This is what i get for paying attention to some nerd talking about poor album production value and offering two versions, one original, one remastered – i.e. one poor, one an improvement – for comparison to whoever cared. The only reason i played along was to see if i could tell the difference in something i never can but perhaps do have enough interest in to try to see if i can be as aurally discernible as some waveform-scrutinising dork. Wouldn’t remastering something not change for better or worse the production of something, but rather the original mastering? Who cares?! Ugh. As much as music and music production and recording interest me, there is this breed of audiophilia, of varying command, that just annoys me.
Once upon a time (hey…) i could not get enough of Pearl Jam. Looking back on them they do seem a little ridiculous, especially when compared with their contemporary bands who were and remained beyond any scope of what was permitted to surface as alternative music. They seem more aligned with the music world they were attributed to save us from than some reforming, progressive force of punk rock – something i will readily lay on Nirvana.
The most revolutionary thing i can think to ascribe to Pearl Jam is they made it permissible to wear shorts on stage. Everything else about them seems inflated. Pearl Jam to me seem now the archetypal band destined for that new alternative crowd – a birth of a class of consumers who would have stayed with hair metal if hair metal stayed fashionable – that came to, and in some stasis still do, worship them. The reason why we were told it was grunge and not punk rock. Punk rock remained constant under all this. Popular rock music for young, middle class, white people changed its tune, changed its name, separated an old, unfashionable product from a new one, but really was all the same – a rebranding. There is so much here to one day (if not already) register as dad rock.
Eddie Vedder sure does make some funny noises with his mouth.
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