It was through musician and DJ Henk Westbroek (Het Goede Doel) that I came into contact with Pearl Jam. He played the song "Alive" on Radio2 and I was sold. Henk Westbroek himself too." Every now and then a true classic appears and this is one of those songs again." The album "Ten" is in my personal top 10 of all time.
Pearl Jam performed at Pinkpop in 1992 and how I would have loved to have been there! Take the trouble to watch this legendary concert again. Eddie Vedder at his best. What a burst of energy!
I have seen Pearl Jam live twice myself. Unfortunately, my favourite song "Black" was not played on either occasion.
Pearl Jam
Pearl Jam is an American rock band from Seattle, Washington. The band was founded in 1990 and consists of singer and guitarist Eddie Vedder, bassist Jeff Ament, drummer Matt Cameron and guitarists Stone Gossard and Mike McCready. Since 2002, keyboardist Kenneth 'Boom' Gaspar has been a touring member.
In the early days, the band's music was labelled 'grunge', as were other bands from Seattle such as Nirvana, Alice in Chains and Soundgarden. Later, Pearl Jam was increasingly associated with classic rock, alternative rock and mainstream rock. Five of the band's albums reached number one on the US Billboard 200. The band is among the best-selling rock bands in the world and is also the best-selling rock band in the United States founded after 1990.
The band became especially famous for their first three albums: Ten (1991), Vs. (1993) and Vitalogy (1994). These albums include songs such as "Alive", "Jeremy", "Even Flow", "Black", "Daughter", "Go", "Animal", "Dissident", "Spin the Black Circle", "Corduroy", "Better Man" and "Immortality".
The albums after Vitalogy received less publicity, partly at the band's own request, and sold less. The band increasingly resisted their own popularity, refused for years to make new music videos (partly as a protest against MTV), fought a battle with Ticketmaster and experimented with their own music from Vitalogy onwards. In the years that followed, the focus was mainly on large tours through the United States, Europe and the Pacific.
With the album Pearl Jam from 2006, the band also came back into the spotlight for a larger audience and reached a highest position of number two in the Netherlands. The albums Backspacer (2009) and Lightning Bolt (2013) reached third place. Successful songs from these albums were "World Wide Suicide", "The Fixer", "Just Breathe" and "Sirens".
Pearl Jam is known for their intense, varied and long-lasting live performances. The magazine Lust for Life wrote about this in 2013: "...Go to one of the band's concerts. You won't get a greatest hits show, but a cross-section of almost 25 years of rock music. And if you go again, chances are you'll get a completely different setlist...".
Top 2000
In the 23rd edition of the Top 2000, Pearl Jam is featured with 8 songs:
Black is one of Pearl Jam's most played songs and is number 9 in the 23rd edition of the Top 2000 from 2021.
To date, the band has performed the song live 567 times, including three times at Pinkpop. The rock ballad is older than Pearl Jam itself. The music was written in 1990 under the title E Ballad by Stone Gossard, then still guitarist of Mother Love Bone.
The singer of that band, Andrew Wood, died in March of that year from a heroin overdose. Together with band member Jeff Ament and childhood friend Mike McCready, Gossard founded the new group Mookie Blaylock, named after a basketball player of the Atlanta Hawks, with jersey number 10. Later the name was changed to Pearl Jam, an inventive synonym for sperm. A singer was missing, but the musicians hoped to find one from Seattle by sending around a demo. That demo included the instrumental track Dollar Short, which would later be called Alive (number 58 in the Top 2000).
Sunday Morning Classics: Ten
On 17 May 2020, the album "Ten" was placed under the needle at our Sunday Morning Classics.
Pearl Jam's debut album was released on 27 August 1991. Ten remains the band's best-selling album to date and is considered one of the most iconic albums of the 90s. It won several awards, including a gold record in the United Kingdom, platinum status in the Netherlands and thirteen times platinum in the United States (more than 13 million copies sold). Listeners of NPO 3FM compile the Heavenly Hundred every year, a list of favourite albums. Songs from these albums are played on Ascension Day. Ten was number one from 2005 to 2016. The album was number 2 in 2001, 2002 and 2004. There was no Heavenly Hundred in 2003. Readers of the authoritative magazine Rolling Stone placed Ten at number 19 in the Top 100 Albums of all time in 2002.
Four singles were released from the album: Alive, Even Flow, Jeremy and Oceans. Alive was the first single and probably the band's best-known song. It generated the huge attention that arose for the band at the end of 1991 and made Pearl Jam one of the biggest rock acts. Jeremy was accompanied by a music video that was frequently played on MTV. The song Black was never released as a single.
Sales of the album only took off a few months after its release, partly influenced by the success of Nirvana's Nevermind (which was released a month later than Ten). This is partly the reason why the album did not reach number one on the US Billboard 200 Albums chart, which Pearl Jam did achieve with Vs. (1993), Vitalogy (1994), Backspacer (2009) and Lightning Bolt (2013). Ten's highest position in the United States was number 2 and the album stayed in the chart for 250 weeks. In the Netherlands, the album entered the Album Top 100 at number 24. It eventually only reached 14th place but remained in the chart for 142 weeks.
With 13 million sales, Ten is among the 40 best-selling albums of all time in the United States. The album sold as many copies as, for example, Whitney Houston's album Whitney Houston (1985) and Prince and The Revolution's Purple Rain (1984).
Pearl Jam's Ten (1991) is number 12 among the best-selling albums released in the 90s in the United States. The list is topped by Double Live (1998) by Garth Brooks and Come on Over (1997) by Shania Twain. In 1992, the album did not reach number 1 because of Some Gave All by Billy Ray Cyrus.
source: NPO and Wikipedia photo: deep_schismic and tammylo
https://pearljam.com/
