![]() ![]() Cultural and socio-political landscape.So while it’s chronological it didn’t feel like your straightforward bio, as it chose to focus on specific moments and it often came at those events in a way that was refreshing, particularly in terms of how much it focussed on things outwith the immediate band, which leads me to: Some of those events are specific concerts, albums (sometimes paired with political events of the time – such as Binaural with the 1999 Seattle protest), their attempt to take on Ticketmaster, the firing of drummer Dave, and so on. The structure is built around some of the main events in the bands career, very much from a fan’s point of view.What’s refreshing about Not For You is it isn’t your regular biography: In one chapter, Givony mentioned his intense research process, saying he ended up “delirious, ranting about Ralph Nader.” I can believe it. I now know more about Pearl Jam than I ever thought I’d want to know I’ve watched numerous concerts of varying quality listened to/read transcripts of several Vedder rambles heard Alive, Even Flow, and Jeremy more times than is probably healthy in a short period watched bizarre animations, talk show snippets, and news reports on abortion clinics, only to emerge dishevelled, and as dazed as Vedder at the Grammy Awards mumbling “I don’t know what this means” before launching into a rendition of Black à la David Letterman (“Whyyyyy! Whyyyyy!”) while my husband rolls his eyes and regrets gifting me this book. I devoured it, simultaneously trying keep up (folly!) with the accompanying Playlist. This is how I came to be reading Ronen Givony’s Not For You : Pearl Jam and the Present Tense. Ronen Givony’s Not For You: Pearl Jam And The Present Tense The past two years have been a blur of obsession. I’d more or less abandoned them post-Vitalogy, so I had a lot of catching up to do. How could I forget how brilliant they are? How could I forget how stunning Vedder’s voice is? I casually thought, “Oh I haven’t listened to Pearl Jam for a while” and clicked. I was watching something on YouTube, happened to glance at the suggestions down the side, and there was Pearl Jam’s performance of Oceans from Unplugged. ![]() It’s been two years (“and counting”) since I fell down a Pearl Jam hole. ![]() Now I'm always up for five or six acoustic songs somewhere in the middle of a set, because you just hear him in a way I find so pleasing.Detail from the cover of Not For You. “ showed that Ed could really be in that kind of a setting, and really, I'm sure we learned something about that, too. ![]() “We relied a lot on the noise and the wildness of our shows to generate energy,” Gossard says. You can hear his voice unleashed here, free of expectations or Ten’s infamous reverb, jumping octaves on “Black” and erupting over time on “Porch.” Every emotion was laid bare, a rarity in stadium-ready rock. In stripping their songs down-nearly all of them pulled from the band’s 1991 debut, Ten-they took note of what made them so powerful: the melodic contours of “Oceans” and “Alive” (their only single at the time), the natural dynamism of “State of Love and Trust” and “Even Flow.” Most enlightening was the performance of frontman Eddie Vedder, who still found a way to captivate in the relative cold of a TV studio environment, without a crowd to surf or walls to climb. “But we had played very little acoustically.” When the set eventually aired in May of that year, it was both a revelation and an introduction. Recorded just three days after they’d completed their first European tour-at midnight, immediately following tapings by Mariah Carey and Boyz II Men-the all-acoustic set came at a formative moment for Pearl Jam: Far from being a household name, the Seattle outfit were on their initial ascent, figuring themselves out just as they were about to very quickly (and unexpectedly) become icons. “I remember being nervous,” Pearl Jam guitarist Stone Gossard tells Apple Music of performing for MTV’s Unplugged in March 1992. ![]()
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