Albums That Should Exist: Pearl Jam - VH-1 Storytellers, Club Avalon, New York City, 5-31-2006

Thursday, September 26, 2024

Pearl Jam - VH-1 Storytellers, Club Avalon, New York City, 5-31-2006

Continuing the "VH-1 Storytellers" flood, here's an episode featuring the band Pearl Jam.

In the 1990s, Pearl Jam sold a massive number of albums. For instance, their debut album "Ten" sold over 13 million copies in the U.S. alone. By the time of their 2006 studio album, simply called "Pearl Jam," their sales were down but they had settled to getting dependable Gold sales (500,000) for this album and the previous two ones. The album did generally get very good reviews.

This performance heavily featured songs from the album: "World Wide Suicide," "Gone," "Severed Hand," "Unemployable," "Army Reserve," and "Life Wasted."

This episode was particularly tough to make presentable. Most of the songs came from a video of the TV show. That means only part of the first song was included, so I had to patch that in with a performance from a different concert that same year. But this is longer than a typical episode because I also found three songs from an audience bootleg of the full show, plus the banter before each of those songs. It turns out those were all of the songs performed. I also found a complete set list, so I added those extra songs in the correct order they were played.

Once I had all that material, I had to do a lot of "massaging" to make it more listenable. Probably the biggest problem was that this was one of the rare, extra annoying episodes where voiceovers were added to extended instrumental sections for most songs. So that's why "[Edit]" is added to some of the song titles after the first one, as I used the UVR5 audio editing program to wipe out the voiceovers while keeping the underlying music. Sometimes, what was left sounded rather rough. For "Gone," I took some music from earlier in the song (under some vocals) and patched that into the problem spot, since there was a prolonged repeated musical section that allowed me to do that. The songs sourced from the audience bootleg didn't have the voiceover problem, but the sound quality on them wasn't as good. So I did some more editing on them to make them sound better. And all the songs had the lead vocals low in the mix, so I had to run all the songs through UVR5 again just to boost the vocals.

Phew. A lot of hassle for me, but it should be a smooth listening for you.

Now, getting to the actual musical content, what's most notable to me is how politically outspoken the band's lead singer Eddie Vedder was in his banter. George W. Bush, Jr. was president at the time, and political progressives (such as myself) were very upset with him over the Iraq War being fought under false pretenses, the erosion of civil liberties, and many other issues. Vedder started right away with a rant against the Bush Administration before even playing the first song, and didn't let up much after that. (Good for him, I say!)

Particularly notable was the sole cover played, "Here's to the State of Richard Nixon." This originally was written by folk singer Phil Ochs in the 1960s as "Here's to the State of Mississippi," about racism in the South. But Ochs rewrote it in the early 1970s as "Here's to the State of Richard Nixon," targeting the Nixon Adminstration at the time. But Vedder sang a version with entirely new lyrics. Instead of mentions of Mississippi or Nixon, it was filled with critiques of people associated with the Bush Administration. I don't think this cover has been included on any official Pearl Jam release.

This album is an hour and four minutes long.

01 talk (Pearl Jam)
02 Better Man [Edit] (Pearl Jam)
03 talk (Pearl Jam)
04 Unemployable (Pearl Jam)
05 talk (Pearl Jam)
06 World Wide Suicide (Pearl Jam)
07 talk (Pearl Jam)
08 Gone [Edit] (Pearl Jam)
09 talk (Pearl Jam)
10 Severed Hand (Pearl Jam)
11 talk (Pearl Jam)
12 Army Reserve (Pearl Jam)
13 talk (Pearl Jam)
14 Insignificance (Pearl Jam)
15 talk (Pearl Jam)
16 Alive [Edit] (Pearl Jam)
17 talk (Pearl Jam)
18 Here's to the State of Richard Nixon [2006 Version] (Pearl Jam)
19 talk (Pearl Jam)
20 Life Wasted [Edit] (Pearl Jam)