all my rightful chances.
My picture clear, everything seemed so easy.
And so I dealt to the blow, when a bus had to go.
Now it's different, I want you to know.
One of us is crying, one of us is lying.
Leave it all in me, babe.
Time Crisis, back again. What's up, Jake?
Not much, man. Still reeling from our concert experience a few days ago.
Oh yeah, we're going to be talking about this for quite a bit of the show.
I think for months. I mean... I think for months, yeah.
I've had many conversations about this show. The show that we're talking about is Pearl Jam.
Jake and I attended. Shout out to Brian, hooked us up with tickets.
So we rolled to see the first of their two nights at the Forum.
But we got a guest calling in in a little bit, who is also at the show.
So maybe we'll hold off a little bit. Okay, table the PJ discussion.
I'm just... I'm raring to go. Are you still buzzing? Oh yeah.
Alright, well maybe let's do a little bit then.
The first thing I want to say, just as some back story, because I love this story that you told.
Because Pearl Jam is one of these bands that could really break either way for Jake.
I mean, obviously you're going to have your own point of view, but it's like...
I think I have a pretty good handle on your taste. Okay.
But Pearl Jam is just one of those bands that, obviously I know from talking about you.
But if somebody just said, "Based on all the information you know about Jake, his taste,
do you think he likes Pearl Jam?" I'd be like, "Damn, that's a straight up 50/50 for me."
I could totally picture Jake just being like, "What are you talking about, man? Pearl Jam rules."
Loved the first three albums, and honestly there's some good sh*t in the next eight.
Always been a fan. Loved them when they came out.
I could see it going that way, and I could also just picture you just being like,
"Pearl Jam sucks, dude. No, even 10. Never been a fan. Always hated them."
When I asked if you wanted to come to the concert, I wondered which way it was going to go.
But you were psyched.
Oh yeah. I'd never seen them. I mean, yeah, I'm not a super fan. I think he kind of nailed it.
I mean, it could have been a coin toss with me, with PJ.
Had the first three records in high school, on compact disc.
Listened to them a lot, and then it felt like a different...
Something, I think because that stuff was early and mid-90s,
I feel like the first half of the 90s were a different decade than the second half of the 90s.
There was a shift in the vibes.
That's interesting. That was the first vibe shift.
That was a vibe shift. From '94 to '97 is a vibe shift.
Because I feel like Vitalogy was '94.
They came out hot with 10 and 91, versus '92 or '93.
Vitalogy is '94. That's a solid quick run.
And then I feel like they took a break, came back with No Code.
The culture was different. They were different.
And I just, for whatever reason, I wasn't a super fan.
I wasn't anticipating the new PJ by the time it came out.
And they're an interesting band, because when you study their discography,
as I've referenced before, I recently read an early draft of Stephen Hyden's forthcoming Pearl Jam book.
So I have quite a bit of information still fresh in my mind from that.
But even just in a casual way, because in his book he also notes how
No Code, their fourth album, was just like this huge turning point.
It also coincided with their Ticketmaster war.
If anybody is not aware, they waged this huge, unwinnable campaign against Ticketmaster,
standing up for what they believed in, and also for the fans.
I guess they just felt like Ticketmaster charged all this extra money, bummed them out.
They didn't like the monopoly they had on the ticketing business.
And yet, kind of nobody backed them up.
Very few of their peers really wanted to go there.
And then they had to go on a weird patchwork tour where they couldn't play certain venues,
and the fans were bummed.
So the late 90s was definitely, and certainly the No Code era was difficult for Pearl Jam.
But one interesting thing about them, even when you just casually look at their discography,
even when you just look at their Wikipedia discography, as I have many times,
I'm a big Wikipedia discography guy, as I imagine you are, Jake,
and many people listen to Time Crisis.
Wikipedia discography is a quick and easy way sometimes to get an overview of somebody's career.
And with Pearl Jam, I don't know how accurate these things are,
but with Pearl Jam, when you look at it, it gives you all the certifications as well,
which is not the only way, of course, to measure the success of music.
But in Pearl Jam's case, their first album, Ten, was such a monster hit, it went diamond.
Was that 10 million?
Yeah, it's over 10 million. 10 million or over.
I don't have this at my fingertips.
Seinfeld, maybe you could get a list of how many rock albums went diamond,
certainly in the 90s on.
You know, for Pearl Jam to go diamond, it truly is just such a level of cultural saturation and success above anything.
Nowadays, it's amazing somebody could sell 100,000 records.
Certainly to go gold or platinum is pretty wild in this era for a rock band.
But to go diamond, that just puts Pearl Jam in this funny league with, I don't know,
the AC/DCs of the world, The Eagle, the biggest rock bands of all time.
So that's their first album.
And then you just see in the US at least, every album after that kind of drops off a bit,
which you could expect.
Second album did great, like 7 million. Third album also did great, like 4 million.
They're not all going to go diamond.
But then starting with No Code, they never went more than platinum again.
They kind of entered this cruising altitude of roughly about 10% as many records as they sold on 10.
That's not like a diss, it's just like an interesting type of career.
Many bands, their first album is always going to loom large and perhaps be their biggest.
But there's something pretty wild about just coming out the gate that huge
and then just kind of by album four settling into this much humbler, mellower place.
And again, maybe to their credit, or I would say to their credit,
they weren't trying to have their fourth and fifth albums go diamond.
Yes, certainly not.
After the first record, they were defiantly anti-commercial.
Stop making videos, or at least appearing in the videos.
Yeah, to settle into a cruising altitude of platinum. Is that what that is? Is that a million?
Yeah, platinum is a million, gold is 500,000.
That's cruising altitude.
Oh yeah, absolutely.
Distinctly a different cruising altitude than the massive superstar status of their first album.
She's a empty canvas, untouched she's a clay
Worldly spread out before me, has her body still
Oh, five horizons revolve around her song
As the earth goes on
Now the air I tasted and breathed has taken a turn
Oh, and all I taught her was everything
Oh, I know she gave me all that she wore
And now my bitter hands are shaped beneath the clouds
Of what was everything
All the pictures said
Old man wants to play
Tattooed everyday
And I think you're right. I think it's at least partially by design,
they really were like doing their thing.
And I think when they entered that zone, they kind of had a real consistency.
I think for like a hardcore PJ fan, every album has something to offer.
And then also one thing about the show is that they're really great at kind of putting a set list together
where you're going to get like a bunch of the new album, a bunch of songs,
you know, if you're a casual fan, a bunch of songs, you probably don't know that well,
but they're always going to space out like the first three album material just when you want it.
Every four songs is a classic.
You're never going to be just like deep in the weeds, just being like, what the hell is this?
And also, you know, like then you hear these songs that you don't know, but it's cool.
Like there's this kind of like 6/8 kind of like African song in the middle of the set.
It's like, oh, what's this?
And it's like, oh, it's something from off Gigaton.
I'm only familiar with about half of Gigaton, the new album.
That philosophy of set list, it makes sense.
And it's consistent with their whole ethos of like after the first album,
they're not going to give everyone candy because they could come out and just do hit after hit after hit like AC/DC or something.
They could just come out and just be like, because like, yeah, there were a bunch of classics that were huge hits that they did not play.
They didn't play Jeremy. They didn't play Daughter.
But I bet they did Night 2.
I looked at the set list.
Oh, yeah.
What did they open with? Night 2, Release, dude.
I kept hoping that we would get Release.
You got to go see them again. Now you're chasing a Release.
Yeah. They played Leash.
I mean, they ended, yeah, they ended Night 2, Jeremy, Leash, Alive, Indifference.
Oh, so they did Alive both nights. Okay.
I think they do Alive every show.
But anyway, yeah, I mean, they could come out and just like melt everyone's faces with just hit after hit.
Not how they roll.
No, but it's very inspiring.
And I'm always interested in looking at Pearl Jam set list.
In fact, that's kind of like somebody, I probably told this story before on the show,
I remember like early on Father of the Bride era, probably before the album even came out,
doing some small show somewhere and somebody kind of checking out like the bigger band.
And like we were starting to mix up set list.
I just remember talking to somebody who was like, I see what you guys are doing.
Because at the time, you know, you have people being like, oh, are they trying to be a jam band?
And I remember I met this dude, I forget where he, he worked in music somehow.
He's a cool guy. And he was just like, all right, I see what you're doing.
He's like, yeah, you're not going, you're not like being like a jam band.
And I was like, no, you know, we have a couple guitar solos and stuff.
How can we go full jam band? It's like not our thing.
I was like, you know, I love the dead, but - and he's like, no, no, you're pulling more from like a Bruce PJ kind of thing.
And then I was like, I talked to him more about like, what do you mean by that?
He's like, oh, I've seen them a million times.
And I realized what he meant is just putting on a slightly different show every night,
but like mixing things up within reason, you know?
I feel like at that show or something, he's like, you guys didn't play Oxford Comma tonight.
And I was like, oh yeah, I guess we didn't.
And he was like, no, but that's cool. You know, he'll play Oxford Comma the next show.
You know, it was one of those things where he was kind of like giving me his interpretation of the PJ Bruce worldview.
And I was like, it totally makes sense because like Pearl Jam is going to give you three or four songs off 10 every night.
And, you know, when I think about like, if Vampire Weekend is ever touring our 12th album, our gigaton.
Stoked.
Oh yeah, it's going to be sick.
But I would still be proud and happy and just like almost kind of relieved to be like, you know,
if we're doing two nights somewhere in our gigaton era, Baio's like cooking up some first draft setlist,
like I'd be like, all right, let's do A Punk both nights.
Like let's not f*** around. Let's do A Punk both nights.
Maybe we only do Oxford Comma one night, you know, maybe we only do, you know, Drop A Whore Child.
You know, like start to mix it up. We already started to do it a little bit, but like,
I like that they have like the right mix of old and new.
It's neither just like, like you said, AC/DC just like, here's like the biggest hits.
Nor is it on some like f*** you s*** that's like, you really want me to play a live?
That's a different guy you're talking about.
Man, I f***ing wrote that song 30 plus years ago. Do you know how much I've changed?
No, we're giving you gigaton front to back. Like they're not, it's not that vibe either.
Out of the gates.
We're going to open with the full gigaton album.
And then after that, we're going to do, you know, five songs off a Lightning Bolt.
We're going to dig into four off the Avocado album.
And then if you guys really beg, we'll give you Last Kiss in the encore.
But that's it. That's f***ing it, man.
Where oh where can my baby be?
The Lord took her away from me
She's gone to heaven so I've got to be kind
So I can see my baby when I leave this world
We were out on a date in my daddy's car
We hadn't driven very far
There in the road straight ahead
A car was stalled and the engine was dead
I couldn't stop so I swerved to the right
I'll never forget the sound that night
The screaming tires, the busting glass
The painful scream that I heard last night
There are 39 albums that went diamond in the 1990s.
Oh, across genres.
Across genres.
In the rock genre, there was Nevermind, Nirvana, Kenny G.
Oh, that's not rock. Creed, Human Clay, 1999.
Kenny G rocks, but he's not rock.
There you go.
Creed, Human Clay. Wow, that went diamond?
Human Clay.
One of the greatest album covers of all time.
Matchbox 20, Yourself or Someone Like You.
That went diamond? Wow.
Other albums, Santana Supernatural, I think that counts.
This is a rough list.
MC Hammer, MC Ed Sink.
But very few rock albums.
Jewel, Pieces of You, is that a rock album? I guess.
Adult Content. No, that's Adult Content.
That's Pop Folk.
Hootie and the Blowfish, Cracked Rearview.
That's rock. That is rock.
Kid Rock, Devil Without a Cause.
Great album. Definitely rock.
Dixie Chicks, The Country.
Anyway, you get the idea.
I'm getting the impression, if we call Hootie and the Blowfish pop rock,
I would say Matchbox 20, solid, but pop rock.
Rob Thomas, clearly he proved himself, he's a great pop songwriter across genre.
He's just different than Eddie Vedder, just like, dude in a band.
Eddie Vedder was never going to write smooth.
Friend of the show, Alanis Morissette, famously.
Okay, that's rock. That's rock.
But in a way, as far as, she's also a solo artist, that's different.
Maybe I'm cooking the books here, but I'm kind of getting the impression,
there's only two straight up rock bands who went diamond in the whole 90s.
Nirvana and Pearl Jam.
Well, and Creed.
Creed, dude.
No, no, you're right. I was trying to figure out a way to like...
Let's not forget Creed.
I was trying to cook the books so that Creed didn't count.
Okay, there's three...
The new Pearl Jam.
Well, this goes to my, I mean, yeah, this goes to my first half of the 90s,
it was a different decade than the second half.
The second half was the, I don't know,
the sad sort of buffoonish cartoonish version of the first half.
And I mean, that's a perfect bookend.
Ten and then Human Clay.
That is so rough.
Matt, let's throw on like some song off Human Clay.
I mean, give me Higher, dude.
Higher is there alive.
Oh, absolutely.
Now go there.
Also guys, Green Day's Dookie sold almost 20 million records.
Okay, oh no, all right, we forgot about Dookie.
That's pop punk.
Yeah.
Okay, there's four rock band albums in the 90s.
Wait, so Chili Peppers, Blood Sugar Sex Magic didn't sell 10 million?
Probably Melancholy and the Infinite Sadness also, 95.
But I think that counts as like a double album maybe,
so they might be doubling it.
Back in the day when like they did weird stuff like that.
So far I'm in.
This is sounding good.
How sick would it be if Pearl Jam just dropped a Higher?
Like no commentary?
They just dropped--
Everybody's kind of like, "Wait, which song is this?"
Just kind of like nodding their heads.
Pearl Jam just unironically dropping a Creed song?
That would rule.
At the Forum?
I mean, there's no way that it would--
I'm getting goosebumps thinking about it.
But I mean, there's no way that it would be--
It's impossible for that to be unironic.
I mean, if Eddie really just like delivered it very seriously,
no smiling.
Could you do a quick number crunch on like,
has Vedder ever commented on Creed?
[imitates drumming]
This is relevant.
So I'm looking up whether or not Eddie Vedder has said anything.
At first glance, no.
However, there's an article from MTV News from 2000.
"Creed bassist disses Pearl Jam in radio interview."
Here's the quote.
So Brian Marshall, the bassist from Creed,
was on Seattle radio station KNDD in 2000,
and he said, "Eddie Vedder wishes he could write like Scott Stapp."
Then he backpedaled slightly.
I love Pearl Jam, but I just don't understand the route they took,
and I don't think it all had to do with Eddie Vedder.
So I guess he sort of caught himself,
and then he thought, "Well, let me qualify this a little bit."
Interesting.
So you said that was from the year 2000?
Yeah.
Interesting, because, you know, so this is--
Pearl Jam is entering their wilderness phase.
Records aren't selling like they used to,
kind of shunning the spotlight.
And then here comes Creed with "Human Clay,"
which is their 10.
They're going diamond.
And maybe at that moment--
This is why you got to be careful with trend forecasting.
At a certain moment, it looks like something's going to go up forever
and something's going down.
But these things--
That's not the nature of the universe, man.
You never know where it's heading.
So at that moment, he was probably like, "Pearl Jam's played out.
I love the early sh--.
They gave up.
The public's turned on them.
We're the f---ing new Pearl Jam.
We're selling more records than them in 20 years.
At minimum, we'll be doing two nights at the Forum.
Pearl Jam, they'll be playing the Troubadour."
That's how it was looking at that time.
But you got to be careful about trends.
You never know where your ceiling is.
You never know where the floor is.
I always remember I had some professor in college,
this kind of funny older dude where he talked about
being in Rochester, New York in the '60s.
Cool.
Rochester's a tight town.
I'm a fan.
But you got to picture this.
In the '60s, I think they had Xerox, IBM, and Eastman Kodak
were all headquartered in Rochester, New York.
And so for people who don't know, Rochester, New York,
it's very far from New York City.
It's basically in Canada/Pennsylvania.
Really far away.
Totally different region.
So you can imagine that at the time, people were like,
"This is like this new power center."
I mean, of course, I'm sure it already had been a power center
in some ways.
But anyway, this professor always used to tell the stories.
I remember being at--
Maybe he went to one of the many colleges in Rochester.
He was like, "I remember somebody saying at the current growth rates,"
because Rochester on the business side was so popping in the '60s
with those companies, that he's like, "I remember attending a talk
where somebody said at the current rate, like, Rochester, New York
is going to be the richest city in the world by the next century."
He was like, "The GDP of Rochester is going to equal the GDP
of like the United Kingdom," or whatever, which I'm sure was true
in the past 10 years at the explosive growth rate.
It's not even that crazy to be like, "Man, they got IBM.
They were entering the computer age in the '60s.
Maybe Rochester was going to be like the Silicon Valley."
This is before Apple, before Northern California became the center
of all that stuff.
Anyway, just an anecdote.
And Rochester is still a cool town, but obviously did not become
the richest city in the world, nor did its GDP dwarf the United Kingdom,
let alone anywhere.
You got to be careful with trend forecasting.
In the year 2000, the dude from Creed, he probably felt on top
of the world, and he felt bad for Eddie.
Maybe he wasn't even--he said, "I like him," but he was just like,
"Man, this guy lost the plot."
He said, "I don't understand the direction they took."
He seemed mystified by their flagrant anti-commercial stance
that they took.
Probably the Ticketmaster stuff was very confusing, not to mention
the palette shift and the songwriting shift from 10 to Versus.
When Eddie started to--the sense I get with 10 is it was basically
a bunch of classic rock instrumentals that the guys in Pearl Jam
had written, and then Eddie figured out vocals to sing over them.
Then starting with Versus--and maybe that's a slight exaggeration,
but I think that was kind of the vibe--and then starting with Versus,
it was like writing more collaboratively, and it was a much edgier--
my buddy Alex is going to be calling in in a second--he described Versus
as Red Hot Chili Peppers meets Fugazi, which is a really funny description
and accurate.
It's just kind of like--it's upbeat, kind of--I wouldn't say funky,
but riffy kind of rock, but then with this very confusing punk ethos
imprinted over it.
Anyway, I can see the guy from Creedus being like, "What is--what?
What is this?"
Right, and then by the time you get to No Code, getting kind of like
spiritual and kind of world music, he's just like--
Yeah, that probably just sounds like metal machine music to him
or something. It just sounds like--it just sounds like--like what?
This is f***ing insane. Although it is funny because by the time
they get to their fifth album, Yield, it's like a pretty--just like
solid, serviceable rock album.
And I guess also he was at the start of his journey with Creed.
I mean, I'm sure Creed had been around for a few years, but he was just
probably becoming part of this massive band.
Maybe another five years after that, when he'd lived a life in the spotlight
and all the frustrations and difficulties and drama that come with
being a public person and being a successful band and stuff,
I wonder if you caught up with him in 2005 and he would have been like,
"I don't know what I was talking about, man. I was early in my journey.
Now I understand exactly where Eddie and the boys were coming from.
I'm no longer mystified."
Yeah, I'm ready for Creed to make our No Code.
Man, a Creed No Code would have been sick.
A Creed No Code probably would have just sounded like the band live.
Yeah, true.
♪ You see a knock to be what ♪
♪ You measure these things by your brains ♪
♪ I sank into Eden with you ♪
♪ Alone in the church by and by ♪
♪ I'll read to you here, save your eyes ♪
♪ You lead them, your boat is at sea ♪
♪ Your anchor is up, you've been swept away ♪
♪ And the greatest of teachers won't hesitate ♪
♪ To leave you there by yourself, change your fate ♪
♪ Yeah, I alone love you ♪
♪ I alone tempt you ♪
♪ I alone love you ♪
♪ Fear is not the end of this ♪
♪ I alone love you ♪
♪ I alone tempt you ♪
♪ I alone love you ♪
Jake, you want to set this up?
This is a buddy of mine named Alex Gordelis.
He's a writer. He's a multi-hyphenate screenwriter.
He's also a journalist.
He wrote a piece many years ago,
maybe like 20 years ago on Kyle Field, Little Wings.
And then he recently wrote a piece for Vice.
Got some traction online, I think,
about the November rain video.
And there's a scene where a guy,
it's like when it starts raining at the wedding
with Axel and Stephanie Seymour,
and a guy just fully dives into the wedding cake.
So he wrote this long piece.
He tracked down who the guy was,
what the deal with the wedding cake dive was.
He's doing hard-hitting journalism.
- I love it. - Important topics like that.
That's also Donald Trump's favorite music video.
Oh, really?
Yeah, did we ever talk about this on the show?
There was this news item a few years ago.
You know how everybody who had anything to do
with the Trump White House dropped a book?
You can't even keep track of them anymore,
but all these people who clearly were drinking the Kool-Aid
and standing by him and working with him.
And then when things turned, when he's out of office,
people started to be like, "I mean, I always f***ing hated him.
Working at the White House was a nightmare."
And they put out the book immediately.
Just such flagrant cash grabs.
But I remember one of them was somebody who worked in the White House
or had some connection to him telling stories
about how weird he was.
And one of them was him just forcing the staff
to sit down and watch the November rain video.
- What? - It was something like him talking to--
Who would he have been talking to?
Like Kellyanne Conway or some spokesperson
and just being like-- - You gotta see this.
- He made some reference and somebody's like, "Oh, I haven't seen that."
He's like, "You're kidding. You gotta sit down.
This is the weirdest music video of all time."
- Let's hit pause on this policy meeting
and then watch a nine-minute music video.
- Yeah. [laughs]
Like, "Wait, wait, watch this part. The guy jumps into the cake.
Oh, hell yeah." - Stephanie Seymour, she's beautiful.
- We should ask Alex if he knows about that.
- Oh, yeah. But I guess he's also a big Pearl Jam fan.
- He's a big PJ head. Yeah, when I found out
that we were going to the show, I texted him.
I was like, "You going to this PJ show, dude?"
So, yeah, he's a big PJ head.
And I feel like he's gonna bring some insight.
- Awesome, yeah, 'cause I'd love to talk to a true head.
- PJ head. - Yeah.
- I mean, I had a great time at the show,
and I respect them deeply, but I cannot call myself a head.
- Nor I. - Maybe we'll become heads.
- Honestly, as we left that show,
if schedule had permitted and somebody said,
"You guys want to come back for night two,
roll out the red carpet for you,"
I would have been open to it.
- [laughs]
- Would that have been a hard no from you, Jake?
- I think that probably would have been a pass from me.
- No, but let's imagine that you just had nothing to do
the next day or night.
- If, like, Hannah and the baby were out of town or something,
and I just, like-- - Yes.
- Yeah, I got nothing.
- [laughs]
- That's what I'm saying.
You got absolutely nothing going on,
family's out of town.
- Uh...
Yeah, sure, yeah, let's do it.
Night two.
- And somebody offered us, like, a party bus,
so it's gonna be a smooth ride.
We can have a couple drinks on the way down in the party bus.
Not bummer sitting in traffic.
- You're gonna get Jeremy.
You're gonna maybe get Dissident, you know.
- Then, yeah, okay, I'm in.
- Two nights at the Forum.
Could have done it.
All right, but let's get Alex on the phone.
- Now, let's go to the Time Crisis Hotline.
[phone ringing]
- Hey.
- Alex.
- Alex, welcome to Time Crisis.
- Thanks, thanks, thanks.
- So, first question, Jake was just talking about
how you wrote a great piece about the November Rain music video.
That's Donald Trump's favorite music video of all time, right?
- Yeah, I heard there's a story that he, like,
made his cabinet members watch the video.
- Yes, okay, that's what I heard.
- Unproven if that's true, but yeah,
there was, like, a rumor going around.
Some reporter said that, yeah, at a cabinet meeting,
he, like, took out a laptop and made them watch the video
and said this is the greatest music video of all time.
- Now, as somebody who's clearly put a lot of,
maybe more work than anybody on Earth
into, like, studying this video
and researching it and unpacking it,
do you have any, like, gut reaction
about why he might love that video?
Is it just 'cause it rules?
- I also just have some sort of, like, nostalgia.
I feel like '92, I think, is when that video came out.
It was probably, like, his heyday in Manhattan.
He was probably, like, riding high at that time
in terms of him being on, like, the social scene in Manhattan.
Probably, yeah, just a nostalgia for '92.
- And I guess also, as we're talking about it,
if you take away any notion of morality or ethics or politics,
it might just be also as simple as just, like,
yeah, somebody being--
Like, because Trump is such a bizarre person,
when you hear these stories from when he was president,
they're tinged with weirdness
and, like, a kind of psychopathic, strange vibe.
Imagine if somebody, like, wrote a book
and they're just like, "Memories from the Obama White House."
It's like, once he stopped a meeting
to make us all watch the November rain video,
you'd be kind of like, "I didn't know Obama liked GNR."
That's tight.
- Yeah, it's a weird footnote in his presidency.
I don't know if he, like, appreciates
other Guns N' Roses songs.
I think there's also, like,
that video is so opulent and over-the-top
and, like, to his aesthetic.
- Right.
- I think that's probably a larger reason of it as well.
Just, like, the grandiosity of it is very Trumpian.
- Yes, right, that's a good point.
It's super long, it's expensive,
it's a big, giant wedding, it's big emotions.
Yeah, it's, like, similar to his work as a building developer.
He likes big, dramatic things.
- ♪ When I look into your eyes ♪
♪ I can see a love restrained ♪
♪
♪ Darling, when I hold you ♪
♪ Don't you know I feel the same? ♪
♪ Yeah ♪
♪
♪ Nothing lasts forever ♪
♪ And we both know hearts can change ♪
♪
♪ And it's hard to hold a candle ♪
♪ In the cold November rain ♪
- Before we get to the show,
tell us about your relationship to Pearl Jam.
- Oh, I'm a head. I'm a huge fan.
By my count, I've seen them 12 times.
I think this was the 12th time seeing them.
- Damn. - Whoa.
- Majority of those were, like, was--
I was in high school in the '90s,
and I lived in the Bay Area,
and they played the Bay Area pretty frequently.
- Now, are there other bands that you've seen that many times?
- Yeah, this is a good question.
People have mentioned online, like,
"Is there a band you've seen in the '90s,
the aughts, the teens, and the '20s?"
Pearl Jam is the first one I've seen all four.
- Whoa. - The other two would be
Mudhoney and the Mr. T Experience.
If I see Mudhoney and the Mr. T Experience this decade,
I will check those lists for all of them.
- Now, can you explain-- I might already have the answer,
but I'm curious to hear from a true head.
If somebody told me they've seen Mudhoney 12 times or something,
I'd be like, "All right, they love Mudhoney.
They check them out every time they come to town."
Whereas there's something about the way that people talk about
seeing Pearl Jam many times,
which weirdly seems closer to people who go see Fish or the Dead.
It seems to transcend a bit of just like,
"Oh, I like that band. I see them when they come to town."
It seems like there's a bit more of a communal experience,
a kind of deeper connection.
Can you speak to that? Is that correct?
- That's absolutely correct.
I wouldn't say that I'm a part of that community.
From what I've heard,
the people in that community call themselves the Jamily.
So people who follow Pearl Jam around on the road are the Jamily.
And it's definitely like a Dead-style thing
where they rove around, follow the band from town to town.
- We did catch--
I guess these people were probably members of the Jamily
because when you're watching this show
and I'm kind of looking for it, I'm like, "Who is the--?"
Because of course, it's such a stereotype.
If you go to a jam band show, you see an old head.
It's like, you know, there's a million signifiers, how they look.
You see a young head.
The way their hair is, the way they smell,
the clothes they're wearing.
There's so many things that broadcast,
"I dedicate my life to this music, to this community,
to this lifestyle, and I follow this band around."
At a Pearl Jam show, you're getting a lot of just like
very professional-looking Gen Xers, moms and dads, people.
You could catch it, all sorts of different stuff.
But on our way out of the show,
we were hanging in the lot for a while,
and I swear-- do you remember this, Jake?
We passed a Ford Econoline,
and it was straight up a bunch of gray-haired 55-year-olds
wearing matching flannel shirts.
It's like as if you had to--
you know, if you ask somebody,
"Pick up what somebody who follows Pearl Jam would be.
Take a deadhead, but make them for Pearl Jam."
And we saw it.
It wasn't overwhelming, but it's this one van
that was a bunch of people wearing flannels,
looking like real Pacific Northwest vibes,
and kind of cracking brews 30, 40 minutes after the show.
I don't know if that's indicative of how most people roll,
but it was a very strange scene to catch.
- Yeah, it was straight out of a Richard Linklater movie.
- And they were, like, blasting PJ out of--
like, they had the Econoline back doors open,
blasting PJ and just slamming, like, Coors Light.
[laughter]
It was a very cool scene, and yeah,
and they were probably, like, yeah, guys who were, like, 57
who have, like, been seeing PJ every year
for, like, 30-plus years.
- I think Vedder, during the show,
at some point pointed out, like,
"Oh, I see a lot of familiar faces in the front
from the previous show in San Diego."
I think he gave them a shout-out, so...
I think those people in the pit do go show to show.
It's a smaller contingent than, like,
what would follow around "Fish of the Dead,"
but they have that community. - Right.
- It goes gig to gig.
- Well, remember, like-- - Okay, but--yeah.
- I was just gonna-- like, on this live tip,
remember, like, 20 years ago,
they put out just an obscene amount of live CDs?
How many shows did they put out, Alex?
Do you remember?
- It's a really big number.
I don't know the exact number.
- It was, like, 60-- they, like, dropped, like, 60 live--
- I think it was, like, every show.
- And I still am mystified by this,
'cause, like, they--
like, sometimes Mike McReady will take, like, a long solo,
but it's, like--
they're not, like, exploring the material
in the way that, like, "The Dead" and "The Fish" do,
where-- "The Fish"--
"The Dead" and "Fish" do,
where it lends itself to, like,
"Okay, this version is truly different
than, like, a version they played a year ago,"
you know?
PJ is, like, pretty by the book
with some, like, extended solos,
which aren't very good, by the way.
And sort of, like--
I don't-- I'm so mystified by--
- Oh, yeah, we haven't talked about this.
Jake loves the show, but--
but he is not a fan of Mike McReady's guitar work.
- I'm really not a fan, but let's--
Okay. We can get into it.
- Let's keep it positive.
- [laughs]
No, I hear you.
- All right, so you're not part of the Jamily.
- Yeah.
- You're Jamily adjacent?
You're extended Jamily?
- I'm extended Jamily, for sure.
I'm adjacent.
I fell off--
previous to this show,
the last time I saw them was in 2014,
so it had been a while since I'd seen them.
- Welcome home.
- Thank you.
[laughs]
- Did you go to both nights?
- Oh, I only went to the first night.
I sat in the upper deck, back row,
and the scene around me reminded me of, like,
a Richard Linklater movie.
Like, Jake was saying, "Everybody around me."
It was weird.
It was, like, people in their 20s
who were wearing flannels
and had long hair and were headbanging.
It surprised me that there was, like,
a younger crowd sitting around me.
- Ah, I'm interested in that,
because where we were--
our friend hooked us up with, like, great seats.
I was eating some fettuccine in the Forum Club
just before we had--
- Winning time style.
- I've only been to a few shows at the Forum,
but in the Forum Club,
which is where the Lakers used to party
back in the day,
and now is just kind of, like,
a slightly corporate, like,
VIP area to get a drink and food.
Every time I go,
there's, like, a different theme for the food,
and I can't make heads or tails of it,
but--well, actually,
I saw Drake there,
and it was all, like, Southern barbecue,
and I was like, "Well, Migos was opening.
They're from Atlanta."
I was like, "All right, that kind of makes sense."
But for Pearl Jam Night, all Italian food.
[laughter]
- Well, I was sitting in the--
at the bar near the upper deck.
They were selling a drink called the Evenflow.
It was $16.50 for a Jack and Coke,
but they called the Jack and Coke an Evenflow.
- Oh, they didn't even, like, mix it up somehow
to make it--
- No.
- Picture telling Eddie that 25 years ago.
[laughter]
One day, they'll be selling a $16.50
Jack and Coke called the Evenflow.
Now he can probably laugh about it.
- ♪ Freezing ♪
♪ Rest his head on a pillow made of concrete ♪
♪ Yeah ♪
♪ Oh, feeling ♪
♪ Maybe he'll see a little better Saturdays ♪
♪ Oh, yeah ♪
♪ Oh, head down ♪
♪ Face a disease, stomach an ache, then for me, yeah ♪
♪ Ooh, yeah ♪
♪ Oh, no, friend ♪
♪ He can't help when he's happy, looks insane ♪
♪ Mm ♪
♪ Mm ♪
♪ ♪
♪ The Evenflow ♪
♪ On the road like butterflies ♪
♪ Oh, he don't know ♪
♪ So he chases them away, yeah ♪
♪ Oh, oh, something, yeah ♪
♪ The weekend is life again ♪
♪ Life again ♪
- Where we were sitting, it was very much like an older crowd,
a lot of, like, older couples, like, mom and dad's night out.
I don't think I saw a single person under 30,
but you're saying you felt there was a youth contingent
in the building.
- But it had a presence around me, yeah,
and so it was like, it made me think of, like, oh, yeah,
that would be, like, my age, I'm 41.
Like, I had friends in high school who were, like,
really into the page and plant reunion.
- Sure, yeah.
- It's the same vibe.
It's like, oh, yeah, like, these guys are from a while back.
They're from before I was born, but they're my thing.
I'm gonna go check them out.
And they were living the grunge lifestyle.
These guys, yeah, they all had long hair.
They all had flannels on.
They were headbanging the whole show.
It was funny, I mean, blah.
- So what did you think of the show?
First show in eight years.
- Been a while.
I mean, I loved the show.
I loved the energy.
I thought the band played great.
As I exited, I had a couple thoughts,
critical thoughts that I sort of went in and checked
the fan forums to see what the fans,
if they agreed with me.
And people were agreeing on these two things.
One was that a typical Pearl Jam set list
pre-pandemic is 30 songs.
And they do a 50/50 split.
So it's like 15 classics, 15 deep cuts and new songs.
- Ah, that's the formula?
- That's the formula, but the current set list,
they're doing 22 songs.
Still 50/50, so you're getting 11 deep cuts
and new songs, 11 classics.
As I left, as good as the show was,
I did feel deprived of four classics.
I felt like there was no Better Man,
no Daughter, no Rearview Mirror.
A lot of live staples weren't in the set list.
- Well, that's why you gotta go to night two.
- Night two, you heard all of them.
They switched it out.
Night two, you heard the four songs that we didn't hear.
- That's Eddie's way of signaling,
"Listen, when we do a two-night stand,
"you get your ass to both nights."
(laughing)
"I'm not giving you 30 songs night one and night two.
"I gotta pace myself."
- This is a big topic on the fan forums.
So the fans are saying the 22-song set list
is the new normal.
And they're hypothesizing that these guys are pushing 60.
I think Better's 57, Heyman's 59.
They're saying the days of the 30-song set list are over.
- That's tough.
(laughing)
That's tough.
- A lot of theories floating around.
They're like, "Maybe the forum had a curfew."
But I think all the shows have been that way.
So you're getting a show that's two hours and change
and not a three-hour show.
- Yeah, how long was this show?
- I'm happy with that.
(laughing)
- This show felt kind of like a perfect length,
although I could see--
- It flew by.
- It actually flew by.
Yeah, if they had added a few songs,
I wouldn't have been mad.
But I'm also speaking as a very casual fan.
Yeah, if I was super hardcore, maybe I'd want a bit more.
I know that with Pearl Jam fans,
the length of the show is a big thing.
I've definitely looked up longest Pearl Jam shows ever.
And it's like, I think their longest is what,
like three and a half?
- Yeah, I think probably like three and a half.
- Was this pushing like two and a half?
- I think this was like 2.15,
maybe two hours, 10 minutes, maybe.
Around there.
- That's pretty solid.
And I got another question for you.
When you talk about the classics versus new and deep cuts,
do Pearl Jam classics have to be
from the era of the first three albums?
Like how do you define classics?
Does that mean singles?
- Singles from the '90s, I would say,
is how I define the classics.
- Okay, so all the way to Yield?
- All the way to--
Yield and No Code are my two favorites.
I've had this conversation with Jake before, I think.
Yield and No Code are my personal favorites.
Going up, probably Yield, I think.
- Amazing.
(laughing)
That's incredible.
(laughing)
I've never heard Yield.
- I think No Code is really cool and underrated.
- And the two things those albums have in common
is those are the only two albums
with Jack Irons on drums,
who was the Chili Peppers original drummer.
- Okay, here we go.
- Right.
- The drummer talk was the other thing
that's all over the fan forums.
So Pearl Jam has had five drummers.
Matt Cameron has been their drummer since '98.
Just like a monster drummer, incredible drummer,
but there's a large contingent of the fans
that are critical of his tempos.
- Classic longstanding band issue.
I mean, like, the fans are hating
the Dead & Co. tempos, for instance.
- I was reading the fan forums,
people criticizing his tempo on Evenflo.
- Too fast or too slow?
- Well, here's the thing.
I looked at the video from the show we went to.
The first comment on Evenflo video on YouTube
from the show we went to was, "What's the rush, bro?"
So there's a fan definitely being critical.
His BPM, I timed it on my phone.
I got the--
- ♪ Evenflo ♪
(laughing)
(scatting)
- I got the metronome out on my iPhone,
and I timed it.
So on the album version,
the beats per minute is 105.
Live, he's pushing 120, 125.
- Oh, wow. - Whoa.
- It's a big jump.
- Bro.
(laughing)
- I feel like we've talked, too,
about maybe him being slightly too technical.
We were talking about PJ drumming,
and you were sort of saying,
or maybe we were kind of agreeing,
that if they had a less flashy,
kind of more like No Frills bar band drummer,
like Dave Krusev,
and he played on the original record,
that might be a better fit.
- Yes.
- I feel like you were saying,
I don't want to make you publicly
put Matt Cameron on blast.
(laughing)
- You were saying to me
that you thought he was too good,
like too technical.
- Too technical, I mean,
he's one of my favorite drummers ever.
- I mean, Soundgarden.
- Soundgarden, incredible.
Oh, yeah, Dave Krusev,
he's the drummer who played on 10.
There's definitely more of a swing to his playing
than what Cameron does.
And then also, Dave Abruzzese was the second drummer,
or the third drummer.
There've been five.
Abruzzese drummed on Versus and Vitology.
- Vitology, yeah.
- And also, surprisingly,
he didn't get nominated
into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame with them,
even though he plays on two of their biggest albums.
They have some differences.
But yeah, those two drummers are slower,
more feel-based drummers than, yeah,
Matt Cameron's a lot of fireworks,
a lot of technical stuff.
Big disagreements in the fan community.
- What's the rush, bro?
- What's the rush, bro, is that comment.
- Next time I meet anybody
who identifies as a Pearl Jam fan,
I'm gonna be like,
"All right, rank the five drummers in order."
- Oh, I, that's, I mean, I have a ranking.
- Please. - You do?
All right, bro, take it down.
- Jack Irons plays on my two favorites.
He's number one.
I love Matt Cameron, gonna put him two.
Dave Kruisen only played on 10, great album.
Matt Chamberlain is a drummer
who only played in the band for a month.
And he's an interesting story.
I feel like he's a minor figure
in the Pearl Jam story.
- What era?
- 10 era.
So Dave Kruisen, who played on 10,
had to go to rehab for alcoholism.
So I had to leave the band
and the band had to keep trucking on without him.
So they hire this guy, Matt Chamberlain,
who was previously the drummer
and E.D. Burkell and the New Bohemians.
- Okay.
- He drums with them for a month in '91,
like summer of '91, drums them for one month.
And then at that time, 10 was out,
but 10 took one year to take off.
10 didn't hit the Billboard Top 10
'til it had been out for almost a year.
- Wow.
- Which is unheard of now.
But so Matt Chamberlain is in the band for one month.
The band hasn't taken off yet.
Matt Chamberlain gets a call,
gets a job offer to be the drummer
in the house band for SNL.
Leaves Pearl Jam to take that job.
(laughing)
And so like, at the time,
that probably seems like a good decision.
It's like, oh, you're like filling in
on this like Seattle band
that has an album out that's not selling.
You get the call from G.E. Smith
or Lorne Michaels or whoever.
And they say, "Come join."
You get to be on TV every week.
Steady gig.
- Early '90s SNL, pretty strong cast.
- Yeah, so he left the band after a month
to take that SNL gig.
- Wow.
Has he ever done an interview?
Does he regret it?
- I don't think he regrets it.
He is like a very--
- I hope not, yeah.
I hope he doesn't regret it.
- He was on SNL for a few years, I think.
And then went on to become like
one of the top studio drummers.
He drummed on the most recent Bob Dylan album.
- Oh yeah, he's a great drummer.
I actually, I met him once at a studio
and I asked him about when Edie Burkell
and the New Bohemians opened for the dead.
- What did he have to say about that?
(laughing)
So you knew his pedigree meeting him.
You knew like, oh, this guy was in the New Bohemians.
- Yeah, I think I knew that part.
I'd never heard this SNL thing before,
but I knew that he kind of like came up with Edie Burkell.
I remember he said like, Jerry was funny.
No, no great stories, but he was just kind of like,
I just had to ask.
♪ Shooting out a chunk in the bathroom ♪
♪ Making it wet, punks on the floor ♪
♪ Living the scene out of her limousine ♪
♪ Little missus in a mini dress ♪
♪ Living it up to die ♪
♪ In a blink of the public eye ♪
♪ ♪
♪ Daglow paints on an electric chair ♪
♪ Electric dye in her lover's hair ♪
♪ A pretty sight in the middle of the night ♪
♪ Made up for everyone to see ♪
♪ Swinging on the branch of a broken family tree ♪
♪ ♪
♪ You've got a lot of living to do with that ♪
♪ You've got a lot of living to do with that life ♪
- All this is to say that you're disrespecting Dave Abruzzese?
- Oh, wait, no, no, no. - To the extent that you're
putting him dead last? - No, no, no, I left it out.
Abruzzese probably comes, has to come above Matt Chambers.
Abruzzese plays on their iconic albums,
which is why I think it's weird that they didn't induct him.
I don't know if the Hall of Fame is like whatever, but yeah, they didn't induct him.
He plays on arguably, yeah, two of their biggest albums.
- And he was a good drummer. Not arguably.
- Without a doubt, yeah, without a doubt, yeah, yeah.
- And anyway, I guess you, we forced you to rank them, so...
- Wait, so you're putting Matt Cameron above Abruzzese?
- Ah, see, now we're getting into it. I think, no.
You're right, I should probably swap him. Abruzzese, those are iconic songs,
and he played on them, you gotta give him credit.
- Do you like his playing on those songs? Do you like that snare tone?
- That's a weird snare tone, right?
- Yeah, on verses? - Yeah, it's a little thin and reedy.
- The early '90s were an insane time for snare tones across the board.
A real low point for rock snare tones.
- Yeah, it's not a great drum sound. I do like his playing, though.
And he's just funny because I think the reason why they fired him from the band
was he just loved being a rock star, and that was not their scene.
He didn't understand why they weren't making a ton of music videos,
he didn't understand why they weren't doing interviews,
he wanted to be on magazine covers.
- Yes, I've heard this story that Eddie, he wanted a moratorium on Pearl Jam Press,
and Dave Abruzzese accepted an offer to be on the cover of Modern Drummer magazine.
Eddie f***ing blew a gasket.
You Hollywood piece of s***.
- Of all the magazines. - You egotistical bastard.
You just had to be on the cover of Modern Drummer.
- Yeah, on the cover of Modern Drummer.
Obviously this is all rumor, but reading magazine articles
that Eddie didn't like that he wore track suits also,
I think he wore Adidas track suits.
I think that was not in step with the Pearl Jam image.
And unfortunately, he got a big Pearl Jam tattoo.
- I think he's a little bit biased.
- Yeah, I think so.
- And Abruzzese also was born in Stamford, Connecticut,
so Jake's got a ride for him.
He's a Connecticut rocker. Tri-state area rocker.
- Okay, gotta add him to the pantheon.
- What was your thoughts on the show?
How did you guys feel about the set? How Pearl Jam played?
Because you're casual fans, did it bug you that almost half the set was songs off of gigaton?
- I did my research, you know, like it's a kind of a when in Rome situation.
If you know you're traveling to another country, you should familiarize yourself with the cuisine.
If you know you're going to see Pearl Jam in 2022, you gotta throw on gigaton that day.
- For sure.
- And we both did. So, I actually, you know, I felt like by showtime,
I was familiar with at least three or four of the songs they played off the new album.
And I enjoyed them.
And then I was pleasantly surprised. I was saying to Jake,
there was this one kind of like African groove in 6/8,
that song that they dropped called "Buckle Up".
I was like, this is either from the new album or from No Code.
I looked it up later, it was from the new album.
And I was like, it was like provided a totally different feel, a different moment in the set.
It was a good song.
I got blood, blood on my hands
The stain of, of a human
I finally awoke to my mother's wrath
Cold lies, bed sores and sponge baths
Firstly do no harm
Then put your seatbelt on
Buckle up
Buckle up
- And also, as we were discussing, you know,
they're really good at kind of like spacing things out.
- For sure. Yeah. There's a good flow to the set.
Like when the classics do hit, it's a big moment.
And like, yeah, it keeps you engaged the whole time.
- Also, I mean, they would take these little mini set breaks
where all the lights would come down except for a light on Eddie.
And he would do like a good three, four minutes of banter.
- His banter, yeah, his banter was surprisingly good.
- Is that a classic Pearl Jam thing that Eddie talks a lot?
- That is a classic thing.
Definitely like going into like after an encore break,
he'll do like a two or three minute speech usually.
And yeah, sometime in the middle of the regular set,
he'll go off and do a speech.
- He did a couple. I mean, there was the Howard Zinn shout out.
- Which I didn't follow. I was trying to like,
I heard him mention Howard Zinn.
- That was the least coherent.
You could tell he was freestyling.
Also, he's drinking a bottle of red wine throughout the show,
which we were both very surprised by.
Just not that he would be drinking on stage,
but just like red wine and his voice sounded great.
- Yeah.
- And he didn't have any water on stage.
And he drank from the red wine bottle probably like a half dozen times,
which is like the driest possible drink.
- Yes. And he did make a comment though,
that like the red wine straight from the bottle
is something he usually does during shows.
And he made a comment that he'll also drink from it
and pass it around the audience.
- But he said he doesn't do that anymore due to COVID, right?
- Yeah. Can't do that anymore due to COVID.
He's like, I'd give it to you, but I can't.
So he keeps the red wine to himself.
- So the guy loves red wine.
So that's a classic move.
Full bottle of red wine.
That's unique.
- Put down a full bottle of red wine.
Some of his like moments were just like telling these great,
engaging, funny stories.
Like he was being at the forum.
He talks about the history of the forum.
Then he tells a funny, sad story about him being 14
and coming to see Pink Floyd, the wall tour,
smoking weed with his buddy in the car.
And he started to get anxious.
I don't want to miss the show, man.
The guy's like, hold on, hold on, let's finish the joint.
And then the guy finally realizes he doesn't have the tickets
to the show.
Eddie's crestfallen.
And then the guy's like, well, okay, hold on.
Maybe we could buy a ticket.
And the guy had just had enough money to buy himself a ticket.
So young Eddie Vedder had to sit in the parking lot
of the forum for like three hours while his buddy went
and watched the show he had hoped to see and came out.
And then he had like really good timing
and everybody was like, aw.
And then Eddie goes, but look at me now.
(laughing)
I was like, all right.
- It was a well-crafted story, yeah.
- Yeah, yeah, he's got top shelf banter.
But the one moment where we thought it was a little bit
incoherent, although still charming and funny,
he just went on this thing about like,
you know, Bill Burr played here last night at the forum
and people were like, kind of like, woo, all right.
He's like, he's from Boston.
And you know, because like the forum still represents
the Lakers to people and they famously had the rivalry
with the Celtics, there's a little bit of like rumbling,
like Boston.
And he's like, you know, I love Boston.
People are like, what?
And he's like, you know, my favorite person from Boston
is Howard Zinn.
- It was a weird left turn.
- The Bill Burr to Howard Zinn thing.
But no, all in all, A plus banter.
And that really gave the show a kind of like,
even though you're in this big arena,
and Pearl Jam, they do, do they always do 360 seating?
- And all the times I've seen them, surprisingly,
this is the first time I've ever seen them indoors.
- Oh, oh, interesting.
You've seen them at amphitheaters and--
- Amphitheaters.
The first time I ever saw them was in '95.
They played the Polo Field in San Francisco.
Infamous show.
- Sick.
- Eddie started vomiting during--
- Oh, and then Neil Young came out?
- Yeah, it was a show, there was like 60,000 people there,
their biggest show to date.
And like six songs into the set,
he just started vomiting on stage.
- What?
- And had to bail.
- Stomach flu?
- He said he ate like a bad tuna sandwich at the hotel,
something like that.
- He's like, "This bottle of red wine is skunked.
"Oh no."
- So he had to leave,
and then Neil Young was hanging out backstage,
and at the time,
Neil Young had just made the album Mirrorball
with Pearl Jam.
And so Neil came out and played like an hour and a half set instead.
And Pearl Jam was embarrassed
because the fans were not cool with Neil coming out.
I think there was some booing going on
when it was announced that Eddie Vedder wouldn't be returning.
- Who the hell is Neil Young?
- Yeah, that was the vibe.
There's a place called downtown
Where the hippies all go
And they dance the Charleston
And they do the limbo
Yeah, the hippies all go there
'Cause they wanna be seen
It's like a room full of pictures
It's like a psychedelic dream
Downtown, let's go downtown
Downtown at night
Downtown, let's have a party
Downtown at night
- What's the origin of the name Pearl Jam?
Like, what is that?
Is that something that's found around a pearl?
Like, what is the etymology?
- I mean, does anybody wanna field this?
- Well, I mean, the popular myth is that it's a...
[bleep]
- Yeah.
- I mean, they're probably gonna bleep this out on the show, but...
- Oh my God, I've never heard that in that context before.
Oh no.
[laughter]
I didn't realize that was the thing, for real.
- Wait, did you really not know?
- I truly did not know.
I've never known that in my life.
I wasn't trying to...
- On the one hand...
- ...publicate you to talk about...
- Was it known for a fact that the band...
in the band's mind in 1991, that that's what it was referencing?
- I've read interviews, like at the time,
obviously when you're a new band, you get the question,
"Where'd you come up with your band name?"
They would get that in early interviews,
and they would have a made-up story of like,
"Oh, one of us has a grandmother named Pearl,
and she used to make jam."
They would just tell a nonsense story.
- That's what I'm seeing.
Vedder said the name Pearl Jam was a reference
to his great-grandmother, Pearl.
- Also, there's like classic rock connotations
to both words, "jam" and "Pearl" is Janis Joplin.
There's like, I don't know.
- It's... - It's also Pearl Drums.
- Yes, exactly.
- Famous brand of drums.
It's a cool name.
I mean, I don't love the male ejaculate association.
[laughter]
Although, when you think about Pearl Jam
being kind of a very late period classic rock band,
it's a pretty appropriate name.
- Right, it's just a bunch of dudes on stage.
- They're just, yeah, I mean, that's the ethos
of a lot of classic rock, maybe.
- Is this a well-known expression, though?
Like, when you were kids?
- No, no, no, no.
- So you learned about this.
- The first time I ever heard the term Pearl Jam
was in relation to the band.
- And did it immediately click for you?
- No. - No.
- When I was 14? - No, okay.
- No, it was many, many years later
that I heard, more of an urban legend, really,
in my book, that I would hear someone be like,
"Oh, you know what that's in reference to?"
And I'd be like, "Oh, that actually does make sense."
I had that moment that you just had, Seinfeld,
like 15 years ago or whatever.
- Same, same, I probably, like, grew up through that,
I was gonna dawn on me.
I was like, "Oh, is that what that means?"
- Wow. - Did you guys buy
any merch at the show?
- Well, our friend Brian did.
He bought our whole crew some bootleg merch.
So Jake and I now have matching
three-quarter length Pearl Jam bootleg baseball shirts.
If we ever started, like, a softball team.
- Yeah, talk about Richard Linklater.
Man, the three-quarter length T-shirts.
- Yeah. - Yeah, after the show,
we did, like, parking lot hot dogs.
- Ooh, that was so good.
- And Brian scored those shirts.
We did, like, a solid, like, 25-minute parking lot
kind of hang afterwards, which felt great.
- It's a real classic rock experience.
- Yeah. - Yeah, I definitely felt like
I was starting to understand the jamily
and the Pearl Jam ethos, and I'll definitely catch
another Pearl Jam show in the future.
And as Jake was saying, there's a lot of songs we missed.
- Got ahead of multiple shows on the tour to hear 'em all.
- It's time to getcha.
And I could see how even if each song
is not particularly different, you get a different set list,
you get some different banter, different vibe at the show.
In some ways, that's enough to, like,
want to catch a few shows on a tour.
- Yeah. - We heard another one
of our producers, Colin, who's a big Pearl Jam head,
said that on some of the fan forums,
there was discussion that the audience was subdued
or low energy at this show.
That was not my experience.
- No, I checked the forums.
The forums I read said the opposite.
They were like, "This was a better crowd
"than the San Diego show the night before."
- Hmm. - "I heard the San Diego show
"was subdued. I heard that this crowd
"was pretty lively and energetic."
Yeah, around me, everyone was, like, on their feet,
headbanging when appropriate.
- Yeah, it seemed like everybody there was having a ball.
- Yeah, it was a good time.
And I could see down in the pit, there was no--
obviously, people don't mosh anymore at these shows.
But... - Yeah, maybe a bit of, like,
head-- dramatic head movements.
- Yeah. - No moshing.
One more question for you.
Even though you've seen Pearl Jam 12 times,
are there any songs that you're chasing
or that you're dying to see one more time?
- Oh, yeah, because with "No Code"
being my favorite album,
"Hail, Hail," track two off that album,
one of my favorites,
didn't play it, haven't seen it on
any of the recent setlists.
But yeah, I'd chase that one for sure.
- But that's the type of song they'll definitely drop
a few times on this tour, right?
It's not like they go years without playing it?
- It seems like it's a song they played frequently.
I checked the setlists.
I think they've done four or five shows so far.
It hasn't appeared yet.
May have been, you know, retired for this tour.
But yeah, it seems like a standard.
Yeah, I'd want to hear it.
- I got one last question.
What's the most memorable cover that you've seen them play?
- One time I saw them open for
the Rolling Stones. - Whoa.
- At the Oakland Coliseum.
'97. They played four nights in a row,
opening for the Stones,
and they covered "Beast of Burden."
- Whoa.
- That's cool. - Covering the band.
- I think
they said something before, like,
"We checked with the Stones to make sure they weren't going to play this one
tonight, and we're going to play it."
- That was the first thing that came to mind.
- That's the first time I've seen a band
cover the band they're playing with.
- That's a cool move. - Yeah.
- Bands should do that more.
- My first thought, before you told me that they
said it in the banter, was,
as you described it, I could already have an image
in my head of Eddie
knocking on Mick's door and just being like,
"Now, Mick, I wanted to run.
I'm a huge fan, first of all,
carrying, like, a few records,
and I'd love for you to sign this copy of Goat's Head Soup,
but also,
this idea. I will spike it immediately
if you have any problem with it,
but we want to play Beast of Burden.
Guy's worked up a pretty solid cover.
What do you say?"
Mick was just like, "Yeah, alright, alright.
It's fine, it's fine.
Yeah, we're not going to play it."
Eddie seems like he's such a reverent, fan-type
dude. - Yeah.
- I couldn't picture him, like, trolling
the Stones. - Yeah, wouldn't do it without their
permission, for sure. - I wonder if he went
individually to each member of the band.
Knocked on Ronnie's door.
Got a minute? - That's, I mean, there's
a legend that, like, the bad blood
between Nirvana and Pearl Jam
came from, uh,
there was a legendary
show, uh, the Chili Peppers,
Nirvana, and Pearl Jam, but the Cow Palace
in San Francisco. - Ah, I've heard about that tour. - I was not
there, but Pearl Jam was the first
band on, and as a joke, they
covered, like, a minute of Smells Like Teen Spirit.
- Ah. Eddie learned
his lesson. - Yeah, and I think
that Nirvana was not cool with that.
Uh, and that may have...
There was already, you know, some
- Tension. - Yeah,
tension between the two bands. - Yeah.
- And that didn't help things. - Kurt was famously
not a fan. - Famously, yeah, yeah.
- Always ask when you're gonna cover
the Headliners song.
Even if it's just a little tease.
Alright, well, thanks so much, Alex, for calling in.
- Thanks for having me on, guys.
- Yeah, we'll definitely have you back in the future,
and, um, if you catch any
DJ shows over the next few months on this tour,
let us know. We'll be back sooner rather than later.
- Yeah, I'll call in from the road, yeah.
- Alright, have a good one, man.
- Thanks, later, guys. - Peace.
- Peace.
It's broke off, but it's a hurt All I want for you to make love to me
Oh, I'd, I'd never be your beast to burn I'd walk for miles, but my feet would hurt
All I want for you to make love to me
Am I hard enough? Am I rough enough? Am I rich enough? I'm not too blind to see
As is often the case in this era of time crisis, we like to cover Pearl Jam and horse meat.
That's our bread and butter. People wanted us to stop talking about the Grateful Dead and Flaming Hot Cheetos.
Well, guess what? Here you go. Pearl Jam and horse meat.
I don't want to actually put in too much work to do it, but sometimes when there's a, I come across a phrase that has like four syllables,
I like to do it to the tune of, remember that Fat Joe song, The Rockaway that has the part.
So anyway, we're talking about Starbucks horse meat, so I can't help but want to go Starbucks horse meat.
I don't know that song. You don't remember? Throw on The Rockaway real quick. Oh, it's called Lean Back.
Lean Back.
Bucks horse meat.
I think you said this was a Billy Joel song. No, Fat Joe.
Here, throw it on for the beginning again. One more time. I'll get it right.
Bucks horse meat. Starbucks horse meat.
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Kazakhstan, where you can get a horse meat salad at Starbucks.
And to all the Americans hating, because you can't get horse meat at your Starbucks or any restaurant. Keep your comments to yourself.
We from the Bronx, New York. Kids clapping. Let us walk the place.
Half the *** in the squad got a scar on their face. It's a cold world and this is ice. Half a mil for the chump. This is life.
Got the Phantom in front of the building. Trinity, yeah. Ten years, been legit. They still figure me bad.
As a young ***, was too much to cope with. Why you think? Mom *** nicknamed me Coochie Coochie.
Should have been called armed robbery, stall **** or maybe grand larceny. I did it all to put the pieces to the puzzle.
This is long. I knew me and my people was gun bubble. Came out the gate, known as the flow Joe.
Fat **** with the shot, he was the logo kid. Said my *** don't dance, we just pull up our pants and do the rockaway.
Now lean back, lean back, lean back, lean back. I said my *** don't dance, we just pull up our pants and do the rockaway.
Now lean back, lean back, lean back, lean back.
This is very interesting because there's actually quite a bit happening with Starbucks. I don't know if you saw that what went down with the actor James Cromwell in New
York.
No, I did not see. Seinfeld, can we get a scene report from the New York Starbucks where James Cromwell protested?
Sure, yeah, I'm on the site right now at the Starbucks in New York where actor James Cromwell, who plays Uncle Ewan on Succession, glued his hand to a counter at
Starbucks.
This was in protest of Starbucks is extra charge for plant based milk. Now, James Cromwell did not do this on his own.
He didn't do this solo. This was part of a protest organized by the animal rights group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.
That's PETA for short. Apparently, the increased price for plant based milk is seen as a deterrent from buying plant based milk.
So that's what they were protesting. The additional price is a way to sway people towards still buying animal based milk.
So that's what happened. There is a line in this article that's pretty interesting.
Cromwell glued his hand to the counter, then later used a knife to scrape it off.
Police said there were no arrests. So that's pretty hardcore. Super glue.
It's like chaining yourself to a tree before they can cut it down.
Was it really super glue? Because if you super glued your hand to a counter, that'd be like crazy, right? You might lose skin.
I mean, this article, NPR that I'm reading, they use the word super glue, but here's how they say it.
They say actor James Cromwell has gone from Succession's Uncle Ewan to real life super glue-in.
They put a little rhyme in there.
Real life super glue-in.
Yeah. Now that's the only place where I can see that it was super glue. Maybe there are other articles.
Yeah. I mean, all the headlines say super glued.
Super glued. Well, all right.
Was he by himself?
He was with another activist. But I got to say, the reason I think of it is because it's an interesting juxtaposition that in the US you have a PETA activist, like actor
James Cromwell, super gluing their hand and doing this kind of intense thing
because they think it's wrong that they charge more for nut milks than they do for cow's milk.
But I wonder if he's even aware that out in Kazakhstan, Starbucks serves horse meat.
He's going to need a lot of super glue when he hears about this.
He's going to be rolling out like 10, 20 activists deep, just full body super glue at every Starbucks in Kazakhstan.
I heard about this because my friend Laura saw that on Instagram somebody was traveling and they took a picture of the kind of, you know, deli counter, you know, the
little fridge in front of the counter at a Starbucks in Kazakhstan where they were serving salad with horse meat.
So, she sent me the little picture, salad with horse meat. And I was like, for real? Wow.
Of course, I'm very aware as a horse meat entrepreneur that horse meat is sold all over the world.
But I was still kind of surprised that an American company like Starbucks, even in a different region, would be selling horse meat.
I was very fascinated by it. And then we did some research and not only do they sell horse meat salads, they sell horse meat sandwiches.
So, they're really all in on horse meat in Kazakhstan.
We looked at a trip advisor for one Kazakhstan Starbucks and some of the travelers said it's a really good option.
Bread is freshly baked. The horse meat sandwich is pretty good.
Pretty good.
They have chicken sandwiches and horse meat sandwiches, which is maybe how it should be in the U.S. too.
But yeah, I gotta say, I'd be very surprised if you told me McDonald's was serving horse meat anywhere in the world. Maybe I'm wrong.
You would think Starbucks corporate would be afraid that this would blow back on them on the internet.
And they'd be like, would call the Kazakhstan regional manager and be like, we gotta cool it with the horse meat.
I mean, good for them for being brave. Because obviously, there's a huge bias against horse meat in the U.S.
The current administration, Joe Biden, was very involved in banning it. He and his brother, very anti-horse meat.
So, you know, Starbucks is not afraid to make a political statement by saying, hey, we can't serve it in America, but we're going to serve it in Kazakhstan because
that's how we roll.
Starbucks is pro-horse meat. I doubt any of the other giant American global chains, Subway, Burger King, KFC are doing horse meat anywhere.
Unless Seinfeld. Can you find anything? I think Starbucks might be one of the only pro-horse meat American fast food chains.
Yeah, I mean, there was that incident at IKEA where horse meat was discovered in the meatballs.
But I think they were like quick to, they were like, oh, no, no, no, no, no.
That was, yeah, that was a mistake. Like a horse fell in. Like they weren't like, you know, they weren't owning it.
I'm sorry, but if you order meatballs, you should assume it's some mix of various meats, including horse meat.
You're going to get a hodgepodge. Everybody knows that. It's in the name.
In my life, I operate by every time I eat a meatball, I assume there's horse meat in it unless proven otherwise.
Horse meat until proven guilty is how you're.
I found an article, but I found an article, but it's sort of like all about like, oops, like similar to IKEA, like Taco Bell accidentally had a horse meat thing.
Burger King. Accidental horse meat. Damn. The new album from Guided by Voices.
Accidental horse meat.
Nobody's really owning it. No, I don't think there's a chain that's really like.
Starbucks is the only company doing purposeful horse meat.
Proudly doing horse meat. Owning it. Living it.
You could imagine Howard Schultz of Starbucks when he heard about the James Cromwell thing saying,
you're really complaining that we charged a quarter more for coconut milk.
You think I give a **** about you super gluing your hand? Mother******.
My company serves horse meat. I'm giving zero ****.
By the way, like, again, just to go back to that little two line sort of snapshot of what happened.
Cromwell glued his hand to the counter, then later used a knife to scrape it off.
Police said there were no arrests. So in other words, Cromwell glues his hand to the counter.
Everybody kind of goes like, all right, like it doesn't just doesn't sound like a rowdy protest.
It sounds like he sort of sat there with his hand glued and then eventually nothing like police didn't apprehend anybody.
And he goes, OK, well, I guess that's, you know, enough time has passed.
I'm going to now scrape this off by myself in front of everybody.
It just seems like a little bit of a peaceful protest.
Oh, yeah, it's totally with a dramatic. OK, to be fair, here we are talking about it.
I had no idea that Starbucks charges more for nut milks.
I would assume it just has something to do with the price of nut milks.
But maybe James Cromwell's point is I don't care if the nut milk costs you more. Make it the same.
Charge the same. And it's 50 cents more for the plant based than the nut based.
Per drink. Like a 12 ounce cup.
Breaking news. Starbucks now to charge 50 cents for cow's milk.
Not to dwell on this, but it just feels like what I'm trying to say is like Jane Fonda.
Like, do you remember she protest? She was arrested a couple of years ago for like protesting on the Capitol steps or something like that.
It was a big thing. It just feels like this was maybe a little bit more anticlimactic than that.
There was no lower stakes. That's that's kind of what I'm. But but you're right.
We're talking about it. I'm picturing him with his hands stuck to the counter.
And after it's been like 40 minutes, people coming in and being like, is that the actor?
What's his name? James Cromwell, sir. Are you all right? Then he's like, he's a pretty old guy, too.
He's probably. Yeah, he's got one hand on the counter.
Maybe it looks like he's probably leaning on the counter, like supporting himself.
Like, well, he was, you know, he was also reading a kind of like statement and he's wearing like a T-shirt, a PETA T-shirt.
So I saw the video on his phone. Right. Yeah. I don't know if eventually things calm down.
You just sitting there. The most interesting thing about. Are you in line? Props to him.
He's doing his thing. One of the most interesting things I found about the video is he's so he's sitting there on the counter and like right in front of the cash registers.
And you just see the people who work there kind of confused and they're just trying to direct people saying, yeah, I can take your order over here because like they just
can't stop working.
So they're just a little bit like, yeah, how can I help you? And it's just a kind of an awkward scene.
Starbucks and the vegan upcharge. Accidental horse meat, vegan upcharge. The vegan upcharge.
That was accidental horse meat with the vegan upcharge.
The vegan upcharge. Well, now everybody knows that Starbucks is anti-vegan and pro-horse meat.
So make of that what you will. We're not judging. It's a crazy world. You do what you got to do, Starbucks.
All right, let's get in the top five.
It's time for the top five on iTunes.
OK, so this week on the top five, we're comparing the top five songs of today with the top five Billboard hits this week in 1991.
Is that correct? Yep. Why 1991?
Even flow. Gotta rise like butterflies.
What's he saying there? Gotta rise like butterflies?
I think so. That's the year that Ten came out. 31 years ago.
So your Pearl Jam hit the scene with their hit album Ten. The number five song this week.
So actually, you know, just to be clear, because we're doing 91 and it's May, we're kind of jumping into the time just before Ten came out.
So this is like we can kind of imagine this is what 1991 was like before Nirvana.
Well, before Nevermind, before Ten by Pearl Jam, before Blood Sugar Sex Magic. All those albums came out towards the end of the year.
I think before Metallica Black Album too. Wow. OK, so we're still in the 80s, basically.
Yeah, it's May 91. It could be 89. Bill Clinton wasn't president yet. Yeah. George H.W. Bush.
OK, the number five song this week, 91, Kathy Dennis with Touch Me All Night Long.
Have you ever heard of Kathy Dennis? Not familiar. Never heard of her.
Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh. Good vibe.
You know, the song is over. Oh, interesting.
Kathy Dennis went on to become a very successful songwriter for other artists.
She worked on Toxic for Britney Spears, Can't Get You Out of My Head for Carly Minogue and I Kissed a Girl for Katy Perry.
All right.
Still kind of feels like the 80s. Yeah. 80s dance hit.
Like if I just heard this and someone was like, guess the year, I'd be like 1988.
Yeah, I would say 89.
This is funny because it's like it's kind of like club music, but above all, it has like mall energy.
Yeah, there's a little bit of like a kind of Debbie Gibbs and Tiffany feel with like the vocals and the songwriting over like the light club music.
Kind of has like a Japanese feel. I feel like if you're watching like an old anime and if it was in Japanese, this would be like the outro music.
All right, let's keep moving. The number five song this week, Lady Gaga Withhold My Hand.
Oh, you know, I've been wanting to hear this song. Hello, old friend.
And this is also co-written and co-produced by my dear friend Blood Pop.
So this is from the first single from the new Top Gun soundtrack.
This guy has 1991 energy so far.
I see that you're hurting. Why'd you take so long to tell me you need me?
I see that you're bleeding. You don't need to show me again.
But if you decide to, I'll ride in this life with you.
I won't let go till the end.
So fly tonight.
OK, definitely 80s throwback chorus.
Yeah, going first. Well, I guess because they need to deliver a "take my breath away".
Right.
I won't leave till I understand.
Promise me just hold my hand.
Raise your head. Look into my wishful eyes.
That fear that's inside you will lift again in time.
I like the vibe.
Combining a kind of 80s grandeur with like a modern pop sensibility.
It's tough, though, because the movie's a throwback to the big 80s hit with the iconic "take my breath away".
It's like if you're going to be dipping your toes into those waters of 80s, it's hard for me not just to want to hear "take my breath away".
Well, let's not take my breath away.
I just kind of want to hear that.
Watching every motion in my foolish love's hand.
See, yeah, they're going for almost like kind of like a big pop metal thing.
The thing about Berlin is that they're a new wave band.
I love their early shit, like that song "The Metro".
Oh, I don't know that stuff.
Oh, yeah, it's like cool.
Turning every turn into some secret place inside.
Beautiful song.
Yeah.
Did the band Berlin write this song?
Take my breath away.
Oh, this song was written by Giorgio Moroder.
Oh, the whole song?
Yeah, the whole song.
From Whitlock.
Wow, Giorgio Moroder, what a guy.
Got to rewatch "Top Gun".
Jake, are you going to go see the new "Top Gun"?
No.
I'm hearing word that it rules.
Have you heard that?
I wasn't a fan of the first one, really.
I don't -- I'm really not that interested, but I'll probably see it on HBO Max like a month after it comes out.
I'm behind on movies, man.
I haven't seen the new "Batman".
I haven't seen everything, everywhere, all at once.
I haven't seen "The Northmen".
Oh, I saw that the other night.
Oh, which one?
Last night.
Which one?
"Northmen".
Ezra, you see "Northmen"?
I saw all three of those movies, Jake, in theaters.
Oh, [bleep] man.
I can't get it in my schedule.
I mean, as discussed, I got a looser schedule.
Yeah.
You got detail-oriented.
I've also increasingly, when my schedule changes or when I realize I have some time free during the day,
now I'm just in this kind of -- after having not done it for a while, I'm getting into this zone of just like, "I'm going to go to the movies.
I'll go solo.
I'll go with a friend if they're around."
Dude, it's awesome.
I mean, I'm jealous.
If I didn't have such a kind of intense deadline situation with paintings,
I would totally go with you at 2 in the afternoon on a Tuesday to the Glendale Galleria and see "The Northmen."
After you finish your next big show.
Yeah, we'll get there.
We're hitting some Tuesday 1/15 film screenings.
Oh, hell yeah.
Seinfeld, did you like "The Northmen"?
You know, I saw it very late with some friends, and I was -- you ever go to see a movie very tired?
What time was the screening?
Did you fall asleep?
Honestly, this hasn't happened to me in a long time, but I was a little bit in and out of sleep.
And I was forcing myself to try to stay awake.
I was very tired that day.
The screening was -- we went to a 10 p.m. show at -- yeah, 10 to 12.
Oh, dude.
Tuesday night.
That's wild.
I saw a morning show of "The Northmen" just jacked up on coffee.
Oh, yeah.
No, I was the opposite end of that spectrum.
It was at TCL Chinese Theater on Hollywood Boulevard, which also added a little bit of --
Hectic.
I don't know, a little hectic, a little extra exhaustion.
Well, that's an interesting movie to be in and out of sleep of.
And on the one hand, it's a pretty mainstream Viking movie, blood and gore and action.
But it's also, as many people know, the director is -- he's coming from a slightly more artistic place.
And it's very surreal and trippy.
There's some drug ceremonial moments.
The entire score is just big movie drums, but also like --
[imitates drum roll]
Like drones?
Yeah, weird drones.
Like Sicario-style?
Very intense.
Bjork was cool in it.
I liked Bjork's appearances.
It was like the perfect role for her.
I want to see the movie.
I mean, I just hate hearing this.
I'm very jealous.
Okay, I won't say any more.
The one thing I'll say about "Batman" -- I always like going to the movies.
I've never walked out of a movie in my life.
Agreed.
Good, bad, whatever.
I'm happy to be there.
It's meditative, going to darkroom.
The one thing I'll say about "Batman" -- three hours long.
Literally, three full hours.
Longer than a PJ show in 2022.
You're not getting a PJ show that long.
I'm sorry, but I just don't believe that "Batman" movies should be longer than Pearl Jam shows.
What is going on with 2022?
Could this year suck any worse?
That's a really solid policy.
Now, this year's okay, but I don't like where culture's heading
when "Batman" movies are longer than PJ shows.
I've only walked out of one movie in my life, and I'll tell you,
I was 14 years old, and I saw a matinee screening of "12 Monkeys" with Bruce Willis,
which I know is a great film, but at the time, I was like,
"You know when you're young and you're not acclimated to--?"
I was into Ace Ventura and stuff, and then I'm like, "12 Monkeys" was so depressing,
and I was like, "I can't deal with this."
Wow, it was too hard for you.
It was monochromatic and very bleak, and I was just like, "This is making me sad."
Okay. Well, I respect--
You have to get out. I was 14. Keep that in mind.
I respect walking out of a movie because it makes you sad.
Walking out of a movie because it sucks, I don't respect.
Because sometimes life sucks, and you can't walk out of that.
That's my two cents.
Damn, that's deep.
Let's get back to the top five.
The number four song this week in 91, "CNC Music Factory"
with "Here We Go, Let's Rock and Roll."
I mean, I know "CNC Music Factory." I don't know--
This title.
This is 1957?
The "CNC Music Factory" is like dance music.
This sounds great.
That kind of metal guitar in the beginning was like,
"Oh, you thought we were going to actually make some rock and roll?
No, that s--t sucks. Here's some good music."
Oh, man. That--
Those power chords. Yeah.
Okay, this is not "CNC Music Factory's" best song.
Yeah, kind of filler.
This guy also reminds me of Ice-T.
Yeah, yeah. He sounds like Ice-T.
I think in my head I always thought it was Ice-T.
I mean, I knew it wasn't, but when I would hear "CNC Music Factory,"
I'd be like, "Ice-T isn't his band."
You know what I think is a slightly better 1991 combination
of rock and dance music?
"Black and White" by Michael Jackson.
Same vibe.
What year was the "Judgment Night" sound--
That was a little later. That was like '93.
Oh, yeah. A little bit later.
All right, let's keep moving. The number four song this week.
Yeah. Yeah?
I was going to say, in some other episode, we could do the "Judgment Night" soundtrack.
We could listen to the entire soundtrack.
Oh, classic. Yeah, I only know a few songs off of it.
I've never gone-- Yeah, I don't really know it.
I know the "Teenage Fan Club," "De La Soul Song," "Fallen,"
the "Sonic Youth" and "Cypress Hill."
Number four, Taylor Swift, "This Love," Taylor's version.
So this is a single she re-recorded
from her hit album, "1989."
Remember the conversation we had when she first started doing her Taylor's version of stuff?
Yeah.
I think about that a lot because
we were talking about how people have tried to re-record music throughout history
and it almost never works.
Right.
Because it doesn't sound anything like it.
And only in this century
Yeah.
can somebody reproduce their music so faithfully
because they can use the same sounds. It's all digital.
And anytime I hear anybody talk about, like, culture being stuck
or, like, there being no ideas,
I just always think, like, "Well, yeah, it's technology."
We're in this moment where you're never far away from anything anymore.
Right. I mean, the technology is improving every year,
but it's basically improving on last year's model.
So it's the same aesthetic.
Whereas, yeah, in the 1670s, it would be wild.
Like, yeah, Beatles starting on a four-track and ending on a 16-track.
Right.
Yeah, any number of, like, innovations are happening.
The Beatles could not re-record their music from the '60s
in a convincing way because technology was different
and it made time feel different.
So this is no knock to Taylor Swift.
It's, like, pretty amazing that she can do this.
But it's just, like, technology, time,
this weird century we're in,
it all kind of goes together.
Well, she's also re-recording this stuff, like, hilariously,
like, soon after she made the original recordings
because I feel like we've talked about
Def Leppard re-recording "Hysteria," like, 25 years after they did it.
And it's just, like, they can't--
Technology aside, like, as humans,
I don't think they could, like, recreate that.
No, sir.
And I don't think Taylor could re-record this
as convincingly in, like, 20 years.
Right.
But this is, like, what? Like, when is this album from?
I think this is, like, eight years old.
This is from, like, 2015 or '16 or something?
Seven or eight years old.
Yeah, yeah.
Not that long.
Also, it's a good way to get your songs back in the top five.
Yeah.
If you're a superstar.
Back to 1991. This is "High Five" with "I Like the Way,"
the kissing game.
I don't know if I know this song.
Very consistent palette so far of '91.
Yeah.
You know who would definitely know this song?
I do.
[Laughs]
Rashida would definitely know it.
Right. Early '90s R&B.
Obscure.
Well, it's not--
Long lost hits.
It's produced by Teddy Riley. He's very fam--
I mean, I don't know how famous "High Five" was in '91.
Nice long intro here.
Yeah, surprisingly long intro.
All right, not bad.
All right, we got to keep moving though.
Yeah.
This is a Pearl Jam episode.
The number three song this week in 2022,
Kendrick Lamar with "The Heart Part V."
Oh, wow.
Have you guys seen the video for this?
No.
Yes.
I didn't know he had new music out.
It's an excellent video.
I almost don't want to tell you what the hook is,
what the visual hook is, so you can just watch it because--
Okay.
It's kind of fun just to see for the first time.
I mean, the video is so kind of striking that I barely paid attention to the song.
It's a vibey song.
Yeah, it sounds cool.
I feel like Kendrick's the type of artist that alternates between just like the big fat hits
and then the kind of like vibey--
You're saying he's the Pearl Jam of rap?
Kind of.
I mean, like the last album, the first single was like humble.
Really simple beat.
Memorable hook.
This is just a different mode.
I like this more lush vibe, personally.
Yeah.
No, it's cool.
Marvin Gaye sample.
We listened to Marvin Gaye, I think, on the last episode.
The number two song this week in '91, Amy Grant with "Baby Baby."
I know this one.
Oh, I remember this one.
God, the snare tones are just, you know, every song.
Yeah, this is also a very like consistent tone with what we've been hearing from '91.
Kind of sweet, a little saccharine.
Yeah, I mean, the vocals feel very like karaoke style on top of the tracks.
So the story with Amy Grant is that she went on to have a career in Christian music.
I really don't know.
Well, I'm sure when she came out, this song was a huge hit.
I imagine there was some expectation in the industry that she could have like, I don't know, like a big pop career.
Yeah.
So she was born in 1960, so she was 31, which is pretty old.
Oh, she was 31 when this came out?
Okay.
Yeah, 31.
When I guess it says she wrote "Baby Baby" for her baby, her daughter Millie.
She's referred to as the queen of Christian pop.
So maybe she was already a Christian artist.
She made her debut as a teenager and gained fame in the Christian music during the '80s with such hits as "Father's Eyes" and "Angels."
Okay.
This is a crossover hit from a Christian artist, not a pop star who went Christian later.
Yeah.
I see.
She married Vince Gill.
Okay.
Vince Gill's got an incredible voice.
You know, I'm really not that familiar with Vince Gill.
The number two song, Nate Smith, "With Whiskey on You."
It's got to be country, right?
Oh, definitely.
What do you think "Whiskey on You" might mean?
Well, my first thought is, like, this round's on you, dude.
Oh, right, right, right.
Oh, yeah, that must be it.
That must be it.
You're getting this one, dude.
You just had a huge payday.
Whiskey's on you.
Or, "I spilled whiskey on you."
Oops.
It's just sad.
Oops, I spilled whiskey on you.
It's not something that I meant to do.
Oh, spilled whiskey on you.
My bad.
Whiskey on you.
Just, like, a surprisingly detailed, very innocuous story about spilling whiskey on your friend at the bar,
and then the guy's like, "Man, I just got this.
This is a white suit.
Okay, I'll pay for the dry cleaning."
"Are you going to take it to the dry cleaner?"
No, I thought, "You take it to your dry cleaner.
I'll Venmo you however much it costs."
Oh, so you spilled whiskey on me, and then I got to go to the dry cleaner.
I wasn't planning on going to the dry cleaner.
Well, what do you want me to do?
I don't care about the $8.
It's more of an errand.
I have to go to the dry cleaner.
It's the inconvenience.
Okay, but no, you're definitely right that this has to be about--
the most likely thing is that this whiskey's on you.
I just wonder what the scenario is.
Whiskey on me.
All right, I know that song's about you feel bad about something.
You're just being there for a friend.
Whiskey on you.
I wonder how Nate Smith's going to play this one.
Let's listen.
I've wasted a paycheck on whiskey and longnecks
Ever since you left, trying to figure this out
This jack I've been drinking's been wasting on thinking
Now I got a new reason for throwing them down
Light 'em up, light 'em up, hold 'em tall, hold 'em tall
This is what's happening, never after all
Ain't gonna wait one more night
Missing wanting you back
No, I ain't gonna cry another tear in this glass
Didn't waste any time finding somebody new
So I ain't gonna waste another drop of whiskey on you
No, I ain't--
Oh, I ain't gonna waste another drop of whiskey on you.
What the hell with the lonely and the why don't you want me
Yeah, bartender, pour me a farewell round
Light 'em up, light 'em up, make 'em strong, make 'em strong
Tell the band that I need me a drink of song
Ain't gonna waste one more night
Missing wanting you back
No, I ain't gonna cry another tear in this glass
Didn't waste any time finding somebody new
So I ain't gonna waste another drop of whiskey on you
No, I ain't gonna waste another drop of whiskey on you
So I ain't gonna cry another tear in this glass
Didn't waste any time finding somebody new
So I ain't gonna waste another drop of whiskey on you
No, I ain't gonna waste another drop of whiskey on you
So I ain't gonna waste another drop of whiskey on you
Wasted a paycheck on whiskey and long necks
That's a good line, wasted a paycheck on whiskey and long necks.
Ever since you left trying to figure this out.
This Jack I've been drinking's been wasted on thinking.
Now I got a new reason for throwing him down.
So is he maybe-- he doesn't really expand on what the new reason is,
but I feel like maybe he's saying,
"I've been trying to drink to forget you,"
a kind of red red wine scenario,
but it's not working. Instead I just end up drunken in my feelings.
So he's like, "I tried to drink the whiskey to forget about you,
but instead the whiskey combined with all my painful thoughts in my brain,
and now I wasted the Jack. I wasted the Jack Daniels."
So maybe he's like, "I'm not gonna do any more sad drinking."
Maybe he's getting ready to do some happy drinking.
No, I ain't gonna waste another drop of whiskey on you
No, I ain't
No, I ain't gonna waste another drop of whiskey on you
Oh, I see. He's not wasting drops at this point when it's happy.
Yeah, it's a tiny bit unclear.
I mean, I get the sentiment. He's basically saying,
"I'm done feeling sad. You moved on, so I'm gonna stop thinking about you."
He's gonna keep drinking whiskey.
He's just not gonna be fixating on her.
He's gonna be like--
The things on the table, the behaviors, the lifestyle hasn't changed.
No, the lifestyle hasn't changed. The whiskey is getting downed.
It's just he's having a mental--
He flipped a switch in his brain.
He said, "That was the last glass of whiskey I drank for you.
This next glass of whiskey is for me."
It's for the future. I'm drinking this whiskey for my future.
Yeah, because he also says, "I ain't gonna cry another tear in this glass."
So he's not leaving the bar. Don't get it twisted.
This is not a song about, "I've been drinking to excess since you broke my heart.
I'm gonna go home, get a good night's sleep.
Tomorrow I'm gonna set my alarm for 6.30 a.m.
I'm gonna get a run in.
I'm not gonna drink for a few months. I'm gonna eat healthy."
No, that's not what's happening.
"I'm gonna stay in this bar.
Keep getting sh*t-faced, but now it's not for you."
Seems a little bit defensive.
Yeah, I think that's a hard turn, though, because if you're in the zone
and you're crying tears over somebody drinking whiskey
and then you make a decision, "Okay, these next whiskeys are gonna be happy whiskey,"
I think there's some bleed over.
I don't think it's a clean switch over.
No, no. Imagine being this guy's friend and you call him up and you're like,
"Where you at, man?" He picks up and he's like, "I'm at the bar."
And you're just like, "Dude, I went to the bar with you the last two nights.
It's Sunday night. It's kind of dark."
And he's like, "Oh, no, no, no."
I was like, "Man, I know you're hurting, but let's do something more positive."
And he's like, "No, no, no. I'm not drinking for her anymore."
You're not? No, no, no.
This is positive.
No, no. I'm done drinking for her.
Last night with you, I was still drinking for her.
Now it's just for me.
You're like, "Okay. All right."
I mean, respect to Nate Smith for writing a song
that intricately explores this guy's interior monologue.
You're right. He could have done a really straightforward country song
that was basically just like...
Well, there's so many classic songs that are just about like a red, red wine
that are basically just sitting there being like,
"I'm here and I'm drunk because I miss you."
That's what it's about.
Whereas he's like, defiantly, "I'm done drinking for you,
but I'm not done drinking. Make of that what you will."
Am I deluding myself? Who knows?
He's really expanding on the genre.
I feel like what he should do if he's not drinking for that person anymore
is just start drinking a different brand of whiskey.
It would be a nice way to section it off.
Like, "Bartender, that's the brand that I do for my depressed drinking."
I don't want to drink anymore...
Maybe switch to tequila.
No more Jack Daniels.
Bring me some of that Florida Georgia Line whiskey.
And that's when Florida Georgia Line come in with a cameo.
Pour me that Old Camp. And that's the cue.
Give me a glass of Old Camp.
Then the whole vibe changes.
The number one song this week in '91, "Roxette."
I have to go, so let's blast these.
Let's blast this. "Roxette" with Joyride.
One minute.
We got 60 seconds here.
I don't think I know the song.
Let's do it.
"Roxette" was a German band, right?
It did. It's a lot of hits.
Yeah.
It must have been love, but it's all over now.
I love you.
I'm going to join the Joyride.
Oh, this is huge.
This was big in Canada.
This seems like a song that would be big in Canada, not the U.S.
Oh, yeah. This was like on our...
This was top in our charts for sure when I was like nine.
All right. Well, we got to go.
So we're going to leave you with "Roxette Joyride."
A surprise number one hit from 1991 that me and Jake don't really know.
But Seinfeld does.
We'll see in two weeks.
This is "Time Crisis."
She's telling all her secrets
In a wonderful balloon
She's the heart of the fun fair
She got me whistling a bright tune
And it all begins where it ends
And she's all mine, my magic friend
She says, "Hello, you fool, I love you
Come on, join the Joyride
Join the Joyride"
She's a flower I could paint her
She's the child of the sun
We're a part of this together
Could never turn around and run
Don't need no fortune teller
To know where my lucky love belongs
Won't know
'Cause it all begins again when it ends
And we're all magic friends
Magic friends
She says, "Hello, you fool, I love you
Come on, join the Joyride
Join the Joyride"
She says, "Hello, you fool, I love you
Come on, join the Joyride
Be a Joyrider"
Ow!
(Whistling)
(Whistling)
(Guitar solo)
I'm looking for the skyline
Feeling like a spellbound
I'm trying to say, "Baby"
I'm looking like a baby
She says, "Hello, you fool, I love you
Come on, join the Joyride
Join the Joyride"
Hello, you fool, I love you
Come on, join the Joyride
Join the Joyride
Hello, hello, you fool, I love you
Come on, join the Joyride
Be a Joyrider
Ow!
(Whistling)
(Guitar solo)
(Whistling)
Time Crisis with Ezra Koenig
(whooshing)
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