(Pearl) Jammin' on Nostalgia
Wednesdays are about books. And writing. Today, a wee piece of and on nostalgia. Been listening to Pearl Jam a bit lately. (It's okay, my doctor knows). It takes me back. In mostly a good way.
I am enjoying revisiting pieces I’ve written and reworking the format. This started life as a poem, there’s even a spoken-word recording of it (down below) and then I turned it into whatever this is, a short story, a short blog post, another in my series of autobiographical shorts that blend fiction and non-fiction? Anyway, I wrote it first a couple of years back, as much in memory of some high school times as the music, but it’s really about reconnecting with the music I think. And I’ve been listening to those first couple of Pearl Jam albums again most recently. Very good. No disrepect to fans that went deeper and stayed there, but they lost me with their third album. And I never went back.
I remember the days when I hated Pearl Jam and Eddie Vedder with his weapons-grade laryngitis. I thought they made bad music and had too much influence on the awful Nu-Metal Years. It was a time where the Creeds and Stainds of that world were gargling marbles and spitting out cliches. Ugh!
But back when Pearl Jam released their first two albums, I had a different opinion. I actually loved them. I had their first album with a bonus five-track cassette-tape EP and a huge blue Volvo with 200,000kms on its clock. It was like an urban assault vehicle, a mighty tank that could drive through walls. I would sometimes put it on autopilot and listen to Pearl Jam’s songs after having a few too many.
I was always frightened by Pearl Jam’s eventual mediocrity and their rabid fan-base. Fans that also loved Ben Harper and thought Pearl Jam was as important as any classic rock and even better than a lot. It was frustrating to see people buying those cardboard-sleeve rip-off concert bootlegs. But despite it all, I couldn’t deny the memories attached to their songs. They were such a big part of my teenage years.
We sang their songs at parties and heard them in our heads during math class. I remember joking and singing out loud, “Jeremy spoke in class today,” when the kid named Jeremy actually spoke in class that day. So many of their songs were white-whines, but 30 years ago, there was something beautiful about them. Lines like “I know someday you’ll have a beautiful life/I know you’ll be a star in somebody else’s sky, but why can’t it be mine?” were like poetry to us teenagers. And the doo-do-de-do-doo payoff was even better, when the vocals and the guitar merged. That was the real poetry of the situation.
Hearing the bass line that opens Even Flow now feels like a creaking door opening back up to my past. The hits on the toms are the footsteps down the corridor, back to my teenage years. I can close that door whenever I like, but for now, I’m enjoying looking around. I see the dog-eared pictures on the walls and hand-scribbled lyrics from my favorite songs. I remember my own attempts at poetry, overwrought and untrue, but they mattered to me then. Hearing their songs again now is like receiving a phone call from an old friend. We’ve lost touch, but we remember each other and care enough to sit on the call and hold the line. Holding tight in the moments while it lasts.