Couldn't say what any of their songs sound like because the singer's voice makes me nauseous too and I must immediately turn them off. Same with Freddie Mercury.
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Pearl Jam songs make me nauseous
- Thread starter oldrocker
- Start date
that's killer stuff, @oldrocker --- shirley you protest too much, eh?!
Those songs helped define a genre and for my generation (X) they are meaningful, but that doesn’t mean you have to like them.
10 is a great album. However, none of it has any place in a cover band setting, unless it's a tribute, or a venue that has a clientele looking specifically for early 90's grunge style music.
Of the 'big 4' Seattle bands that defined Grunge becoming a new genre (thanks to the phone interview/news article that coined the term), PJ is far and away my least favorite. Nirvana, Soundgarden, and AiC made far more compelling music. PJ was grunge for frat boys. Of course, Vedder is the only LS to survive the tumult. Nirvana and AiC have a number of songs that go over really well in a cover band setting.
For those two songs specifically, I've never played them in a band, and at this point, I've heard them so many times that I simply turn the channel when they come on. But, if I saw them on the same list of tunes that the OP posted, I'd at least have some hope that the band wasn't going to be relegated to playing to people in retirement homes. Slim hope. One of my current bands plays a few of those, and they are absolutely dead on arrival.
Of the 'big 4' Seattle bands that defined Grunge becoming a new genre (thanks to the phone interview/news article that coined the term), PJ is far and away my least favorite. Nirvana, Soundgarden, and AiC made far more compelling music. PJ was grunge for frat boys. Of course, Vedder is the only LS to survive the tumult. Nirvana and AiC have a number of songs that go over really well in a cover band setting.
For those two songs specifically, I've never played them in a band, and at this point, I've heard them so many times that I simply turn the channel when they come on. But, if I saw them on the same list of tunes that the OP posted, I'd at least have some hope that the band wasn't going to be relegated to playing to people in retirement homes. Slim hope. One of my current bands plays a few of those, and they are absolutely dead on arrival.
For me it's like listening to a song by Cheryl Crowe. It's like fingernails on a chalkboard! Pearl Jam, meh.
Just because you cant accept it doesnt mean it isnt true. The bands you listed were 20-30 years old in the 90s. 1995 was 30 years ago, making Pearl Jam almost 40 years old. How is that not classic rock at this point? We all get old, and the music that you felt as being young gets old also. You kind of have to deal with it.
Unless other band members feel the same as you, you are in the wrong band.
The function of living in a consumer culture. We are so much in it that people don't think about, like the saying goes, fish never think about the fact that they are in water.
This process is consciously employed by marketers, knowing how the phenomenon plays out socially.
There's a discipline of study called diffusion research that is used.
I first noticed it when new wave grew out of punk (itself highly promoted consciously by people like Malcolm McLaren).
At first it was genuine social outsiders, but it quickly got picked up.
With new wave, it immediately became more marketable, and you'd start to see it getting used to sell clothes.
The thought came, in an excited marketer's voice "New Wave!! Finally a youth movement that doesn't threaten the status quo. Bob and Karen can now get the latest new wave clothes at Macy's and Nordstrom!".
Watching that whole grunge phenomenon play out really hammered it home, seeing it on the street occur within a couple of years, knowing how the whole thing was largely created around those bands and promoted.
It's been true for a long time, but the whole thing gets played out pretty much immediately now.
And the society has changed.
Everybody is "hip" now, edgy, ironic.
Grandmas with tattoos and blue hair.
And it's all pretty much consumer culture, none of it really questions anything.
Iron clad with society functioning on the internet.
What's really interesting: seen first going back to the longhair counterculture phenomenon in the late 60s-early 70s: people giving someone who looks a certain way a hard time, and seeing those same poeple adopting that very thing (long hair, punk) a few years later, when it becomes acceptably different and "cool" or whatever.
Everybody's swimming in it without thinking about it.
I personally think it's pretty important to question what's going on.
I read a lot of history.
My view of it all, anyway.
I'm probably skirting a moderator line.
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Funny timing to see this thread, we had Black and Even Flow as must-play requests at the wedding I played on Saturday. I listened to this music growing up, and it's fun to play during the rare occasions that it comes up. But it's not my kind of listening material anymore.
the drummer was so offended by this thread that he up and quit.
We all owe it to ourselves to recruit, as many as, we can to our camp, otherwise, we'll never have a chance to win the war.
Some build, some create art, some heal, some make music, some relish conflict.
Smooth_bass88
vaxx!
- Oct 31, 2006
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- have been on nationally released albums, charting on the Billboard 200
songwriter21
I have an obsession for wood. The musical kind.
Chains got lumped in with those other bands. I've always heard them as hard rock or even metal, and even the band has said that numerous times.
songwriter21
I have an obsession for wood. The musical kind.
The grunge fashion craze was hilarious. People paid money, and often stupid money, to dress like slobs.
I don't disagree, I respect Pearl Jam as musicians and humans to the nth degree, but always thought there were many better songwriters in the '90s, both within the scene (Nirvana, Soundgarden, and, sorry - Stone Temple Pilots - interesting melodies and chord changes out the wazoo compared to PJ) - and outside it - Beck, Jeff Buckley, Fiona Apple, Radiohead, Wilco, not to mention hip-hop and R&B.
A lot of that era/genre of rock just doesn't excite me either. Then again it's all personal preference and taste. I have my own bands that I absolutely cannot stand covering.
For example, as much as I respect the musicians in Foo Fighters I loathed every single time some drummer I played with wanted to do Everlong. First off, almost none of them could play it right. Secondly I just find their sound to be very..........safe and unexciting. I always would counter with No One Loves Me by Them Crooked Vultures and almost always it was insisted we play Everlong, My Hero, The Pretender, Learn to Fly. Blech. At least once my bandmates tried to meet me in the middle and suggested Weenie Beenie off the FF first album. Differently irritating song but at least it didn't sound so generic.
For example, as much as I respect the musicians in Foo Fighters I loathed every single time some drummer I played with wanted to do Everlong. First off, almost none of them could play it right. Secondly I just find their sound to be very..........safe and unexciting. I always would counter with No One Loves Me by Them Crooked Vultures and almost always it was insisted we play Everlong, My Hero, The Pretender, Learn to Fly. Blech. At least once my bandmates tried to meet me in the middle and suggested Weenie Beenie off the FF first album. Differently irritating song but at least it didn't sound so generic.
