Pearl Jam Reconcidered Redux

** Note I wrote this back in May.... and don't recall if I posted it here, I couldn't find it when I went back looking... anyway it's that time of the year where we start to look back... so here)I got the newest issue of Entertainment weekly today and their article about Pearl Jam and their new found status as a Grateful Dead like rock band caused me to pause and think about the band seriously for the first time in many a year.Yes, I was 19 in 1991 when they hit the scene and owned copies of Ten on both cassette and still have the CD I bought 1992. I purchased their second album, Vs. on LP a week before the CD was released because I wanted to hear it so bad, and I think that I at least owned each of their discs up to Yield. I was a fan, I was hooked and I cared about the band, their music and all of that. And then it faded away (hey isnt that in one of their songs? I disremember)..A couple of things have happened over the last year that have got me thinking about them again, and I guess this article was just the last straw that got me to the point where I just had to write something down. First I saw the amazing Andrew Wood documentary Malfunkshun (http://www.malfunkshun.com/) which got me to drop more Mother Love Bone tracks into my iPod. Secondly all the press about the new Pearl Jam records got me thinking about them, the time in my life that I was really into them and their music, and then my recent visit to Flat, Black & Curricular a record store in East Lansing that I frequented in college that had a flyer on the wall for: The Red Hot Chilli Peppers with opening acts Smashing Pumpkins and Pearl Jam. I remember that my best friend from high school had gone to the show (as he was a freshman at MSU that fall) and written me about it. So what is there to say about Pearl Jam? For me Ten is the only record of theirs that I still own, I think that Black was the best song on it, I think that their big singles Jeremy and Evenflow are far from the best things on the record. Sure its dripping with arena rock aspirations, but how many people really recall the music climate that the album was dropped into? Who recalls the dominance of Warrant, Trixter and Firehouse that preceded the alternative revolutions. Listening to Ten these days I can feel my over exposure to punk rock kick in as I kept thinking pick up the tempo, but over all they are the last band standing from something that happened when I was at just the right age and the right place in my life to latch on to it. Really thats the only thing I can really say about them, they were the band for that time and that place that meant something in my life, and that counts for something now I am off to listen to what ever my iTunes selects...Postscript...cause I can... Rereading this makes me think that I missed some thoughts on the band, that my impassioned non-edited rambling comments aren't slick enough or well thought out enough, but they were honest and a little scattered if they had a bit of Non-Sequiter in them... I still don't listen to much Pearl Jam, once and a while I play something, and today, it's that sonic squish that starts the tune Deep that catches me and puts me in mind of great rock song openings..... So I have left the bulk of my comments untouched.... what were you writing about, music wise in May of 06?