Pearl Jam - Vs. POLL

http://www.giffies.com/games/files/StickCockSmash.gif

is that the glorified version of a pellet gun?

uh oh I hope I never have that fantasy

Rearviewmirror or Indifference by quite a way for me

Love the Rearviewmirror riff, so that. Got a lot of love for this album.

all in all this might be my least favorite of their '90s albums but there are still a lot of songs i love or at least am surprisingly not as sick of as i am of some of the big Ten/Vitalogy hits. "W.M.A." and "Indifference" are the ones that stop it in its tracks for me, if you chopped off the last song of each side of the album the remaining 10 song LP would be pretty solid.

Probably will end up voting Elderly Woman, but I also like Daughter, Dissident, and Rats lots (and maybe more)

Jayson Greene reminded me of what I've always disliked: the tacky drum sound, inept and cranky stabs at social consciousness, awkward anthems. To be a crank, I'm the only guy who dislikes "Elderly Woman Behind the Counter in a Small Town," but you would too if every one of your bros chanted this in cars while drunk or requested it at karaoke.

"Rearviewmirror" for me; I wasn't too keen on Ten when it came out but I loved this one from the start, & "Rearviewmirror" was the aha moment. The only song I hate on here is "Dissident". "Elderly Women" struck me as corny from the start & I've never dug it much therefore, & anyway "Daughter" mines the same-ish vibe (better).

the drum sound on this is way less tacky than on Ten and not really much moreso than any of the later O'Brien-produced albums, but the drumming itself is admittedly pretty tacky (i kind of like the cheesy splashy Dave Abbruzzese style on some songs though)

this is the only pearl jam album I still like, though I always skip W.M.A. and the last 2 songs.

voted for Animal, since that's the first pearl jam song I remember liking (I had heard some stuff off of Ten before this, but I only got into that album after this one)

the "Animal" VMA performance w/ Neil Young was the coolest back in the day imo

when i was in 6th grade i told my friend adam that this was a better cd than 'ten' & he look at me like i was not even a person anymore

voted elderly woman...

lol lamp

still think it's kinda dope that the first 2 songs/singles on this are such taut 3 minute tracks after Ten's big hits were all kind of flabby 5-minute opuses

"Go" is a pretty terrific opener -- maybe my favorite PJ one of the nineties.

it's pretty mindblowing that Pearl Jam hired Brendan O'Brien in the first place since pretty much the biggest album he'd produced at this point was the first Stone Temple Pilots record. like i imagine BB having to straight up apologize to Eddie the first time they met in order for them to have a good working relationship.

Rearviewmirror easily....Vedder shrieking "rearrrrrrrrrviewmirrrorrrrrrrrr" at the end gives me chills.

also really love "Go"...really funky bass, and the chorus is great. what I love about the chorus is the chord progression is the same both times, but where the chords fall in relativity to the downbeat changes, so it changes it up slightly.

i actually sang "Go" at karaoke last week, semi-drunk.....

'Go' is probably my favourite thing they've done

I might vote Daughter; I love it...one of PJ's best songs for sure. EW is not as cheesy as ppl make it. Certainly it suffers from the same problem as Lost in Translation--it's a meditation on time lost from someone too young to fully understand it. But ime EW comes off better, mostly bcz it mainly lingers on the fatalism of "hearts and thoughts they fade away" and only zooms in on the "lifetime of regret" at the very end.

daughter but this whole album is good

This album inspired a singular act in my college radio experience: deejays treated it as if the station were an eighties album-rock station and programmed every cut. I have tapes with "Glorifed G," "W.M.A.," "Dissident," "Indifference" besides the singles.

djs at your college radio station mostly played singles? weird.

I should have been clearer: the djs placed every cut in regular rotation, as in you heard six or seven new PJ tracks in a given day. In other situations you could still call and request an album track.

"Rearviewmirror" was my fave back in the day, voting for "Animal" now

12345aginonefittafivefiveoneaganaogan

This album inspired a singular act in my college radio experience: deejays treated it as if the station were an eighties album-rock station and programmed every cut. I have tapes with "Glorifed G," "W.M.A.," "Dissident," "Indifference" besides the singles.

― Hey Look More Than Five Years Has Passed And You Have A C (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, March 30, 2011 6:36 PM (48 minutes ago) Bookmark

this was even kinda true for a lot of mainstream alternative stations, i mean MTV was really at the absolute peak of its influence on rock radio playlists so for a band that big to not make videos (plus not going for any of the most widely appealing songs with the first couple singles) really freed programmers up to actually try other songs.

Voted wma as it felt like a very strange song at the time

i heard 'dissident' and 'glorified g' a ton on the local altrock stations, truth be told 'dissident' was probably the song i heard third most from this album after 'daughter' and 'old lady'. have never gotten this rep 'wma' has for being a notoriously awful weak point on the album (totally get it for 'glorified g'), not really tempted to listen to it again for the first time in 17 years to find out why. i know i've mentioned this before but at the time the big atlanta altrock station had billboards that simply read 'PEARL JAM' and then, smaller, in the corner '99x'. for no other album was the sentiment truer than 'vs.' - 'ten's the bigger seller and the 'classic' and vitalogy is where indie snobs (like myself at the time no doubt) were tempted to give them credit (if not for their music than at least for their politics, 'putting the system on trial', etc), but this felt the biggest/most unavoidable at the time. this era - from in utero/vs. thru whenever hootie hit - really was the highwater mark for altrock and probably the last time you could really make the argument that rock was the most popular/'relevant' music in america (although dr. dre and garth brooks could've posed counterpoints).
voted 'animal'. koritfw.

OTM, with one quibble: reconciling the strategies of an alternative subculture suddenly gone mega as it sold records at Bodyguard and Music Box (Mariah Carey) levels. Obviously the eighties had seen college radio icons like Peter Gabriel and U2 cross over -- even less massive but still cultish but Top 40 Brit phenomena like Pet Shop Boys -- but something else entirely happened in the period you described.

It's almost like we experienced a collective HI DERE WE CAN ALL AFFORD CD'S LET'S BUY LOTS OF THEM

Balls otm. Vs. led to them getting the cover of Time magazine. Which is something that literally changed my life.

Daughter

This is so Rearviewmirror it isn't even funny. It's quite likely their best song ever, with the possible exceptions of Corduroy and Alive.

yeah "Rearviewmirror" is such an obvious standout that i'm kind of thinking about voting for something else just to keep it interesting

my overall ranking would prolly be like:

RVM > Go > Leash > Animal > Blood > Glorified G > Dissident > Elderly > Daughter > Rats > WMA > Indifference

actually i don't know if that's really "best to worst" or "most rocking to least rocking" now that i look at it

"Leash" is like one of their most heinous moments. Just awful.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AIgfYVq5Y5A

i love how heinous "Leash" is. i mean the first few seconds before the drums kick in alone are massive.

I prefer the live versions of RVM to the one on the album.

Either "Rearviewmirror" or "Elderly Woman", both for very emo nostalgia reasons. When I was 17 and driving around with my friends on a boring Friday night in the shitty small town we were living in, this was our go to album and those two songs (corn alert!) really helped feel like things were going to get better.

I ended up listening to both Vs and Vitology today for the first time in probably 10 years.. partially due to Pitchfork's review..

I think "Leash" has some great energy.. Fully enjoyed it. Couldn't make it through "Rats" or "Glorified G."

"Go" and "Elderly Woman" are probably the 2 best songs.. And I'm not gonna fucking vote for "Elderly Woman," so this was easy..

???!! There are people who don't like "Leash"!?!?

I can't believe I used to like "Glorified G" when I was 14. I'm embarrassed.

FUCKING GO

http://goclub.stanford.edu/images/goban.jpg

ALWAYS...KEEP IT...LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOADED

I think I used to love all the songs you guys hate. Wma, rats, glorified g were all highlights for me an my mates at school.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

he's singing 'pelican'

how can a gun be a glorified version of a pelican

dunno

I believe it's the subject of the song (the wielder of two guns and lover of god) who is a glorified version of a pelican.

look at its mouth, it looks like a gun

(I just listened to this album yesterday for the first time in 10+ years and it was the first time I felt puzzlement about that particular lyric from "Glorified G" so that's pretty weird.)

I listened to it yesterday for the first time since 1994!

Vitalogy too. Still don't like that so much, but I'm really enjoying Vs., Glorified G's chorus aside.

What the eff, man. Weird. But yeah, pretty solid rock record.

Damn, NO votes for "Blood"?

Still love this album.

for an album that's so well packaged, Vitalogy is one strangely put-together album. All the big stinky rock tracks come in clumps and some of them are crap. but I love the more reflective moments on it, not to mention the throwaway weird/funny moments top

9. "Rats" 4:15 0
7. "Blood" 2:50 0
4. "Glorified G" 3:26 0
12. "Indifference" 5:02 0

this is accurate i guess. "Blood" an "Indifference" are quality filler but not album highlights. the other 2 are kinda garbage.

Rats >>>>>> Blood > Leash

"DONT SHIT WHERE THEYRE NOT SUPPOSED TO" is among the lmao-highlights.

it's safe to assume that if rats don't compare they probably don't poll either

Dinsdale otm. I still would take Rats and Dissident over the top 3

Special note: This was the first CD I ever bought in my life. Now, my order of song rankings from best to worst...

Elderly Woman...
Daughter
Dissident
Glorified G
Go
Animal
Blood
Rearviewmirror
WMA
Indifference
Leash
Rats

don't call me
dot

urr

anybody who didn't vote Rearviewmirror can munch a butthole

that said I don't remember if that's what i voted for

still got the soul patch

http://www.blabbermouth.net/news/arrest-warrant-issued-for-former-pearl-jam-drummer-dave-abbruzzese/

Elderly
Daughter
Go
Rats
WMA
Glorified
Rearview
Leash
Animal
Indifference
Blood

I leave off Dissident too, what a stinker

ah i knew i'd forgotten about one of them. oh well.

I cant even be in this thread

SOYBEANS
SO MUCH CLEARER

I leave off Dissident too, what a stinker

Uh — this is the only PJ song I love!

Glorified G is such a terrible song.

Agreed (my freshman year roommate in college played this album con-stan-tly)

SOYBEANS

For reason the other day I remembered that back when this album was new, one of the KLOL* night DJs claimed that the full title was "Elderly Woman Behind The Counter In A Small Town Eating A Bag Of Cheetos And Rubbing Her Belly".

*The actual call letters!

For <some> reason.

this is probably my least favorite of the first 5 albums, but "Rearviewmirror" is very possibly their single best song

GLORIFIED VERSION OF A PELI-CAN

^^^ gets it

YOUNG GIRL,
WYLAND

Did I ever tell the story here how I randomly stumbled upon the counter of the small town that the elderly woman worked at?

^^^ tease

Please, put us at the center of your attention.

Used to think Glorified G was great when I were a lad. This is a really funky album. I always liked 'Rats', WMA, Go and the two acoustic ones. As with all PJ albums it has its share of hoary old rock dirges like Dissident, Leash and Blood which do little for me.

I definitely thought it was "Glorified version of a pelican."

I had the flu when this thread started. You never forget the flu threads.

Did I vote for "Leash?" If I didn't I should have.

I would have voted for leash, don’t understand the hate, it’s basically this heat with a real singer

Love hearing Eddie go "one two three four two three" in concert and into Elderly Woman. Hair raising with the crowd singing along.

Did I ever tell the story here how I randomly stumbled upon the counter of the small town that the elderly woman worked at?

― Jersey Al (Albert R. Broccoli), Friday, March 29, 2019 9:42 PM (one year ago)

This is a good story, but I am pretty sure I posted it before. Need to search.

There is the little tiny speck of a town that I visit often, maybe 20-30 times a year, about 35 miles north of the small city where I live. One of the few landmarks of this tiny town is a hybrid store/bar/restaurant that serves as basically the only retail business in about a 10 mile radius. I was in there the other day and had a much longer conversation than usual with the man who is often working there. He is also a musician, after he was playing some perverted boogie woogie piano song, we started talking about music.

For some reason he brought up that in the early 90s, Pearl Jam stayed at a ranch/studio nearby while recording Vs. and that Eddie Vedder wrote the song "Elderly Woman..." about the former owner of the store/bar/restaurant who has since passed.

For its second album, Pearl Jam felt the pressures of trying to match the success of its debut album, Ten. In a 2002 interview, guitarist Mike McCready said, "The band was blown up pretty big and everything was pretty crazy."[1] Vs. was the first Pearl Jam album to have production duties handled by producer Brendan O'Brien. It was also the band's first album with drummer Dave Abbruzzese, who had joined the band in August 1991 and toured for the album Ten. Rehearsals for Vs. began in February 1993 at Potatohead Studio in Seattle, Washington. The band then moved to The Site in Nicasio, California in March 1993 to begin recording. Abbruzzese called the tranquil recording site "paradise" while lead vocalist Eddie Vedder said, "I fucking hate it here...I've had a hard time...How do you make a rock record here?"[2]

https://goo.gl/maps/vkGjZANEepv95AEF9

https://i.imgur.com/ei8yK3v.jpg

I had always imagined it as a diner counter somewhere in the midwest or the plains.

Am I the only one who has always detected a slight reggae influence in this album? Particularly in the bass lines of W.M.A. and Rats (perhaps not coincidentally two of the most interesting songs).

I always felt that 'Rats' was Jeff trying to inject a little bit of Jah Wobble into things.

OH PLEASE DON"T GO OUT ON ME
DON"T GO ON ME NOW