Pearl Jam: Rock Music with a Hip Hop state of Mind: DO THE EVOLUTION!!

Pearl Jam: Rock Music with a Hip Hop state of Mind: DO THE EVOLUTION!!
by Sam Frank

"I'm still Alive!" growled a rugged Eddie Vedder during a sold out Pearl Jam show at Manhattan's famed Madison Square Garden Arena in support of their, uh, wait a minute, do these guy's even have an album their touring behind? Well, yes and no would be my answer. The "no" part comes from the fact that PJ has not released a new "studio" album since 2006's self-titled "avocado" album, but on the other hand, one could say "yes" because they are recording every show in soundboard quality and selling mastered copies on their website; thus, new albums are coming out weekly, similar to the frequency of Lil Wayne mixtape CDs. Pearl Jam calls these recordings "concert bootlegs," and sells each two (sometimes three) disc set for roughly the same price as a single CD at a walk-in record store. Pearl Jam is the only band I know that goes to this length for their fans which is one reason floor seats were averaging $700 [per seat] on Craig's List just days before both sold out MSG shows.

Being fan friendly has been Pearl Jam's strong suite since the early 90's when Eddie Vedder made it a point to exploit and challenge Ticketmaster's unfair monopolistic practices. Despite a valiant fight, fans only saved a few cents, but nobody seemed to mind spending hours waiting on the phone to buy tickets for the No Code tour. In 2000, soon after the original Napster's demise, Pearl Jam found a way to embrace technology rather than try to stop its progression, unlike other artists I shouldn't mention [cough, Metallica, cough]. Initially, the "bootleg concert" prototypes were recorded during the Binaural Tour, but the project was so successful that it has been repeated for every tour over the past eight years, bringing us back to the sold out MSG show in late June.

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