Saturday, March 28, 2009

Crap/Not Crap - Pearl Jam Edition

All questions raised by the comments on the AV Club in a discussion of Pearl Jam's Ten.

1. Crap/Not Crap: STP at their best were better than Pearl Jam.

2. Crap/Not Crap: Mother Love Bone was good.

3. Crap/Not Crap: Screaming Trees were not very good.

4. Crap/Not Crap: Nirvana is a band you can like when you are "like 12 years-old," but Pearl Jam is the music for the true connoisseur.

5. Crap/Not Crap: Pearl Jam were not "really" grunge.

6. Crap/Not Crap: "Grunge" is just a media word that has no real meaning.

7. Grunge is most closely related to: a.cock rock, b.metal, c.hardcore, d.punk [sure indy rock should be on the list, but that's not the way the AV Clubbers see it]

8. Ten was part of the soundtrack of: a.middle school, b.high school c.college d. not terribly familiar with the album

7 comments:

j martins said...

1. I no longer listen to PJ, but at their best they were better than the best STP
2. I'm going with Not Crap on this one today
3. Not crap? Don't remember much, but I think I liked "I nearly lost you"
4. CRAP. The opposite is quite true. Nirvana is one of the few grunge bands that I like when I listen to now. And Mudhoney.
5. Crap. PJ was grunge, no question.
6. not sure (if I care)
7. depends. In PJ's case, I think Cock rock is the closest cousin, even if they were eschewing the cockiest elements. Mike McCreedy has a lot to do with this, but I think Jeff Ament might as well. Nirvana was closest to punk, Soundgarden is closest to metal.
8. middle

wobblie said...

1. Unmitigated crap
2. Not crap
3. Crap
4. Crap
5. Crap
6. Crap - I think grunge as a sub-genre has some very telling characteristics to it (besides Seattle). And, of course, if grunge were just a construct of the media, what are we to say of the musical abyss that is post-grunge? Myself, I'm looking forward to wallowing in neo-grunge in the months ahead.
7. I've always thought it to be a wonderful melange of all of those bits.
8. b. - junior year, specifically.

evil r + b guy said...

1. Not crap. STP, while not good, at least weren't self-righteous.
2. Not crap. I can't really remember, to be honest.
3. Not crap. I kissed some girl while listening to their one popular single in about '92.
4. Crap. Whoa, there's no way out of this one.
5. Don't know.
6. Uh, don't know.
7. a. metal
8. b. high school

brown beard said...

1. Crap. I liked STP okay, but I think Pearl Jam was better.
2. Not Crap. Although I didn't listen to them at the time, I like a few Mother Love Bone songs (like "Waiting for you")
3. not very familiar with the screaming trees.
4. Crap. Nirvana is awesome, and I still occasionally listen to their records. Pearl Jam is an artifact (albiet a huge one) of my past.
5. crap.
6. crap. "Grunge" as a genre has its utility.
7. Pearl Jam Grunge = cock rock with a splash of punk.
8. middle school. By High school, I'd moved on to masterpieces such as No Code!

solidcitizen said...

1. Crap. Very crap.

2. Barely crap.

3. Barely not crap.

4. Most definitely crap.

5. Crap

6. Crap

7. punk

8. college

ash said...

1. crappy crap. and i am not a (current) fan of pearl jam.
2. meh. not crap?
3. sort of crap. haven't thought about screaming trees in years, but would take them over STP, for sure.
4. crap-covered crap.
5. crap/who cares?
6. whatever.
7. cockpunk.
8. college. yeah, i'm old. get the fuck off my lawn!

ginger said...

1. uhhhh....who cares!
2. crap. but I still like them. it's a guilty pleasure. kind of like cheesecake, which is actually a good analogy for Mother Love Bone.
3. crap. who are these people?
4. crap. that's idiodic.
5. not crappish...i can see that point of view. the tail end of the grunge movement when grunge was top 40 and not that grungy anymore.
6. Double crap. Grunge was around way before the media knew about it.
7. I think it has aspects of all 5, but it is really much, much more than that. I fell in love all over again with Soundgarden's Screaming Life/Fopp double EP while driving to the coast this weekend. Those mnfers didn't take any prisoners on that album. It has all the raw emotion and energy of hardcore/metal/punk but its better!
8. I'm pretty sure ten came out when i was in college. I remember 1 year in college, I dressed up as dave3544 and everyone thought I was eddie vedder.