Pearl Jam

Pearl Jam, an alternative rock band formed out of Seattle in the early 1990's, is one of the greatest rock bands of all-time and one of the most influential bands of their time.  The story of Pearl Jam begins with another band named Green River.  Pearl Jam's founding members, guitarist Stone Gossard and bass player Jeff Ament were in this band, and then left to join another band, Mother Love Bone.  Mother Love Bone had some success but as you know how it goes, tragedy struck when their lead singer died, and Gossard and Ament were on their own again.  After Mother Love Bone disbanded Gossard began jamming with local guitarist Mike Mcready.  The three of them would record some demos and passed them out in search of a lead singer.  Somehow their demo made it out to San Diego where a gas station attended named Eddie Vedder heard the demo, wrote down some lyrics, recorded the tracks and sent it back.  The guys loved it, and now all they needed was a drummer.  These four men, Vedder, Gossard, Ament, and Mcready have always been members of the band, however they seem to have a problem with drummers.  Dave Krusen was the original drummer, and since then have gone through 4 different drummers.  The original name for the band was named after NBA star Mookie Blaylock, however due to copyright issues the band could not be named after him, so instead they went with Pearl Jam, and named their debut album Ten, after his jersey number.  Though Pearl Jam was formed in Seattle where the grunge scene was huge, other grunge artists didn't really classify them as grunge.  Kurt Cobain in particular was very vocal about Pearl Jam being sellouts, which is ironic since his band Nirvana would follow in the same footsteps.  Their debut album wasn't an instant hit, but a year after it's release it became a major selling album, consisting some of the bands biggest hits.  They became very successful from their debut and did not know how to react.  They didn't want to give in to big labels, with many singles and music videos.  In 1994 after their second album was released the band began to boycott ticket vendor company, Ticketmaster.  They thought it was unnecessary for their fans to have to pay additional charges for tickets that was charged by the vendor.  This would last for several years as Pearl Jam would not play at venues in which Ticketmaster was their vendor, making Pearl Jam a difficult act to see.  The band would continue to make good studio records and battle with Ticketmaster.  On their European tour in 2000 the tour came to an end when 9 people were killed at a concert, this broke the band up and they even considered retiring.  Once the band loss their battle with Ticketmaster they became one of the biggest acts on tour and began recording every concert performance and making a bootleg CD out of it.  I think this is one of the most clever ideas.  It would be awesome to have a CD of an actual concert that you attended.  As of 2008 the band has over 250 official bootleg albums.  In addition to Green River and Mother Love Bone, Pearl Jam has been associated with other acts through guitarist Mike Mcready with the tribute band to Mother Love Bone named Temple of the dog, and the project with fellow Seattle Musicians, Mad Season.  Though the band came through Seattle during the grunge era, they are more of a rock/classic rock sounding band.  Some may call them sellouts, I consider them great.  It would be hard to come up with another band as influential as Pearl Jam was in the 1990's, and almost twenty years later the band is still one of the hottest acts around.

Ten - 1991     Vs. - 1993     Vitalogy - 1994     No code - 1996     Yield - 1998   

 Live on two legs - 1998     Binaural - 2000     Riot act - 2002     Live at Benaroya Hall - 2004

Pearl Jam - 2006     Live at the Gorge - 2007     Ideal Compilation - SG

*Since there are over 250 bootleg albums I will not own those, instead I own all studio, and three of their best live albums*                 

Scott's Music Library