The Pearl Jam debut album "Ten," did nothing short of alter the course of my life. It was the first cd I bought with my own money, and I had to buy it again a few years later because I had worn out the first one. What's funny, is I never came to appreciate the back half of that album until years later when I was in middle school. I got so hung up on the obvious tracks like "Alive", "Jeremy", 'Black" and "Even Flow," that I nearly rediscovered the entire album when I started getting into tracks like "Porch", "Oceans" and "Deep."
"Garden" was a kind of a crossover track. I enjoyed it when I first heard the album, and I re-discovered it with a different pair of ears when I listened to the album obsessively again, years later. It's angry and blistering. And painful. Pearl Jam can be like that. Those goddamned beautiful screams of agony that Eddie Vedder lets loose. It's a bone chilling way to set your heart on fire. And Eddie's got the lyrics to back it up. Though much of his stuff has been comically parodied as indiscernable moans, there is feeling there. There is a life and message, apart from the music, that lives in Eddies head. And though some of it is a bit extreme at times (or political), there's a lot of poetry too. Sometimes the most prolific stuff is conveyed in the simplest form. An example of that would be this song, or Wishlist, or dozens other's that I can't get into now, but I'd recommend everybody get into sometime.
But maybe that boat has sailed for you. For me, it comes back to port to pick me up at some point every year. Whether they release something new, or not.
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