I Got ID
This Merkinball gem from the Mirrorball sessions with Neil Young is all heart, though it’s an unrequited love, fantasizing about the unattainable: being the object of her affection. Through the light strum and melody there’s an earnest appreciation for the solace found in the escape that fantasy provides, heartbreaking in its own right.
Nothingman
Another tale of love dissolved – a woman has fallen out of love in the relationship, and there is no turning back. The imagery expressed perfectly encapsulates the sense of loss, the agony of watching her pull away, and the emptiness when she’s gone. Before the physical break, the inevitable disconnect of emotion hangs heavy in the room through “empty stares from each corner of a shared prison cell,” before “one just escapes, one’s left inside the well”.
All Those Yesterdays
Perhaps the most Beatlesque song Pearl Jam has ever recorded, “All Those Yesterdays” issues a reminder to step out of the routine insanity we’ve grown so used to, from time to time. It also serves a valuable challenge to Pfizer Nation: “What are you running from? Taking pills to get along, creating walls to call your own, so no one catches you drifting off and doing all the things we all do.”
Nothing As It Seems
The sparse nature of this darkly melancholic Binaural gem leaves a great deal open to interpretation. The songwriter, bassist Jeff Ament, attributes this to some darker hidden childhood memories that began to surface in more recent years. It’s also helped by the anxiety-spawning fatal finality in the solo, red-lining a delicate engine before easing the song out again somberly.
Given to Fly
The soul-soaring spirit of 1998’s Yield hits a high mark of uplifting optimism on this track, and it’s no accident that the melody mirrors Led Zeppelin’s “Going to California” – the tale is a mix of messianic symbolism spun into what could be interpreted as an autobiographical streak of Ed’s own journey to California in his younger years. “I just kind of imagined it as sort of a wave in an ocean,” McCready explained. “It starts out slow and then it gets a little larger and a little larger and then it breaks and then it comes down again.”
Dirty Frank
This redheaded stepchild of a song crosses a crazy real-life tour bus driver with Jeffrey Dahmer. A goofball song the band all but disavowed for years, it captures the playful energy of PJ’s early days, complete with chainsaw sound effects and the tragic news that McCready’s been eaten.
Spin The Black Circle
The sweetest love song to vinyl one could ask for, wrapped in a punk-spaz freakout.
In My Tree
This one’s about a guy who’s grown tired of the mundacity of the rat race. As Eddie explained at the band’s 2.21.98 show in Maui, the guy says “fuck the streets, fuck the newspapers, fuck my telephone bills… fuck everything I’m gonna go live in a tree.” Featuring Jack Irons’ remarkable tumbling percussion, the track is a reclamation of innocence, a departure from that which desensitizes us to the true nature of our lives.
Black
One of PJ’s signature breakthrough tracks, this classic-rock heartbreaker is a memorized piece of the Gen X tapestry for every pre-emo grunge kid to every tribal-tattooed bro from here to the moon. It’s timeless, it’s perfect, it’s heartbreaking, and 22 years later it can still kick your ass – especially the crushing version from the band’s “MTV Unplugged” performance
Yellow Ledbetter
PJ’s trademark show closer, nearly always performed with the house lights up, thousands of fans’ hands on their hearts, souls singing skyward along to the ever-changing lyrics. The triumphant, tear-jerkingly cathartic goodbye after an exhilarating 2-3 hour show, it’s a bittersweet sendoff, both band and fans aware that the moment is fleeting, the heart can’t stay quite so full quite so easily once we all walk out into the night. McCready often throws in solo tags of classic songs while Ed gathers his wine bottle and notebook, and the band gives a final bow goodnight.
All photos: Johnny Firecloud
